Best Gifts of 2010

Nikon D90

When I was young and every Christmas meant a new doll my parents used to ask me to get out my dolls and clean and dress them all up to show my appreciation for them. My brother and I would also sort through our old toys and pick those we were passing along to the toy drive for poorer children. With my father we would clean and fix them up, and then put them in boxes and wrap them. Today toy drives are about purchasing new toys and I think there is a message missed in that.

This year of 2010 was not the best of years and my sister and I had promised each other a super Christmas and then there was the new computer for me and a new septic tank for me to bust the budgets. But my sister and her fur kids are joining me for Christmas and that is a wonderful gift in and of itself. Besides not all gifts are at Christmas.

As I grow older my friends and I have agreed to not feel we must gift at this time of year. It frees us up to find the perfect gift and the perfect time and wrap it and give it as a complete surprise. And sometimes they are not things but time spent together. Jessica deciding to go to the spa seriously and haul me along has been a wonderful gift. Getting in shape has been super but so has the windshield time to and from Taos. And my friend, Dianne, coming up to sit my house and four dogs and three cats while my sister and I escaped to Utah, or her opening up her house for Thanksgiving are immeasurable gifts.

And my sister gifted me this summer with a weekend at the St Francis in Santa Fe (photos of which were lost in the dreaded computer crash) and the Nikon D90 camera that just keeps giving and giving and giving. On another shopping trip to Santa Fe we jokingly gave each other identical all-in-one socket tools at Loew's. With all the other unpacking from the vehicles we both left this small item in our cars. Hers turned out to be the perfect thing to take off her high lift jack from the jeep when she got stuck in mud. I am putting mine in the emergency box.

Surviving 2010 has probably been the best gift of the year. I have a list of friends that did not make it. And thanks especially for my sister making it out of the Zuni Mountains this fall.