My Best Christmas Present ever:

What makes a good Christmas present? I don't think it is to do with money, I don't think it has to do with size it all comes down to the thought and the feeling behind the present. Growing up it was all about things being fair, did my parents spend as much on me as they did on my siblings and did I get bigger presents and more impressive presents that everyone else. I once got a Power Rangers Megazord that at the time I thought there was no way it could be beaten.

Anyway over the years I have of course come to realise that there are much more important things than the Power Rangers, even if there aren't that many. So last year I really had no clue what to get from my parents, they are normally good at getting things and know me really well so know what I like. So last year I had been to lots and lots of cricket games, I love cricket and so does my partner, so last Christmas they ended up getting us membership for our local cricket team. This was a fantastic present that kept on giving, we went to so many games I really haven't kept count, we went to lots of the shorter format games (for those who don't know 20 and 40 over games) and looking back on the year some of these games and moment in these games are a real highlight and I really enjoyed going. It actually culminated in us going to a quarter final match of my team against the mother in laws team and whilst the game went the wrong way we introduced my mother in law, who is a huge fan of cricket, to live cricket and she loved the experience. At said quarter final we were being good and supporting both the home and away teams and so when the away team hit a 6 and we were waving our banners we ended up live on Sky Sports and this was recorded by my parents and is now in my possession and is going into my partners present that I will write about later as I think it is going to be the best present I have ever given.

The above present however is probably the second best present I have ever had, the best one I have ever got was given to me also last year but by my partner. This time last year we were sort of living together, I had moved most of my stuff in and it was only really a matter of time before it was finalised and well at Christmas she gave me keys to her flat (I was living with my parents so we were only ever going to move into her place). This of course meant a lot, true we were already talking about getting engaged after only 3 months of dating (we were good friends before this) and did get engaged after 6 months and living together really cemented things in place. So yeah my best present ever was keys to the flat and moving in with my partner.

The best present I have ever given though is hopefully going to be the one that I am giving to my partner this year. We are quite poor off at the moment, well poor may be not the right word but money is tight when you are saving for a wedding. So this year we set a cap on how much we can spend on each other (£25) and I had to ponder what I was going to do. My partner is a really sentimental person and so I wanted to make something that would be special to her and that she can keep forever. I ended up coming up with the idea of making her a scrap book type thing. In this I have stuck lots of memories from the build-up of our time together as friends and then since we have started going out and up until now. I have put in lots of text messages, e-mails, pictures and facebook status updates from friends and family that I thought she would like to see. I however thought that this was not enough and might be too simple, so I have decided to make her a DVD. The main focus off this DVD is our cat, she is nuts and so I have plenty of great footage but I have also added in personal mementos such as the above mentioned video at the cricket and photos from our 1 year anniversary weekend away in London and what I hope will be the icing on the cake is personal messages from friends and family. I have asked people from literally all around the world including America and Brazil to make personal messages to my partner so that I can put them in my DVD.

Anyway this is the story of my favourite Christmas presents and of what I hope to be my favourite gift to have given.