Firstly - I suck for uploading this so late. We were away from Christmas so I opened this early January, but then a 'life event' got in the way of me doing anything useful for many weeks.

So - my awesome secret santa totally killed it. She did my whole family (my gf and daughter), and gave us a HUGE pile of gifts. I was totally blown away, as were my girls. My girlfriend could not believe that a strange from the internet put so much time, energy and thought into gifts for strangers. They really made us all v. happy.

Everything was beautifully wrapped and with a really awesome personalised card (and several notes on gifts - I've not photographed most of those here as wanted to keep some part of it just to us!).

In no particular order until the end:

A dinosaur book! Freakked me out as I have this exact on a private Amazon wish list of things I wanted to get my daughter at some point (she loves dinosaurs - I feel I've done a good job in some regards raising her!). We opened up the gifts in the evening, and we always read books together whilst she has some milk. We read about some of the dinosaurs and I had to act them out for her. This has already gotten lots of use.

Skipping ropes for me and my daughter. I had told my secret santa I needed to get fitter but hated exercising. This was an awesome idea. I have used mine with my daughter (she was totally bemused the first time). She has tried, but is still a bit young but had a great time trying.

Flying dinosaurs! Yes, you read that right. The little foam planes you build? We one of those from a party bag a few months ago that met its demise, but we had fun with it. The addition of dinosaurs only makes it more awesome. We broke one quite quickly, but I repaired him, and we've since had some competitions in living room.

Bath rocks for my girlfriend. She LOVES baths! She doesn't get as many chances as she likes. She is currently pregnant (April!), so can't have baths (can't have them as hot as she likes), so she was already looking forward to having some baths, and now even more so. She couldn't wrap her head around the fact a stranger had gone to so much effort.

Geek pencils. We're total geeks, and such have much need for pencils. Mathilda tried to make off with mine, but I managed to distract her with a flying dinosaur...

Temporary dinoaur tattoos! We're big (play) tattoo people! We had flags on our faces for the Queen's Jubilee, and whilst in Germany for Christmas we had snowmen, Christmas puddings and the like! I still haven't had a chance to try these out, but I might do exactly that when my daughter wakes up from her nap.

Walking Salt and Pepper robots (because I study AI)! I almost pee'd myself laughing. I've never seen these! You wind them up and you can then send them on their way to carry your condiments. So much more efficient than passing them.

Camera Eye! I can't remember if I said I liked photography. I do but I'm not very good. Science + photography = awesome. We'll see how I get on.... :-/

Big Bang mini Sheldon. He was the perfect size for joining the team on my daugther's pirate ship at bath time! However, she already pulled his head off! It sticks back on though, but he loses it whenever the pirating gets rough. I think he is having a great time.

Ok, so I might need to explain from this point forward. I mentioned in my profile my (possibly weird?!) hobby of thinking about and preparing for the Apocalypse! I enjoy the mental puzzle of working out wht to do in certain situations, and also think a bit of light prep doesn't cost much but could one day be very valuable. That and I'm a bit of a loon.

It turns out I'm not the only one who has given the apocalypse some forethought. Santa's boyfriend has also been thinking it over. Santa helped me out with two gifts:

Talking Zombie book. This came with an explanation that should I fail at fighting them off I might as well learn to communicate with them! My daughter stole it from me right away and had a great time making Zombie noises. We've 'read' it a fair few times together now and she always giggles like crazy.

An Axe!! It even came with a (hand made, I think) D&D style 'stats' sheet with its damage and speed stats attached! Santa explained it was the best apocalypse weapon as you remain mobile with such a weapon (and you can also use it for other survival tasks, I'll add!). In my eagerness to use it I chopped up a sofa already (we needed to take it to the tip so I figured best to make it smaller!). If the Apocalypse does roll around then I'll make sure the spirit of Reddit lives on.

This was my first secret santa on Reddit and it was totally amazing. I can't imagine it'll be topped next year. Thank you Santa!