Boy did I get lucky with my Secret Santa match. The day that we were paired for our matches, I went to see who I would be sending to, and noticed that my information had already been retrieved. A few hours later, I get the message saying that my gift has been shipped. "Already?" I think, "this is awesome!" My gifter informs me that two packages are coming. One is coming from Amazon, and the other, from England.

Since I live a few miles away from an Amazon distribution center, the Amazon package arrives first. I open it up, and what's staring me in the face, but one of my all time favorite TV series, Firefly. It is a 3 disc Blu-Ray of the complete series of Firefly. Granted, there was only one season. It also has three unaired episodes, and commentary from the director and actors. I've been rewatching the show for the last week or two. It is a great show, and a super gift.

I set the Blu-Ray down, and under that is a Nylabone dog treat. It is the shape of a stick, and is bacon flavored. I hand it to my dog, thinking she won't go for it. She usually turns her nose away to these types of chews. She immediately grabs it, and begins chewing on it. She chewed on it for the next half hour, before I had to take it away. That was the first time I have seen her chew on anything like that before. I am impressed that someone from across the ocean knows what my dog likes better than I do.

Then there is about a 2 week wait. My gifter reminds me that the Royal Mail is slow, and can take up to 3 weeks. Today is the 3 week mark. What do you know. It arrived today!!

I tear open the package, and out spills a bunch of candy! One of the things I specifically ask for in the Reddit gift exchanges, is something unique to your country or something I can't get in the USA. I figure, if we are going to ship internationally, we might as well make it interesting. Most of the candies that were included were candies I have never heard of before. There was one candy in particular that caught my eye. It was labeled "Maynards Wine Gums". It didn't describe what it was, but I thought it sounded interesting. It turns out, they are actually wine flavored gummy candies. I like wine, and I love gummies, so this was awesome. Of the other candies, only two of them I could get in the USA (Snickers and Milky Way). The Milky Way had a much different wrapper than the American ones though. I've seen Mars bars too, but I'm not sure they actually sell them in the USA. Cadbury sells some candies in the US, but I know I have never tried any of the ones sent to me. Usually its just the eggs that you get around Easter. The Dip Dap appears to be some what similar to the "Fun Dip" candies I used to have as a kid. It looks to be a sucker with a bunch of flavored sugar in a bag. You get the sucker wet with your saliva and dip it in the sugar. The stick on this package poked a tiny hole in the bag, so all of the other candies had a light dusting of flavored sugar on them. I've never even heard of "Fruit Pastilles" and had to look them up online to see what they were. They look delicious. And finally, the Haribo candies. I absolutely LOVE Haribo candies, and all the United States usually has are the "Gold Bears". These little bags of "Starmix" are awesome!

There was also a hand written letter in the package with the candies. She wrote a very nice letter explaining where, in England, she lives; how she decided on the gifts; how she is a fan of Firefly herself; how she thought it was funny how she bought a dog treat that looked like wood, and smells like meat, but was neither; and how British chocolate is "particularly nice."

So thank you, agnesb, for your wonderful and generous gifts. You did an awesome job picking just the right things. I could not have asked for a better gifter. I hope your gifter is as wonderful as mine.

Have a very merry Christmas. Have a happy and fun new year as well!

Thank you, -bmlbytes