Thread by @kazweida

This #SundayMorning , I was asked about the best holiday gift I ever received. And boy, have I got a story for you.

It starts on Christmas Eve in 2004. My husband and I were newly married and had recently moved to Utah. We'd been having a difficult time that year.
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(2) He was an engineer and had been unemployed for more than a year. We'd moved to Utah to give him better job prospects & for me to go back to school but it hadn't worked out that way.

I was teaching kindergarten at a local private school where the commute was an hour each way

(3) Finally, after working the nightshift at a factory painting just to pay bills, he got a break. An aircraft company hired him as a temp. It's the same company where he now works at an executive level fifteen years later.

Our prospects suddenly seemed a little brighter.

(4) In 2004, we lived in a corner of a Utah valley just above Ogden called Liberty. We had rented a literal log cabin in the snow shadow of Ben Lomond, a peak just shy of 10,000 feet.

We heated the house by wood stove. The snowdrifts got so high the dogs could walk on the roof.

(5) On Christmas Eve in 2004, I was sitting on an old futon. We'd actually never had enough spare cash to spring for a couch.

The futon had been gifted to me by friends years ago but now we had two Labradors and it was, shall we say, CROWDED.

(6) We were in the middle of a snowstorm.

The cabin was at the end of a road across from a campground. We got moose in the yard often. To say it was a bit inaccessible isn't an understatement.

So I was surprised when I heard the engine of what sounded like a large truck.

(7) Our driveway was steep and the yard thickly wooded, so I couldn't see the road from the picture window in front. But very slowly, the back end of a large truck came into view, backing up our driveway.

It was from a local furniture company.

(8) Despite what must have been a struggle to get the truck through the snow, the guys emerged from the truck grinning and I turned to my husband.

"What's going on?"

He'd surprised me with a sofa delivered on Christmas Eve, though he'd been worried the storm might stop them.

(9) And it wasn't just any old sofa. It was a big sectional so soft and deep that you could lose yourself in it and never want to be found.

I curled up in that sofa on Christmas Eve in 2004 and watched my first Harry Potter movie. It was magical.

(10) I'll always feel grateful for the delivery guys who drove what must have been nearly an hour through the snow to reach us.

10 years later, we still had that couch. Through two more children and four more moves. It was bittersweet when I sold it two years ago.

(11) It had snags from the claws of dogs that have long since passed. And more than a few stains from the messy hands of toddlers that have grown into teenagers.

To the rest of the world, it looked like an old sofa. But to me, it was the best Christmas gift I ever received.

(END) Thanks to @cuttersoft for the #SundayMorning thread suggestion. Come back next week and we'll do this again.

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