The last time Ed gave me a gift that wasn’t a gift card was for my 26th birthday. He bought me a set of Lenox cups and dessert plates in their Butterfly Meadow design because he remembered I liked butterflies. Tonight, I used the butterfly cups for the first time. Chris washed two of them so that we could have homemade hot chocolate together since it was another cold winter’s day, and the heating wasn’t working properly in the apartment earlier.

Maybe I didn’t appreciate them enough when I received them in 2012. They’re a really beautiful design, one that I’m sure he picked out with a lot of love in his heart. Ed always preferred real gifts rather than money – to give and to receive. As I snapped a picture of the cups filled with hot chocolate and topped with whipped cream tonight, I thought about what he was thinking when he purchased them and had them shipped off to me. I wish I could tell him now how much I love these cups and how great they look in this photo I took with my phone.