The best gift

I may have mentioned that I learned to cook at the ripe old age of 32, when I married the man who singlehandedly put away all the Christmas decorations yesterday while I hung out at the mall with two hilarious youngsters.

Tell me I'm not the luckiest girl on earth.

So.  For the last 8.5 years of wedded bliss, I have been cooking with these knives:

Everything I know about cooking, I learned with these knives.  Every.Single.Thing.

In South Dakota, where I grew up and where we walked uphill two miles in the snow (in both directions) to school with no shoes on our feet, we believe that a little hardship is good for the character.

Perhaps character is why I never bought good knives.  Perhaps, in the beginning anyway, I didn't know any better.  Perhaps after I knew better I started researching knives, looking longingly at their shiny blades and sturdy handles.  Perhaps, while I dreamed of a bread knife that cut instead of tore, sliced and diced tomatoes that weren't squashed to oblivion, and all the magical things I just knew I could accomplish with an honest-to-goodness Chef's knife, I couldn't decide exactly which knives I wanted.  Perhaps every time I considered purchasing new knives, someone had a growth spurt overnight and required a new wardrobe.

Perhaps my proficiency at procrastination is to blame.  Who knows?

Well just imagine my surprise on Christmas morning when I opened this:

...and then these:

...and this (it cuts bread like it's butta, baby):

...and maybe best of all, this (which will not leave my kitchen, under penalty of dismemberment):

I feel like Annie, and these knives are my own personal Daddy Warbucks.  Or wait.  Maybe my husband is my own personal Daddy Warbucks.  That makes more sense.  Either way, I'm giddy, people.  Watch out, it's a whole new world!