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Yesterday was my 57th Birthday and I wanted to share with you all, how I spent my day. First I started by making sure I took the day off from work. What a lovely day it was! Though it started off cold at only 31°, there was full sun, no clouds and it warmed up quick. I got up early and made a quick trip to DSR to grab a few big slabs and brought them home. I put these in my yard and over time when I am bored I will split them to find treasures at my leisure. When I got back home I got out my new dremel 290 and tried it out on a few pieces to see how it worked. I did like using it while I tried to expose more of a couple of my Dipluera specimens. I also used my angle grinder to trim some of the excess matrix of of them as they were much bigger then they needed to be. Later in the afternoon my wife and I got some chairs and sat outside soaking up the sun and just enjoyed being outside. Then it came time to pick up my oldest 2 kids to come over to celebrate my Birthday. I ended up having my wife, 4 kids, and 2 of their girlfriend to help me celebrate. We ordered pizza and wings and my wife made me an ice-cream cake. After that I got to open my gifts. My loving wife had already given my my gifs early. She got me a Tommy Bahama silk shirt while we were in Florida, sterling silver rope chain, and the Dremel 290 which I got on Wednesday. My Son Dylan and his girlfriend got me a Geologic Time coffee mug, some cool rocks from lake Ontario and a piece of drift wood which was meant as a gag gift. A couple rocks they painted. His girlfriend painted a trilobite on one of them. My Daughter Rachel got me a gift card from Bass Pro. My Son David a gift card from Cabela's, and my son Devin, some money. All in all it was a nice day to chill out and relax with my family. It was much needed.

Merry Christmas to all you lovely people of the great Fossil Forum community . Please show us your Christmas fossils and other paraphernalia related gifts. I have not open my presents yet but got my fingers crossed . all the best to you and yours the Ricos .

There's no title I could think of that didn't sound odd....Show us your Nature's Gifts! Have you been Gifted by Nature? Show us! Yeesh. WHAT I MEAN IS HAVE YOU BEEN GIVEN A "GIFT" BY MOTHER NATURE!??! In other words...show us your fossils that were just LAYING there...waiting for you to notice them! In perfect or almost perfect condition, highlighted by a little sunlight (or not). literally just sitting there waiting for you to pick it up! Most of the time we hunt, scrounge, dig, scrape or otherwise discover fossil finds. Other times they are there just for the picking up, but SOMETIMES....it seems there is just a little extra something, a special fossil that seems like it was just placed there for you to find. I have had this happen so many times it's just WEIRD and I just figure they are Gifts from Nature! My absolute favorite is this honking Cretodus Shark tooth. I stopped by a creek in downtown Dallas while there for a convention and just thought I'd see if there were any fossils there. Nothing to be found AT ALL until I went up the bank and I swear this monster was just sitting there looking just like this. Clean as could be. I seriously thought maybe someone had dropped it. Maybe they did. But I found it. Cretodus 2 inches Most recently were these two echinoids from Bell County, at two different localities. The one Leptosalenia mexicana I'd been TRYING to find for some time. I hunted around for about an hour, was getting hot, so turned around to head out and there the little bugger was, just sitting at my feet all pretty like. . Same for the Phymosoma. Had wandered around finding not much except a few nice gastropods and then boom....this pretty thing sitting right out on top, nicely cleaned up and everything! There's about a half dozen other things...a couple of ammonites, some gatropods and a Pennsylvanian brachiopod that was actually catching the sunlight while stuck in the crevasse of a rock that caught my attention Fun stuff. So what has been your "gift" from Nature?

This idea comes from a recent post. Show us a great fossil given to you because the person didn't really care about fossils. Please don't ruin your reputation by telling about how you scammed some poor kindergartener or elderly out of a great fossil. lol A guy at work said this piece of petrified wood had been left in his garage by the previous owner.....15 years ago. And that's where it stayed. He didn't care about it but also didn't feel right throwing it out but didn't know anyone to give it to. Until he found out last year that I was a collector. Since I live in Ohio I don't come across this sort of thing in my collecting. It weighs about 12 lbs.

So my family and I have been spending time about 2-3 hours away from were we live and have found a neat store that sells art, minerals and fossils. I pointed out a few fossils I liked (pretty much all of them) not thinking anything about it and to my surprise I got some for Christmas! I know 2 aren’t fossils but it’s the biggest sand dollar I’ve ever seen and a neat shell of some kind. Next time I go I’ll have to get the information about where they were found and all of that. But I’m happy to add to my small collection!