It is always a pleasant surprise when you are the beneficiary of a random act of kindness. This morning, my day started off on a great note…

I walked into the locker room after my workout on campus. As I walked to my locker, something stuck out like a sore thumb. The pink gift bag with white polkadots was very evident as it sat on the dark ledges that line the dark lockers. Resting on the top of the bag was an envelope addressed to “The Reser Family.”

This gift bag was right in front of my locker this morning after I finished my workout.

In hindsight, I wish I would have opened the card after I opened the actual gift to keep you in suspense on who it was from. But in all honesty, I tore open the card before I wrestled with the tissue paper. The gift was from Brentley and Victoria Broughton, friends of both Sidney and I. More on them later.

Wanting to know who the gift bag was from, I opened the card first.

After I was humbled by who sent the gift, I removed the tissue paper to discover the contents. At the bottom of the bag were five onesies folded together. At first I was like, “Awesome! We can use every one of these that we get.” But there was more to it than that…

I grabbed one of the onesies and discovered that it had Sloan’s initials on it. How cool! Were the other ones customized as well? They sure were.

I pulled out this onesie and discovered that it had Sloan’s initials on it. It would turn out that each one was customized.

The first one I had pulled out had her initials inside a shape. The next one I pulled out had her initials depicted in a type of calligraphy font. I inspected the next one and it spelled out her first name! The fourth one also had her initials configured into a shape. I then removed the final one and laughed out loud…

A look at the onesie that has her initials in a calligraphy-type font and the onesie that has her name on it.

The last onesie had DON’T BLINK written on it. I totally wasn’t expecting it and that is probably where the laughter came from, just from a state of surprise. Because, to be honest, I was more touched by it. How nice of the Broughtons to incorporate my personality and motto into the gift. I visualized Sloan literally wearing her daddy’s life philosophy and it made me feel some type of way.

I pulled out this onesie last and it made my day!

Brentley and I both work in University Communication at Coastal Carolina. We became golf buddies and we eventually introduced our wives to each other. Although friends, Brentley and Victoria didn’t owe us anything at all. They had already given us so much support in person and through social media. To be given this gift was an extremely kind act on their part.

But it gets better…

After I showered and got to my office, I called Brentley to thank him. While we were talking, he told me that Victoria had put the designs on the onesies herself! This blew my mind. I thought that they probably ordered them off of a website that allows you to customize baby clothing but it was so much more meaningful than that. Victoria had created the artwork and worked the magic you need to do in order to transfer them to clothing. To know that she put all that effort into our gift made it even more special.

A look at all five onesies given to us by Brentley and Victoria.

The onesies are sized for when Sloan is 3 months old. I am almost counting down the days until she reaches that mark so we can throw on her Don’t Blink one. Thank you to Brentley and Victoria for the very nice gift, Sidney and I appreciate it very much. Don’t Blink.