One of the most touching and sweetest - literally -- Christmas gifts that I received this year was a set of chocolate coins from my son and his girlfriend Léa, who is a university student in France.

When the two of them arrived just before the holidays, they were unusually interested in seeing some of my school medal collection. They are not collectors so this seemed a bit odd, but I jumped at the chance to show them some of my recent acquisitions and pulled out a box with some French university medals.

I was thinking all along that my son might finally be catching the collecting bug, but they had something else in mind. As I was showing them medals, they were taking careful mental notes of the way I wrote up the envelopes, rather than focusing on the medals themselves, so they could put together the mini collection you see here.

Note that Léa even put the price codes down in the lower right corner of each envelope, just like on my collection envelopes. When I unwrapped the gift box, they were very eager to know if the codes they wrote meant anything. No, but I'm assuming the French translations are correct!

They also decorated a gingerbread man to look like me, complete with a gold medal in my left hand, though my tan isn't this good with the recent snowstorm in the northeast.