BM in my case is prety unique too. She gave ss clothing that was waay to big for him before. She has completely skipped all 3 of my skids birthdays for years. Oh and a few Christmases ago she sent my sd a fabric calendar with teddy bears on it that was for the year prior. Plus my sd was way past liking teddy bears....but her mom would only know that if she actually was in contact with my skids. One of my favorite gifts is when she sent a gift card with directions to buy a specific gift for ss that was more expensive than what the gift card would have covered! lol

SS's aunt was on welfare (until the state removed all of her children from her home). Every year at Christmas she'd sign up with every toy drive for needy children that she could find, and then pick and choose which of the donations were "good enough" for her to give to her children. She'd pass a couple of rejects on to BM (her sister), who would give them to SS as the bulk of his Christmas presents from her. (She'd tell DH where they had come from - I'm not sure why; maybe to let us know that if she had bought presents she'd have picked better ones?)

One of SS's former teachers was very big into toy drives and so SS naturally kept trying to get us to donate presents for "needy kids" - totally oblivious to the fact that at least some of those donations were making their way back to him. It really annoyed us knowing that someone who may not have really been able to afford it was being charitable, only for their gifts to be passed over by a welfare queen with a sense of entitlement and then sent home with a kid who already has to donate some of his toys every year to make room for the new ones.

Mattie, that takes the cake! (I'm surprised you still have a tongue, mine would be just about bitten off by this point...)

Silver, a close runner-up was his very belated "birthday present" this year which was... his choice of stuffed animals that she still had from when he last lived with her. He was one year old then; he is now eight. They never even made it out of the bag that she sent them in - they sat for months until, during one of his periodic "pick which toys you no longer play with to go to Goodwill" he gave away the entire bag.

DH and I amuse ourselves (when SS is not around) by planning the things that we say we will send up there with him for her to deal with - a pet rat? Clothes that no longer fit? Betamax tapes? A Commodore 64 so that he has a computer there? :-)

I'm glad you are all smiling pleasantly in front of the children.

My ex's brother & his new wife pulled some of these same stunts, including sending the children back to their mother in worn-out, ill-fitting thrift store clothes, but the kids never were put into the middle of it.

I just love my X and his whole family going in together to get a PS3 for DS for Christmas. Ummmmm.....yeah...did I mention X was out of a job and living with his GF's mother? Oh and did I mention he wasn't providing health insurance like he is court-ordered to and wasn't even paying full CS? Oh, yeah, and did I mention I have residential custody of DS and he only spends every-other Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon over there(basically 4 days a month)? Then, believe-it-or-not, X gave DS a gift card, but wouldn't let him spend it on a game for his portable system. He could only spend it on a game for the PS3...which is with X most of the month. X's gifts always come with strings.

Ashley, was your ex the kind of guy who would give you a gift of sleezy lingerie as a present? "Here, honey, I got me, I mean you, a present...."

LMAO! He never gave me any lingerie, but he would give me things like liquor. Stuff I might use, but that he would use more. Two Christmases before we split up, he gave me a TV as my Christmas gift. Then, when we split up, he went to the house and took it to his mother's before I could get it.

ROFLMAO! I still laugh my butt off when I think about it!

I just feel bad DS because they try so hard to convince him the gifts are his, but they really aren't.

OK, so my BB isn't that unique after all - I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or not!! LOL. The flowers weren't the first bizarre gift she gave SS. When he was 12 she gave him bunny slippers. When he was about 10 he came home from her house once with a pair of her jeans (circa 1990 high-waist narrow-leg MOM jeans!!) that she said he could have because they fit him better than her. Well, the bunny slippers "mysteriously" disappeared and the Mom jeans went straight back to her the next weekend he visited her. I sometimes wonder what the hell she's thinking.

"When he was 12 she gave him bunny slippers"

LOL! That's too funny; when you started this I was thinking that at least no one got the bunny suit from A Christmas Story, but now I'm not so sure.

My SD's grandparents sent them every year $10 WallMart giftcards for their birthdays. Mind you, they were very wealthy, never shopped in regular stores, only upscale, they both passed away recently and left BM close to $ 1million. So I mean that wealthy, and BM has siblings, so everyone got that much. I mean that how much money they had.
And for Christmas they usually sent stuff from pharmacy, like one year they sent disposable razors and cheap hand cream, LOL

When SD got married last year, no one from BM's family attended and no one sent a gift or even a card. Not even bunny slippers. LOL