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The Season of Love, Joy, and Wisdom

It was the year of the Cabbage Patch Kids, and I was making my bi-weekly visit to the Zayre’s toy department to peruse the aisles, hoping for a surprise shipment of the hottest doll of the year. The toy was…

Perfectly Imperfect

Standing back to admire and enjoy the lovely decorations I’d put up in our home for Christmas 2020, I noticed that the table runner on the long table in our family room was extremely uneven. One side dangled nearly to…

Songs of the Season

I love all kinds of Christmas music–carols, secular songs, children’s songs–provided it is not played before Thanksgiving. That being said, there are a number of songs associated with Christmas time that really don’t seem to have anything to do with…

Evan’s Elf

“I’m never allowing an elf on my shelf – or anywhere else in my house for that matter,” I proclaimed at my firstborn’s baby shower. I was a new mom and full of ideals, philosophies, and many other “I’ll never”…

fortune cookies

Our Chinese Food Christmas

In 2021, the polar vortex left millions of Texans with no electricity or water available. My niece’s family, warned about the stoppage of water, filled bathtubs and containers with the precious liquid. Other friends with no electricity left their homes…

brown wooden board

How Do You Know When You’ve Had a Good Thanksgiving?

“How do you know when you’ve had a good Thanksgiving?” my middle son, who had driven home from south Texas for the holiday, asked many years ago. “Having all the family together,” I answered instantly. I didn’t even have to…

person slicing pie beside bread

Gobble It Up

Thanksgiving. Just the mention of this holiday has me salivating for turkey and sweet potato casserole treasuring memories of cherished family traditions. One very weird tradition I have carried into my adulthood is that the turkey is always referred to…

Adopting an Older Child

“No! I won’t! And you can’t make me!” She hurled the words at me with all the fury in her small nine-year-old body. “You’re so mean to me! I hate you!” Taking a deep breath, then another, I told myself:…

Thanksgiving Thievery

It was a brilliantly blue-skied Thanksgiving Day, perfect for a celebration. But there was mischief afoot. Little did we know that a criminal was lurking in the neighborhood looking for an opportunity to strike. A neighbor had placed her cooked…

field of purple flower beside house

Going Home Again

In the 1950s, developers were building row after row of cute little houses to meet the needs of returning soldiers who were anxious to begin a new life and start a family. My folks were part of a new wave…

person using laptop computer

Buying a First Home Over the Internet

“You’re going to make an offer on a house you’ve never seen?” asked my husband incredulously. “We don’t want to move into an apartment with a second child arriving in the fall.” “Your dad and I’ve never bought a home…

gray scale photo of person playing piano

Music Box

When you live in Myrtle Beach and don’t have a big Performing Arts Center, even though I have fought long and hard as the former Chair of the City of Myrtle Beach Cultural Arts Committee for twenty-five years, you pretty…

Sweating, Itching, and Having the Time of my Life

I chose my outfit mindfully before meeting up with my friends the other day. Then during the entire morning, no one at all remarked about my clothes. They didn’t bat an eye about my dirt-stained shirt or my mud-caked shoes,…