November 9 2018

Burden (Five Minute Friday)

I know many feel the weight of a burden when this time of year comes along because they dread the idea of getting together with their entire family for the holidays. I’ve never understood this because to me gathering with my family is not a burden. It is a joy. I look forward to family reunions every year because this is often the one time I get to see some of these folks. If I get to see them some other time throughout the year then that is just a bonus.

Maybe the sense of burden tied to family gatherings is really because you feel like you need to buy gifts for every member of your entire family and whoever they are involved with at the time. I feel that pain and it can indeed feel like a burden. This year if you are feeling like avoiding all contact with your family over the holidays because of gift giving “obligations” I want you to rethink your idea of what the holidays are all about. You have all heard Jesus is the reason for the season, and while I am not here to preach to you, consider the fact that His presence is and was enough.

Consider the idea of giving the gift of your presence without the stress of giving gifts. If you feel the need to give, donate to your favorite charity and do it in your family’s name if it makes you feel better. Of plan a fun holiday experience for all of you to do together and give the gift of a lasting memory. Family gatherings don’t have to be a burden, just free yourself of the ways you thought of them in the past and make this year’s holiday season one you can remember and enjoy with your family.

If none of those ideas works for you, then perhaps you should go back and read Saving for the Holidays to get a handle on it before this time next year rolls around. It’s NOT about the gifts, it’s about the people!

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Burden
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

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August 23 2018

Review: Rage Card Game

Earlier this year we got together with three couples and one single gal while one of the couples was in town for what I like to think of as cousin date night. We are all over fifty, so get those dirty thoughts out of your mind. After eating dinner together in a restaurant, one couple called it a night and the other five of us got together in the common room at a nearby state park inn, where the out-of-towners were staying. Yes, we got the grand tour first and it was a very nice place.

Anyway, back to the common room where we were all seated around a table ready to play games with the fireplace going in the background. The out-of-town cousins travel with games and introduced us to one of their favorites, a game from the 1980s by the makers of UNO, called RAGE. It took a while to get the hang of the game, but they were very patient teachers and we all caught on quick enough. Remember, none of us is twenty anymore! Continue reading

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August 9 2018

Anniversary (Five Minute Friday)

The word for Friday, August 3rd was anniversary. I thought I knew what I wanted to write about it as soon as I saw the word because we just celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary on July 26th. But then it occurred to me that not all anniversaries that are remembered are to celebrate happy occasions. We remember things that happened like the death of a loved one or the dissolution of a marriage as well. Sometimes it is the date we started a job or the year we graduated from high school or college. An anniversary is merely a means of marking, in years, the time that has passed since a monumental event.

This week, my husband and I celebrated the anniversary of the day we met. We met thirty-six years ago, August 7, 1982, at the graduation party for a mutual friend. We might never have met had it not been for the closing of the high school hubby had attended and this friend having to finish her course requirements at the high school I attended. We met in summer school where we were taking both Government and Economics for four hours each morning so we wouldn’t have to spend an entire semester in each of these classes. There simply were not enough class periods in the school day to take all the academic classes I wanted to take so I often chose to take those I dreaded the most in summer school to get them over with faster. Continue reading

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July 8 2018

Vacation (Five Minute Friday)

Vacation is a word that conjures up so many different memories. When we were kids, vacation meant our family of four kids and two parents piling in a nine-passenger station wagon without air conditioning and driving to Lookout Mountain, Tennessee or Mammoth Cave, Kentucky or even Santa Claus, Indiana. These were the kind of trips we took with our family as kids. Always fairly close because the cars were never newish or in great condition and there was always the chance that it would break down on us. The trips were usually only one or two nights in a single hotel room because more than that was NOT in the budget. As often as not, our family vacations were to Ohio to visit our cousins and/or attend our annual family reunion.

When we were kids, vacation meant our family of four kids and two parents piling in a nine-passenger station wagon without air conditioning and driving... Click To Tweet Continue reading

Category: Family, Five Minute Friday, Travel | 1 Comment on Vacation (Five Minute Friday)
May 17 2018

Details Matter

I learned an important lesson recently. Details can be very significant, they do matter. For example, Family.jpg is not the same as family.jpg and map.JPG is not the same as map.jpg, they may seem the same, but these details matter.

Details can be very significant, they do matter. Click To Tweet

These details don’t bother my computer. I can see these photos just fine, but I got so frustrated not being able to figure out why I could get hundreds of photos to show up just fine on my computer, but when I uploaded all the HTML and jpg files to my server so they would be online, something wasn’t quite right and one just wouldn’t show up. I thought I’d have to call for help to figure it out and then it happened again. Finally, after exhausting every possible cause, I finally found out that details really do matter, the internet is pickier than my computer apparently and capitalization is the detail that mattered this time.

Admittedly it had been years since I did much coding using the HTML programming I learned in college. They forced me to learn some sort of computer programming language for my computer endorsement on my elementary education degree. This was the only sort of programming language I could ever see a need to know, so that is what I chose to take. I love making web pages come out just so using Notepad and typing in all the code it takes to make it work. Continue reading

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