I love this week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.  I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to Christmas.  It comes and goes so fast, so I leave my decorations up until the end of the week, as I try to enjoy just a little more of that wonderful time.   This week is also a [...]

No room for Mary being great with the Christ child to be born in Bethlehem.  That message from the first Christmas resonates for us today and reminds us to make room for others. Here’s an example:  When I was a teenager, my dad had been driving down a street when he spotted a homeless man huddled [...]

… To Grandmother’s house we go.”  This song paints a peaceful sleigh ride picture of the journey home.  It’s not always so, however.  Sometimes it’s a trial just getting home for Christmas! One year I had been living in Utah working on my Master’s Degree at Brigham Young University.  Since Bruce was still working and [...]

Will you be going home for Christmas?  When my dad was a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II, each letter he wrote home repeated the hoped for “Home for Christmas.”  For two years that hope did not materialize.  When the Vietnam War was raging and the draft snagging, Bruce’s number came up [...]

One year that stands out for me could have fallen under Dickens’s spell where he wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  It was the worst of times for me because my husband and I were struggling financially.  I was pregnant with our fourth child.   My husband’s employment provided medical benefits [...]

Bruce and I have been busy baking pumpkin bread with chocolate chips for neighbor gifts this year.  The first batch didn’t turn out so well.  The loaves were so crumbly, we had to “eat” that batch and start over.  Neighbor gifts at Christmas time is one of our family traditions.  There’s no set thing we [...]

If you decorate a Christmas tree, you probably remember where or how you got each ornament.  For many of us, we choose Christmas ornaments for the memories they evoke, something we are interested in, or an occasion we want to remember.  How about putting family history ornaments on your tree?  Here’s some ideas: Purchase miniature [...]

Would you like to make Christmas less commercial, and more meaningful this year?  How about including some family history items in your gift list.  You probably don’t have time to make a family quilt or some other big project, but there are some things you can give or do to make this year a Family [...]

Things have changed since the days when we sat around the nightly dinner table and had a discussion.  Parents and children are busy.  In our hurried lives, many have the grab and go routine down where they drive through the fast food line, grab their grub, chow it down, and head to the next activity [...]

Many homes on Thanksgiving Day are filled with the smell of turkey roasting in the oven, pumpkin pies set out on the sideboard, cheers or moans from the group huddled in front of the football game on the TV, and children or grandchildren running through the house, knocking over the toddling babies who try to [...]