When I was a little girl and my birthday was just around the corner, I couldn’t contain my excitement. With my parents and eight kids, our family had built-in birthday parties. I shared mine with my sister who was 4 years and 3 days older. But, our mother made sure we each got our favorite cake. Strawberry shortcake for her and chocolate on chocolate with a side of chocolate for me. And Pepsis for everyone. It was the only time we actually got r...

Parents strive to make their children happy. When they are infants, it’s not too difficult. You feed them, change them, bathe them and rock them to sleep. They cry, you cry, no one sleeps, but ultimately, everyone’s in love with each other. In elementary school they start telling you what they want. Mostly what other kids have and that they absolutely can’t live without. And it becomes a little harder to make and keep the little dic...

It’s pretty much a parent’s job to embarrass their kids. It’s an unwritten law that has been going on since Eve spit on Cain’s cowlick. Despite the level of embarrassment you, yourself, endured as an adolescent at the hands of your own parents when you swore, “I’ll never do that!” there you are doing “that” and this and the other.

No one starts out the day ...

It seemed simple enough. I went on Amazon.com looking for a calendar for our home to help Pepper keep track of our busy schedules. I could select, order and have it in the mail to us in a couple of days. Done.

She needed something easy to read and large enough to write several items per day in some cases. We seem to have more than our share of entries. There’s superfluous school closings for the kids&...

Good friends afforded us the opportunity to spend the night in a luxurious room on the 26th floor of a Hilton resort for our 27th anniversary recently. Overlooking the magnificent San Diego bay, the view from our room was spectacular. As a matter of fact, I was mesmerized.

“What on earth are you looking at for so long?” Pepper asked.

“That Dole ba...