If you find yourself looking forward to the end of the holiday season instead of the beginning, here’s a call to shift gears and reclaim what should be a time of appreciation, excitement, joy, and peace. Make up your mind that this is going to be your happiest Christmas ever. Your decision to emphasize the positive can reclaim a season that is supposed to bring out the best in us, rather than do us in. The truth is that this time of year offers us a wonderful opportunity to rekindle the spirit of love and living life to the fullest.

With your expectations set on positive, here are some attitude adjustments to try:

• I’ll let the holidays flow, rather than trying to make them fit into a fixed schedule.
• I’ll remember that people are more important than things.
• I’ll relax my expectations for myself and others this year.
• I’m going to live in the present moment and enjoy each activity for itself instead of always thinking about what is ahead of me.
• I’m going to approach the holidays with a sense of joyful anticipation and wonder, just like I did when I was a child.

By vowing to think and behave in more meaningful ways, you’ll find in each present moment of the Christmas season something to savor and enjoy. Each moment of our lives affords us a choice and the holiday season is no exception. This life is a miracle, each and every particle of it, and the holiday season is a celebration of the miraculousness of it all.

You have choices in this business of Christmas celebrations. The responsibility is always your own. The true meaning of the holidays is one of joy, love, peace, and happiness. Cultivate a child-like awe and appreciation and have a Merry Christmas!

The Wayback Juke Box - The Little drummer boy - David Bowie & Bing Crosby

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned From ‘Elf'

1. The best way to spread Christmas cheer
…is singing loud for all to hear!

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Thanksgiving Recipes for Every Dietary Restriction

You can almost guarantee it will happen: you invite a few friends or family members over for Thanksgiving, and one will inevitably tell you that they're on some new diet this year, and you've got to figure out how to cater to their needs because you're a nice person.

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Traditional Irish Music - Brogan's Bar - Ennis, Ireland

Santa's Sad Side Effect: We're Decking The Halls With Endless Holiday Packaging

Is it really possible to keep holiday waste in check?

Valentine's Day Graphs

Valentine's Day Cards

Victoria Stilwell's Top 10 Halloween Pet Safety Tips

1. Keep the candy bowl away from your pets. Candy is never a good idea for any pet, and chocolate in particular can be very dangerous for dogs and cats thanks to a toxic chemical called theobromide. Put the candy bowl where your pets can’t reach it and be sure to lock the cupboard door so they can’t do some scary scavenging.



2. Careful with the costumes. We may love dressing ourselves up, but I’m pretty sure that if we asked our dogs and cats, they’d agree that they’d just as soon not wear that canine superman outfit you think is so cute. If you absolutely must dress your pet up, consider a simple themed bandanna, or at least make sure the outfit is not constricting, uncomfortable or harmful to the animal. Dog costumes often cover so much of the body that their ability to express important canine body language signals to us or other dogs is compromised, which can lead to unnecessary, avoidable instances of aggression or bites.



3. Don’t take your dogs trick or treating with you, even if you’re confident that your dog will be able to handle it. There are too many unknown factors on a night like Halloween, and even if your dog is well-adjusted, some others you encounter may not be. Plus, seeing a bunch of four-foot tall Yodas and goblins can unnerve even the most placid dogs.



4. Keep your dogs away from the door during trick or treating hours. Again, even if your dog is a good, well-mannered greeter, your smaller guests are not always prepared to see dogs bounding down the hallway or sniffing their candy bags. Just play it safe and keep your dogs and cats locked away in another part of the house for those couple of hours.



5. Make sure any electric cords for holiday decorations are out of reach of your pets, especially if they’re chewers. Nibbling on a hot wire won’t turn out well for anyone.



6. Be sure your jack-o-lanterns with live flame inside them are also kept out of reach. They can get easily bumped or knocked over, leading to fire hazards.



7. Halloween is a great excuse to make sure your dog or cat is microchipped. Given all the crazy sights and sounds of the evening, many pets end up running away each year.



8. Keep your pets indoors on Halloween and in the days surrounding it. There are just too many jerks around sometimes, so play it safe and don’t tempt fate.



9. Head out for your afternoon or evening walk with your dogs well before trick or treaters start hitting the neighborhood. No reason to risk a frightful encounter with Buzz Lightyear and his noisy, flashing guns and jetpacks.



10. Desensitize ahead of time. Be aware of how stressful the repeated ringing of the doorbell can be for dogs. If you haven’t already, take some time to desensitize your dogs to the sound of the doorbell or knocking in the weeks leading up to the big night so that they’re prepared.

5 facts about the fallen to remember on Memorial Day

Memorial Day — first called Decoration Day — got its start as holiday commemorating fallen soldiers at the end of the Civil War, according to Yale historian David Blight. In 1865, former slaves exhumed Union soldiers from a mass grave in Charleston, South Carolina on the site of that city’s racetrack and buried them in individual graves. It was a ten-day project that ended in a day of celebration of the newly united nation, peace and freedom in which thousands of Charleston’s African-American families gathered to decorate graves, pray, play games and picnic.

Now, almost a century and a half later, there’s no end in sight to U.S.-led military operations across the globe. The loss of life, limb, mind and more from our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone has been staggering. “We don’t do body counts,” General Tommy Franks, the retired general who led the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, famously remarked when asked about Iraqi civilian casualties. But we do do body counts of our own fallen. Groups like Veterans for Common Sense and projects like the Washington Post‘s Faces of the Fallen regularly publicize Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs data of U.S. troop casualties while projects like Iraq Body Count helps ensure that civilians killed in U.S.-lead wars get counted.

1. To date, there have been over 112,000 documented U.S. troop casualties in the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of these, 6,461 troops have died; 48,253 have been wounded in action; and more than 58,000 medically evacuated due to injury or disease. according to Defense Department data.

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On Memorial Day, Remembering 15-Year-Old Marine PFC Dan Bullock

Dan Bullock was 14 when he signed up with the Marines using doctored documents—and 15 when he died in Vietnam.

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Happy Easter

Horrible Holiday Fights—and How to Stop Them

Sidestep the annual real-tree-versus-fake disputes and the "what the heck is wrong with a gift card?!?" squabbles with this bedrock advice.

Here's the joke....

One Christmas, a parent decreed that she was no longer going to remind her children of their thank-you note duties.

As a result their grandmother never received acknowledgments of the generous checks she had given.

The next year things were different, however.

"The children came over in person to thank me," the grandparent told a friend triumphantly.

"How wonderful!" the friend exclaimed. "What do you think caused the change in behavior?"

"Oh, that's easy," the grandmother replied. "This year I didn't sign the checks."

The True Story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

A guy named Bob May, depressed and brokenhearted, stared out his drafty apartment window into the chilling December night. His 4-year-old daughter, Barbara, sat on his lap quietly sobbing. Bobs wife, Evelyn, was dying of cancer. Little Barbara couldn't understand why her mommy could never come home. Barbara looked up into her dads eyes and asked, "Why isn't Mommy just like everybody else's Mommy?" Bob's jaw tightened and his eyes welled with tears. Her question brought waves of grief, but also of anger. It had been the story of Bob's life. Life always had to be different for Bob. Being small when he was a kid, Bob was often bullied by other boys. He was too little at the time to compete in sports. He was often called names he'd rather not remember.


From childhood, Bob was different and never seemed to fit in. Bob did complete college, married his loving wife and was grateful to get his job as a copywriter at Montgomery Ward during the Great Depression. Then he was blessed with his little girl. But it was all short-lived. Evelyn's bout with cancer stripped them of all their savings and now Bob and his daughter were forced to live in a two-room apartment in the Chicago slums. Evelyn died just days before Christmas in 1938. Bob struggled to give hope to his child, for whom he couldn't even afford to buy a Christmas gift. But if he couldn't buy a gift, he was determined a make one - a storybook!


Bob had created an animal character in his own mind and told the animal's story to little Barbara to give her comfort and hope. Again and again Bob told the story, embellishing it more with each telling. Who was the character? What was the story all about? The story Bob May created was his own autobiography in fable form. The character he created was a misfit outcast like he was. The name of the character? A little reindeer named Rudolph, with a big shiny nose.


Bob finished the book just in time to give it to his little girl on Christmas Day. But the story doesn't end there. The general manager of Montgomery Ward caught wind of the little storybook and offered Bob May a nominal fee to purchase the rights to print the book. Wards went on to print Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and distribute it to children visiting Santa Claus in their stores. By 1946 Wards had printed and distributed more than six million copies of Rudolph. That same year, a major publisher wanted to purchase the rights from Wards to print an updated version of the book. In an unprecedented gesture of kindness, the CEO of Wards returned all rights back to Bob May. The book became a best seller. Many toy and marketing deals followed and Bob May, now remarried with a growing family, became wealthy from the story he created to comfort his grieving daughter.


But the story doesn't end there either. Bob's brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, made a song adaptation to Rudolph. Though the song was turned down by such popular vocalists as Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore, it was recorded by the singing cowboy, Gene Autry. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was released in 1949 and became a phenomenal success, selling more records than any other Christmas song, with the exception of "White Christmas." The gift of love that Bob May created for his daughter so long ago kept on returning to bless him again and again. And Bob May learned the lesson, just like his dear friend Rudolph, that being different isn't so bad. In fact, being different can be a blessing!

You Know You're Too Old to Trick or Treat When....

10. You get winded from knocking on the door.

9. You have to have another kid chew the candy for you.

8. You ask for high fiber candy only.

7. When someone drops a candy bar in your bag, you lose your balance and fall over.

6. People say: 'Great Boris Karloff Mask,' and you're not wearing a mask.

5. When the door opens you yell, 'Trick or...' And can't remember the rest.

4. By the end of the night, you have a bag full of restraining orders.

3. You have to carefully choose a costume that won't dislodge your hairpiece.

2. You're the only Power Ranger in the neighborhood with a walker.

And the number one reason Seniors should not go Trick Or Treating...

1. You keep having to go home to pee.

Happy Halloween

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