Family News Home Archive for January, 2008

Dear Miss Manners: My city has replaced the traditional parking meters, where you insert coins, with machines that spit out tickets (after you insert coins) that indicate the expired time. The tickets are then placed on your dashboard. Therefore, it is not possible for the next person taking [...]

The number of U.S. homeowners entering the foreclosure process climbed 75 percent in 2007 from a year earlier, as mortgages became more difficult to refinance and falling property values made it tougher to sell.
Despite the increasingly difficult mortgage situation, Utah bucked the trend with a [...]

Dear Abby: “On Foot in Orlando” (Nov. 23) wrote about being nearly run down by bicycles going too fast, especially when they don’t warn that they’re approaching. When I’m on my bike, I always slow down and call out “On your left!” to warn the walker that I’m [...]

It’s not a denial, yet it isn’t an acceptance, either. For high school seniors who applied to college using a binding early decision program, a deferral is the equivalent of purgatory. Students apply early when they are certain that the college they have chosen meets all their criteria. [...]

Dear Heloise: After searching my own family roots for the past year, I would like to share the following hint: Please ask the older members of your family to go through any and all old photographs, and provide name, date and place where the photos were taken and [...]

It doesn’t get more tragic than the story of Maccabee and Andrew Stein.
Maccabee was a 7-year-old chocolate Doberman pinscher, the Stein family pet from puppyhood.
Andrew was the 8-month-old son of Brian and Paula Stein.
On Jan. 3, while Brian and [...]

When we turn on our televisions, the first thing we hear is how bad the economy is.
We hear about the trickle-down effect from the government to the people. Let’s try a different approach. For lack of a better term, I am going to call it [...]

Dance away mud, grit and grime from your shoes and boots with a whimsical doormat. Your family can paint it together and then use it every time you walk through the door during this wet and muddy season.
So, why is it so much fun? The [...]

We’ve been discussing trying new veggies lately, and last time I gave you a list of new ones from A to H.
Now you’re going to see I through N. See what you think of these new guys:
%26#8226; I is for Italian parsley. [...]

Grumpy children are really hard to handle, and it seems like, at least for me, that when a season changes, the grumpiness of my children seems to be magnified 10 times. Sleeping schedules change, it is dark early at night, and there are extracurricular activities late into the [...]