Michelle Ule's Blog, page 68

Happily Ever Afters: The Gold Rush Christmas

Did the folks in The Gold Rush Christmas live happily ever after?

In the Pioneer Christmas Collection story, twins Samantha and Peter Harris journey to Skagway, Alaska at the height of The Yukon Gold Rush in search of their missing missionary father.

Joined on the trip by the boy next door, Miles Parker who is determined to win Samantha’s heart, they encounter a host of unusual characters causing Samantha to dress as a boy for safety.

When they meet a bevy of sporting women grieving the loss of a friend, Miles preaches a sermon that changes hearts.

Eventually, they follow a lead and discover Missionary Harris finishing his carving of a totem pole based on the nativity story. There, Samantha realized Miles has grown into the man she had always hoped for and . . . Missionary Harris gives his blessing.

What happened next?

The Gold Rush Christmas ends on Christmas day 1897 when Miles Parker, a seminary dropout, proposed to Samantha Harris, a teacher, in the Tlingit long house where her missionary father had built a Christmas totem pole.

The Parkers return to Skagway, where they lived for several years—Miles preaching at the church and Samantha teaching school Somehow, children didn’t come along.

Samantha’s twin brother Peter climbed Chilkoot Pass to the Yukon gold rush country in spring 1898, and made his fortune. He lived in Dawson Creek for fifteen years, eventually coaxing Miles and Samantha to join him and his family. Always out for adventure, he convinced Miles to learn to fly the rickety bi-planes developed in the early years of the 20th century.

Peter funded Miles as he flew their plane to remote sections of Alaska, but was shocked when his sister and brother-in-law decided to join the YMCA during WWI and serve in France.

Biding Alaska goodbye, they headed across the Pacific Ocean in 1916 and rode the Trans-Siberian Express train all the way to Moscow, where they traveled through Scandinavia and thence to Great Britain. They were assigned to YMCA work in Paris at first, and eventually ran huts along the Western Front.

They preached the gospel everywhere, sometimes even using words.

In 1919 they returned to Alaska, bringing a family of four orphans with them. They joined Peter and his family in Anchorage where they ran a church, flew to remote areas to provide preaching and Sunday school, and recalled with gladness the folks they’d known during the Alaskan gold rush.

They were still alive and grandparents many times over, when Alaska became a state in 1961 and always celebrated Christmas with a miniature Christmas totem pole.

You can photos of The Gold Rush Christmas environment on Michelle’s Pinterest board here.

What’s happened to Michelle Ule?

Michelle Ule has spent the last two years working on two projects: a World War I novel about a journalist coming of age spiritually, emotionally and professionally over the course of the war; and a biography of one of the marquee characters from her novel. She’s also written for The 12 Brides of Christmas Collection (The Yuletide Bride this Christmas) and its sequel the upcoming 12 Brides of Summer (The Sunbonnet Bride; summer, 2016) which are two stories connected to each other using the same characters.

She continues to blog twice a week at this website and occasionally sits in at Books & Such’s blog and Novel Pastimes.

Merry Christmas.

Tweetables

How do you top a gold rush? World War I? Click to Tweet

The Chilkoot Pass was nothing compared to the Tran-siberian Railroad! Click to Tweet

Gold Rush, War and they all lived happily ever after in Alaska. Click to Tweet

 

It’s the Advent season and Michelle has written an ebook called Reflections on Advent, available to subscribers to her newsletter. If you’re interested in obtaining this free Advent gift, click on the link here.

Click to subscribe: http://eepurl.com/2l7F9

The post Happily Ever Afters: The Gold Rush Christmas appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.

Happily Ever After: A Silent Night

Can a Silent Night lead to a happily ever after life?

Before writing for A Pioneer Christmas Collection, Anna Urquhart had seldom heard of pioneers traveling by water and examined the opening of the Erie Canal in 1830’s which led to settlements in Michigan Territory. A Silent Night actually begins in Edinburgh, Scotland and follows the challenges of making a life in the big woods of the upper Midwest.

The drama of a marriage lost and found is played out over Christmas in a barn beside a smoldering cabin in A Silent Night.

The rest of the story

A Silent Night ends on Christmas Day in 1830. The Findlays—Iain, Lorna, and Afton—are spending Christmas with Sissy and Charles Grayson in Sissy’s home because the Findlay’s cabin was burned to the ground. After wintering with Sissy, the Findlay’s return to their homestead in the spring, after the worst of the snow has melted. They rebuild their home, and Iain builds Lorna a new table, using the wood from the land on which there are rebuilding their lives.

One day Lalawethika, the Shawnee who saved Iain’s life, appears with a baby in his arms—a white baby he came upon whose family had all died from small pox. Iain and Lorna take in the child, a little boy whom they name Jonathan, meaning “Jehovah’s gift.” They once believed they would never have another child; Jonathan, indeed, was a gift from the Lord.

Afton is delighted by the arrival of a new little brother. She grows up, inquisitive and vivacious as ever. At 18, she meets a young minister in Detroit and they eventually marry and have several children, filling Lorna and Iain’s lives with the sounds of more pattering feet and childhood laughter.

Jonathan eventually returns to his birth-family’s homestead, which—after a long legal struggle—now belongs to him. He rebuilds his home and works the land, learning from Grayson how to sow and tend and harvest. He eventually marries a young Shawnee woman and they too start a family. They face many challenges—since Indians of any tribe are not seen in a favorable light. Yet they keep hold of hope and work to spread grace and love amidst the difficulties they face.

Sissy, tough as ever, continues to work her land with the help of Grayson. She eventually succumbs to pneumonia and leaves her home and land to Grayson. She passes quietly, but not before whispering to Lorna, “He still sees the sparrow, and this sparrow’s goin’ home.” Grayson and the Findlays bury her on the hill by the row of hemlocks alongside her husband and children, overlooking their land.

Grayson continues to live and farm on Sissy’s homestead after she dies. He never marries, though he comes close to marrying a widow, Margaret, who has lost her husband and is left with 2 small children. He continues to help Margaret (as he did Lorna) until she is able to move back East to her family, yet Grayson senses the Lord has other plans than marriage for him. Grayson makes amends with Joseph Edgar, who has taken to drinking and hiding away on his farm after setting the Findlay’s house afire. Edgar, too, makes amends with the Findlays, who eagerly forgive and accept him back into their lives. Grayson and Edgar live out their days as close friends and dedicate themselves to helping those in need on the Michigan frontier.

What’s happened to Anna Urquhart?

Anna

Since A Silent Night was published, Anna has been hard at work and recently received a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing. She’s revising a full-length historical novel and publishing freelance travel stories.

As to A Pioneer Christmas Collection, she wrote this:

“What makes Pioneer Christmas different is that every story is set “in transit”—the settings (especially the Christmas scenes) are at times precarious and at times surprising, and they show the reality for people of that time that Christmas wasn’t necessarily a day “set apart.” It was a day still filled with challenge and requiring courage.

It was more about the people and finding contentment and joy amidst difficult circumstances.

I love that all of the writers of this collection didn’t shy away from making things hard for their characters. I also love that they didn’t shy away from acknowledging that joy and hope is always possible, regardless of circumstances.”

Enjoy your silent nights!

Tweetables

Edinburgh, a burnt cabin and A Silent Night. Now what? Click to Tweet

Finding contentment and joy in difficulties. Click to Tweet

The rest of a story, A Silent Night, in a Pioneer Christmas Click to Tweet

It’s the Advent season and Michelle has written an ebook called Reflections on Advent, available to subscribers to her newsletter. If you’re interested in obtaining this free Advent gift, click on the link here.

Click to subscribe: http://bit.ly/1yMSAAj

The post Happily Ever After: A Silent Night appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.

Happily Ever After Stories?

Don’t you love and “they lived happily ever after” stories?

Not because it’s reality, but because in our complicated cruel world, it’s lovely to drift away and enjoy a story that ends happily.

We all need a little hope, if not magic, somedays!

Knowing true love will at least be met is part of the draw of romance novellas, and certainly at Christmas time, a chance to spend an hour in a far country long ago and be simple, is appealing.

Readers have written telling me how disappointed they were the novella ended–they wanted more. What really happened to those characters?

Did they really live happily ever after?

I broached the question to my eight co-authors on A Pioneer Christmas Collection, suggesting they tell us what happened to their characters after the story ended.

Four of us wrote out responses–a Christmas catch-up, if you will, of where those character went in their lives.

Several, though, didn’t have answers.

Not because they didn’t love their characters, but because of how those characters live in their minds.

Cynthia

Cynthia Hickey’s story, A Christmas Castle, is upfront about marital challenges between virtual strangers: her heroine is a mail order bride. Or, in this case, a mail order widow upon arrival in a small Arizona ranch town riven with controversy.

Without ever laying eyes on her husband, the new wife/widow takes to her inheritance with dash and aplomb, not to mention instant motherhood. She displays the deering-do necessary to survive, particularly when neighbors attempt to steal her late husband’s property.

Cynthia’s “happily ever after” description fit into three sentences:

They had three more children.

Drake built Annie a large ranch house.

The ranch became a successful horse rearing ranch, selling horses to the military.

Lauraine

Lauraine Snelling‘s The Cowboy Angel features an anxious pregnant woman whose husband is long overdue from town with the necessary supplies. What will happen to her out in that sod house property they’ve fought so hard to “own up” if he does not return?

The “happily ever after” question made Lauraine laugh. Of course they were happy, but what happened next?

She didn’t know:

“I do not imagine my characters in other places and times. For myself, once I have told their stories, my characters are where they are supposed to be, doing what they are supposed to be doing. There are always new characters with new stories to be told.”

Margaret

Margaret Brownley, a “seat of your pants” author, doesn’t know what happened to her characters either. She rarely knows what will happen to them while she writes the story! And since the Pony Express only lasted a few years owing to the building on the Transcontinental Railroad, we can assume her plucky heroine grasped the hero she saved from uncertain death and continued to lead an adventure-filled life.

We can only hope the hero lived up to that former spinster’s plans!

Margaret (via Twitter): “All my stories end happily ever after.”

Kathleen Fuller‘s characters wrestle with God’s plan for their lives in The Calling. The hero is a young man struggling with his destiny. Is he called to be a minister in his home town, or to the

Kathy

burgeoning populations of the then-far west? It’s the tavern keeper’s daughter who recognizes the desires of his heart even as she falls in love with him. What would happen to them after the wedding?

“Millie and Elijah are pretty finite characters. They spent the rest of their lives in Unionville and lived happily ever after.”

Vickie

Vickie McDonough‘s Buckskin Bride is the story of a headstrong buckskin-wearing young woman who has lived in a teepee with her father and sister for years. When the landowner comes to claim his property, well, did those two live happily ever after? And did Mattie ever put on a dress?

Of course they did.

At least the part about living happily ever after!

The other four stories have answers to these questions and stop in here over the next two weeks to find how their authors envisioned a future only dreamed about in A Pioneer Christmas Collection!

Except–what do you think? Can you see any of these folks living a peaceful life given what caused them to fall in love?

Tweetables

Do novella characters live happily ever after? Click to Tweet

Do romance writers know if their characters live happily ever after? Click to Tweet

Do you wonder what happens after the story ends? Click to Tweet

It’s the Advent season and Michelle has written an ebook called Reflections on Advent, available to subscribers to her newsletter. If you’re interested in obtaining this free Advent gift, click on the link here.

Click to subscribe: http://eepurl.com/2l7F9

 

The post Happily Ever After Stories? appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.

Helping Families Through Holiday Grief

A friend is dying this Christmas season and I’ve been thinking about how to help families through holiday grief.

My friend is elderly and ready to go home to God; her family accepts that and have loved her well.

But what if she were young and had children at home?

What can we do to help families with children through a holiday grief? Here are some suggestions

Ways to help families through holiday grief:

1.Volunteer specific suggestions to the healthy parent of what you can do.

“I would be happy to take your son to cub scouts every Monday through January,” is really helpful.

But that well meaning, “If there’s anything I can do to help,” doesn’t really help. They may be so overwhelmed they don’t even know what they need.

If you see a need, offer but give  flexibility: “I’ll be happy to grocery shop for you one day a week, choose your day.”

Even cooking one dinner can help.

2. Involve their children in a holiday-related activity.

When you’re caught up in the drama of a family death, grief or just a major illness, the usual holiday activities seem like unnecessary fluff for you, or too much to even contemplate.

The children, however, may still yearn for holiday activities.

Why not invite them to join your children, or just provide an opportunity?

It’s not that difficult to take another child to

see The Nutcracker

make Christmas cookies

hunt for a Christmas tree (volunteer to get one for their family, too)

[image error]

Christmas sugar cookies. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

view Christmas lights at night

shop for gifts

ice skate

attend a church’s Christmas program or nativity scene.

3. Sit with the ailing family member so the healthy parent can enjoy time with their family

Sometimes a healthy parent just wants a sense of normalcy: an afternoon off with their children to do one of the above.

Someone volunteering to stay with the ailing family member can be a God-send.

4. Volunteer to pick up relatives

In a holiday crisis family members may be showing up.

Volunteer to pick them up at the airport, take the kids with you if possible.

Having someone willing to drive, even in traffic, can be very helpful.

5. Pray for them, feed them, love them.

My mother suffered a brain aneurysm 20 years ago this Christmas. We lived in Hawai’i, she was in Los Angeles.

My brother got a travel agent to find me the last seat on a plane home so I could see her.

A neighbor packed my suitcase–her eyes filling with tears to match mine when I said, “I guess I better bring something black to wear, just in case.”

Another got cash from the ATM so I had money.

A third called her husband–who broke into a meeting with an admiral to make sure my husband knew he was needed at home immediately.

My husband drove me to the airport so I could be with my family.

Neighbors promised they would take care of my husband and children.

Mom’s dearest friend sat  holding her hand, while my father, brothers and sisters-in-law met me at the airport.

She was brain dead when I got to the hospital. We kept Mom alive for organ recipients to be lined up. Seven people got organs for Christmas.

Family friends made the phone calls and my parents’ house filled with casseroles when news of Mom’s death spread.

Some of those meals were holiday meals–what kindness to bring us a Christmas ham!

Many wrote notes telling us they were praying for us; it helped to know we weren’t trudging through the horror alone.

The same travel agent, somehow, found five seats on a Christmas Eve flight so my husband and children could be with me.

Some people actually brought the children presents for Christmas Day.

The local newspaper held the deadline so I could write an obituary, letting everyone know when the services would be held.

These are the many ways people helped my family get through a holiday grief.

Look for the practical, look for the tender, look for ways to bless without anything in return.

Holiday grief goes on a long time.

It was years before I looked forward to Christmas once more, but my children never suffered the shadow of grief I carried, thanks to the many kindnesses of people who loved us.

I can never thank them enough–even 20 years later.

Tweetables

5 Suggestions for helping families deal with holiday grief. Click to Tweet

How to help children with holiday grief. Click to Tweet

Cookies, ice skating, the Nutcracker: kids and holiday grief. Click to Tweet

 

Sometimes holiday grieving works best if we focus on the reason for the season: Jesus’s birth.  Michelle has written an ebook called Reflections on Advent, available to subscribers to her newsletter. If you’re interested in obtaining this free Advent gift, click on the link here.

 

 

 

 

 

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5 Things I Want to Read in Christmas Letters

December marks the annual question about Christmas cards and Christmas letters.

I’m squarely in favor of both, as I’ve written about here.

People complain, though, about the nature of the Christmas letters–too much bragging, too much good news, not enough reality.

I’ve had letters like that over the years, but for the most part, I relish whatever news I get.

It’s different now that we can follow each other’s lives on Facebook, I know, but a Christmas letter distills the essence of what has happened into one or two pages and is an excellent overview of the year.

I’ve got all the ones I’ve written in a file and I read through them from time to time and remember the life that has been lived.

Much easier and faster than breaking out the family movies.

But what am I looking for in Christmas letters?

Here’s a list of five things I want to read in your Christmas letter:

1. Provide glimpses into the highs of your year. I don’t need details of everything you did, but tell me what gave you joy and give me a reason to rejoice with you.

2.  Give me humor--you can brag all you like as long as I laugh along with you. You need to tell of your triumphs in a way that will make me appreciate what happened without causing the green eye of envy to open its ugly eye and destroy my soul.

3. Show humility. Share with me some of the things have have touched your heart and tell me why. Perhaps your daughter displayed generosity of spirit when you didn’t expect it. Tell me how grateful you are for the blessings that have come your way, reflect on something wonderful that happened to someone else that you were allowed to witness.

4. Share your pain. I want to know if your mother died, if you were disappointed in some way, if you’re fearful or worried about something close to your heart. Don’t break confidences and don’t dwell in the misery, but tell me if your heart has been hurt.

5. Let me see some pictures. Either send one or include a bunch in your letter. Or if you don’t have a camera, paint a picture for me of something special.

Christmas is a time to reflect back on the good and the sobering. It’s an opportunity to rejoice and be glad, but to see your life within a frame.

[image error]

The world’s first commercially produced Christmas card, designed by John Callcott Horsley  (Wikipedia)

If God wrote a Christmas letter, this is what I would expect to see in his story of the Bethlehem birth:

The Savior of the World is born this day! Rejoice with me!
Mary and Joseph left too late and he was born in straw and surrounded by animals in a manger!
All they had to wrap him in was swaddling clothes; Shepherds were the first–though honored–guests.
The king sent soldiers to kill him; Mary and Joseph had to flee with their lives and his.
The stars danced with joy the night Jesus was born. Angel voices rang across the heavens and all I could do was smile with gladness this day had finally come.

If you’re sending me a letter, you’re someone I care about. I want to know about your life–about you.

Write away!

And Merry Christmas!

Tweetables

5 things to include in your Christmas letter. Click to Tweet

What would God put in His Christmas letter? Click to Tweet

I want highs, humilities, humor, pain and photos: the Christmas letter Click to Tweet

 

Sigh up at http://eepurl.com/2l7F9

Speaking of Christmas letters–my newsletter, Michelle’s Musings, will go out within the week. In the letter, I’m offering a free copy of my ebook/PDF called Another Look at the Advent Stories. If you’d like a copy subscribe to my newsletter, click here to sign up.

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Scan the Photos!

1919 Passport Application photo

While I went to spend Thanksgiving with my family, I had another goal as well: scan the family photos!

Have you scanned yours?

Why not?

I started talking to relatives in August, asking them to bring family photos to Thanksgiving and I’d bring my scanner.

It’s portable and I attach it to my laptop. A few clicks and the photos are saved.

Literally saved.

As in, I’ll import them to my “big computer” that is covered by an offsite server (Mozy, similar to the Cloud), adjust them with Photoshop and then send them back to my relatives.

I have photocopies of my grandparents’ youthful pictures but I’ve never seen the real photos.

No one is really sure where they are since my aunt and her daughter–both lovers of old family items–died eight and nine years ago.

I hope to scan them before they’re totally lost or gone.

(Photos deteriorate in time. Scan them before they’re lost!)

When my paternal grandmother died in 1998, I inherited her 100 year-old photo album.

My great-grandfather is the handsome one, third from right!

Since I live in a high fire area, I spent that summer photographing the album–my scanner at the time wasn’t good enough to do the photos justice.

(I really need to scan them again. I’ll put it on my list and you can stop feeling guilty).

I had copies printed and gave them to my brothers, uncles and aunt and to my grandmother’s brother’s extended family.

I couldn’t bear the thought those photos might be lost to history.

I’ve written before about the importance of writing on the back of pictures and I hope you’ll notate yours as well.

And I hope you’re as lucky as we were that someone picked up a photo album at a yard sale one day and gave it to the East Texas Genealogical Society, who kindly posted the photos on their website.

I’d been looking for a photo of my paternal great-grandmother for twenty years.

Surely you heard me scream at 1 o’clock in the morning the night I found her picture on that website?

It’s posted on Ancestry.com now, so others can find her.

Speaking of Ancestry, I discovered another treasure there recently: my grandfather’s 1919 passport application and photo.

I’d never seen that picture before.

Thanks US government for requiring it and Ancestry.com for making it available.

Grammy’s in the front row wearing a hat.

Family genealogy may not seem important to you now, and there are so many photos out there, it may seem ridiculous to worry about them now.

But you never know when that loved one won’t be around to retell the stories; those photos may burn up.

The keeper of the box may lose it in a move.

Someone may spill a cup of coffee and ruin it.

Once the face is gone, it’s too late.

If you’ve got family with photos, get copies made or scan them.

If all else fails, take a picture with your camera.

You’ll never be sorry if you have it.

And neither with your children.

(Scanning old family photos makes a great summer job!)

Tweetables

Scan your old family photos! Now! Click to Tweet

Fire, dust, ignorance: scan your family photos to protect them! Click to Tweet

Why not use the holidays to dig out the old family photos and scan them? Click to Tweet

 

You can sign up for this giveaway–seven Christmas books AND an electric fireplace– at Amanda Dykes’ website located here. Raffle ends December 4.

 

 

The post Scan the Photos! appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.

Family and Genealogy

My grandmother’s the baby.

When it comes to genealogy, I’m the person my family calls.

I spent several years working on family histories for both sides of my family.

I did my work in the days before Ancestry.com, which means I spent a lot of time in libraries, looking at microfilm, interviewing elderly family members and writing.

I wrote books about my Italian grandparents (to commemorate my grandfather’s 100th birthday); my paternal grandmother and the big daddy of them all, Pioneer Stock–the history of my paternal grandfather all the way back to 1628 Maryland (who knew?).

(Pioneer Stock is in the Library of Congress and other genealogical libraries around the US. If you think you might be related to me, check out my genealogy tab.)

It took me five years to research and write Pioneer Stock and during that time, my family experienced a number of deaths along with a long-running health crisis. Emotions ran high  and more than once, I was able to use stories I’d learned about our ancestors to smooth conversation about our current family issues.

We were all interested in the results.

One Thanksgiving one of my relatives had a newly-found adult child join us. With 50 strangers at the house, she needed a key to understand who was who and how they were related to her.

I printed up a family tree chart (using the Family Tree Maker program, including photos!) and taped it on a wall

I also wrote out name tags identifying who each of us was and how we were related to my grandparents.

For example, my nametag looked like this:

Michelle

Daughter of Biagia Gina

Since my mother was one of the three children in the family, our new cousin could easily consult the chart and learn she was my first cousin once removed.

[image error]

This is a simple family tree that illustrates the definitions of various types of cousins (e.g. “second cousin twice removed”). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m so glad I wrote the family histories when I did because only my uncle is left from those generations ahead of me.

I berated myself one afternoon for not asking my grandmother the names of her family members. I only had scraps of stories and too many questions. How was she the seventh child? What was her grandmother’s name? Did her relatives have genetic ailments?

I never thought to ask the questions and felt terrible until I remembered a simple truth–my grandmother really didn’t speak English. Even if I had asked the questions, I wouldn’t have understood the answers!

Thanksgiving is coming and my family will gather again. I’m bringing a copy of the book I wrote about my Italian grandfather to share with some of my cousins’ children–the ones who were infants when I wrote the book and who have children of their own now.

I think the family stories will be more important now.

I cannot encourage folks enough to get the stories.

Even if you’re not interested now, someday you may want to know your family’s history.

Sure, you can check out the genealogy on Ancestry.com and learn where they lived and what their professions were–prior to 1940. Census records for 1950 won’t be released to the public until 2020. (Census records are only released 70 years after they were taken).

You’ll get facts, but you won’t get stories.

Genealogy riches are found in the stories.

Get out your phones this Thanksgiving and ask your family questions with the recorder running.

You’ll always be glad you did.

Need some questions to get started?

Try these:

The basics: where were you born? Who was there?
What were your parents’ names? Your grandparents? (as far back as they remember names) Where did they grow up?
What did people in our family die of? Common diseases or problems?
What types of work did people do?
When did the family move to this area? Why?
Tell me some stories about them
What did they like to eat? What were their hobbies?
Did anything terrible ever happen in our family?
Where were you/them when man landed on the moon; President Kennedy was shot; WWII ended?
Did anyone serve in the military? Go to college? Travel abroad?

Enjoy your family!

Tweetables

Family dinner and genealogy. It’s important! Click to Tweet

10 genealogy questions for Thanksgiving dinner. Click to Tweet

What all the family has in common: Genealogy Click to Tweet

 

 

You can sign up for this giveaway–seven Christmas books AND an electric fireplace– at Amanda Dykes’ website located here. Raffle ends December 4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Christmas and The Game

My family has already begun discussions on Christmas and The Game.

If you’ll be seeing relatives this Thanksgiving and The Game is something you play, you might consider discussing it.

The sooner the better.

What is The Game?

My family has been playing it ever since the grandkids (my generation) outgrew the need for toys at Christmas and dollars shrunk among the adults.

It basically is the “trading game,” whereby everyone who wants to play brings a wrapped gift.

We draw a card from a deck of playing cards and take turns choosing and opening one of the wrapped gift.

(Deck of cards hierarchy: Clubs is lowest followed by Diamonds, Hearts and Spades. The numbered and face cards also have an order: by number of course, followed by Jack, Queen, King and Ace. The Ace of Spades is the top card. You can also just number pieces of paper and folks can draw them out of a hat.)

And then we start.

The trick is, if you like what someone else has already unwrapped, you can “steal” it.

The person who lost their gift can either steal another gift or pick another wrapped gift to open.

You work your way through the numbers and pictures to that Ace of Spades–or whatever you use.

Pick a card

In our family we extend grace and whoever went first, gets another choice. But only that person.

A gift can only be stolen three times.

It’s not fair to get into cahoots with a family member (like you, Mom), and steal something you know they really want.

(Still looking at you, Mom).

My family always left it with a price tag. The first years it was up to $10.

I think it’s up to $25 now.

You obviously can buy a cheaper gift.

Among the gifts that caused a stealing riot over the years were an umbrella, a family photo album with pictures of all of us, a calendar; and various records, tapes, CDs or gift cards depending on the year.

My grandmother’s hand knit slippers were also popular until someone just made a bagful for whomever wanted one.

Oh, wine and liquor are always popular in my Italian family, too.

The game is so popular with the adults, the children requested a version themselves!

Most stolen gift 2013

We’ve only been playing the game the last five years on my husband’s side of the family. We’ve had a good time recently by making the gift a book. One year the most stolen gift was The Black Count by Tom Reiss.

This year someone pointed out most people read on their Kindle apps.

How about DVDs?

“Most people don’t watch DVDs anymore and have Netflix.”

The youngster explaining this had another suggestion: “what about gadgets?”

I’ve already begun shopping . . .

How does your family handle Christmas gifts if there are a lot of you?

Tweetables

How to play The Game for family Christmas presents. Click to Tweet

How to handle Christmas gifts in a large family. Click to Tweet

Amazing what Christmas gifts someone will steal from their family! Click to Tweet

Our The 12 Brides of Christmas and The Twelve Days of Christmas Cookbook two-book giveaway has ended. 

Three winners came from “sign up for a newsletter” entry:
 
1. Jenny Dominguez 
2. Rhonda Gothier
3.Jennifer Beck
 
One entry was a tweet:
Merry
 
Thank you for your terrific participation. We’re gratified and humbled. Merry Christmas!

Meanwhile, if you’d like yet another chance to win not only The 12 Brides of Christmas, but six other newly-released Christmas books AND a fireplace to read them by, there’s another raffle on, going through December 4.

 

You can see more about it and sign up here.

 

The post Christmas and The Game appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.

Why Go Home for Thanksgiving?

Several weeks before Thanksgiving many years ago, the clouds threatened snow in Connecticut.

It was a Saturday and my submariner had been out to sea way too long. He wouldn’t be coming home for awhile.

Money was tight, as it so often is when you have small children and are paying a mortgage.

My entire family–aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, parents, siblings, in-laws–were in Southern California, 3000 sunny miles away.

Loneliness settled in for a melancholy chat.

So, when one of the boat wives, Pauline, invited us and another sea widow, Ann, over for the afternoon, I loaded up the preschoolers and we drove to her house in Mystic without a glance at the sky.

Ann and I settled into the cozy corner of Pauline’s kitchen table and drank tea and talked.

The children ran off to play.

Pauline’s husband’s large French-Canadian family lived in Rhode Island and several of them were on the road that day traveling through Connecticut on their way to and from New York. “I expect them to stop by this afternoon,” she laughed. “They’re always fun.”

They were.

All different groups of them at various times throughout the afternoon.

Totally fun as they filling the warm kitchen with stories, grand hand gestures, hugs, kisses and peeks into the dinner pot on the stove.

Her father-in-law had a touch of an accent in his voice and gallic forebearers turned their phrases.

Ann and I loved it.

I don’t know how many cups of tea we drank!

The kids survived.

Our husbands didn’t feel so far away–at least for that welcoming, embracing afternoon.

We went home to hot dogs and tater tots, bathtime and stories, and when I put the boys to bed, I looked through my photo albums, restless.

I missed my Italian family so very much.

I wanted to be transported back to my grandparent‘s house with my cousins stopping in and out. I wanted to hug them all and kiss the new babies and listen to my grandmother’s shrill Italian babble.

I didn’t care about the food so much (we all mourn my grandmother’s lost recipe for cutlets), as spending a day with the people who had known me my entire life.

I was the only one who had left California.

The New England saltbox house grew cold. I threw more logs in the woodstove, hoping it would keep us warm enough through the night since the furnace didn’t work.

It didn’t snow in California.

I sighed at the checkbook and made a list. It read something like this:

There’s more of them now!

Reasons to Go Home for Thanksgiving

To see the family
Hugs and kisses
For my kids to know their relatives
Stories
Games
Tradition
Warmth
Love
Pictures

With snow drifting outside my New England window, I looked at the checkbook again.

My husband would never begrudge me or the children our family.

The next day I booked tickets home.

I’ve never once regretted any year I’ve gone home to my Italian family for Thanksgiving.

I’ll be seeing them next week. I can hardly wait for the hugs and kisses, stories, games, traditions, love and pictures.

Maybe we’ll even say a couple words in Italian.

Two of my kids will be there to spend time with their relatives.

Why wouldn’t we go home for Thanksgiving?

(Okay, here’s one: no snow.)

How about you?

Tweetables

A lonely sea widow wants to go home for Thanksgiving Click to Tweet

Why wouldn’t you go home for Thanksgiving? Click to Tweet

A Navy wife makes a list: 9 reasons to go home for Thanksgiving. Click to Tweet

 

Tuesday, November 17 is the final day to join The 12 Brides of Christmas two-book giveaway. Opportunities close at midnight, California time, if you want one more chance to win!

Winners will be announced here and on our 12 Brides Facebook page by Thursday, November 18.

Thanks to all who have participated!

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The post Why Go Home for Thanksgiving? appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.

Sound of Music Tour Part 2

If you climbed this mountain outside of Salzburg, you went to Germany

The Sound of Music tour was a four-hour ride through Salzburg and the Austrian countryside, remembering and seeing the sites from the 1965 best picture film.

As described here, I took the tour on the insistence of family and friends and had a lovely time.

The scenery was spectacular and the stories fun.

For example, the photo on top is of the film mountain the vonTrapp family climbed to escape Austria to Switzerland.

Unfortunately,if you climb the Untersburg, as the family did in the film, you end up not only in Germany, but in Berchtesgarten–Hitler‘s alpine hideaway.

In reality, the family caught a train to Italy and from there went to America.

In 1938.

But that doesn’t take away from the fun–movies are not real life.

Lake Fuschl

The trip out of town provided spectacular scenery, even on a cloudy day.

We drove an hour to Monsee, the site of the church where George and Maria married in the film.

A baroque church with all the usual excesses, it seemed bigger in the film–probably because of that shot of Maria’s long train following her down the aisle to the altar.

We had 90 minutes in Monsee and I used the time to admire the church and then wandered into a tourist shop–as I was expected to do while there.

I was hunting a music box that played “Mozart‘s Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” for my astronomer son.

“Mozart didn’t write that,” the shop owner said. “There’s no proof of it, so we don’t have one.”

He didn’t sell me anything.

Too rich to finish!

Our tour guide insisted we try the traditional apple strudel with thick cream sold at the shop across from the church.

Pure decadence!

The DVD player in the bus played The Sound of Music all the way back to Salzburg where we finished the tour in the Mirabel Gardens.

We all recognized the gardens at once and were humming: “Doe, a deer, a female deer.”

You’ll know them, too:

The Doe-Re-Mi steps–up and down with Julie hitting the high note at the end

My astronomer and I singing and jumping up and down the steps!

 

Don’t you want to race?

 

Music is in the air in Salzburg and you’d be singing, too!

Tweetables

Scenery and gluttony: Sound of Music Tour Click to Tweet

Familiar sites on the Sound of Music Tour Click to Tweet

Why take a Sound of Music tour? Stories and scenery. Click to Tweet

 

This is the final weekend of The 12 Brides of Christmas Giveaway. Check out the Rafflecopter for opportunities to win the collection and a companion book: The 12 Days of Christmas Cookbook 2015. Check out the Rafflecopter Giveaway:

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