A kindly gnome decided to double for Santa one Christmas Eve. Grades 4-6.

The author's columns of the antics of her four offspring in small-town middle-America were only the beginning. While teaching English and German for 18 years, she took students to Washington DC and the N.Y. World's Fair as their sponsor, saw her children out the door while teaching at Batavia High School and West Aurora High School in the Chicago suburbs, and then completed a Masters of Theology from Bethany Theological Seminary. From there she went to the University of Chicago Oriental Institute, focusing on Syro-Palestinian Archaeology, spending 10 summers in Israel and Jordan. It was at Chicago that she met her current husband, they now live in Trophy Club, TX. From then until her retirement in 2010, she was Sr. Technical Editor for the Flora of N. America project. Now retired and in her 80's, the author felt it was time to revisit these stories to relive these fun-filled years once again and make them available to her extended family, friends, and anyone that enjoys the daily humor of family life.