Tripping Out
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Family Matters
By Jess Knox

In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.
~Daniel L. Reardon

On a hot August morning, after waking me up way too early, my dad handed me a red T-shirt with orange lettering on it. "McCheesey?" I grumbled.


"McChesney." It was his mother's maiden name.


"Looks like McCheesey. These are McDonald's colors. It looks like we're selling cheeseburgers."


Mom chuckled. Dad scowled. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the trip.


The reason for the shirts (we each had one) was to identify which branch...

The Cooking Lesson
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Family Matters

By Ava Pennington

Recipe: A series of step-by-step instructions for preparing ingredients you forgot to buy, in utensils you don't own, to make a dish the dog wouldn't eat.
~Author Unknown

It was time to learn the family secret. The particulars had never been recorded on paper or even shared verbally. The silence needed to be broken, and I gathered up my courage to confront my mother.

I was nineteen years old and engaged to be married. The eldest of three daughters, I would be the first to leave the nest. However, I was not about to leave without the top-secret information. So I sat my mother down, took a deep breath, and blurted, "I want the recipe for your spaghetti sauce."

There, the words were out. Still, the worst was yet to come. I dreaded her response, because I knew what she would say.

"There is no recipe. It's in my head."

We set a date for the information transfer: Thursday night. While this event did not approach the level of national security, it was certainly important in my world. Ready-made sauce was not good enough for the love of my life. He was special, and that meant he deserved special meals -- homemade meals -- with such ingredients as my mother's world-renowned spaghetti sauce. This was an event worthy of clearing my calendar and bearding the lioness in her den.

Define Normal
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Family Matters
By Natalie June Reilly
Divorce: The past tense of marriage.
~Author Unknown


The house is deathly quiet now, but I swear I can still hear my poor Jeep Grand Cherokee panting heavily out in the garage after toting seven-plus Reillys around town for the past seven-plus days. Ah, the out-of-town guests have left for home; they boarded a plane just this morning and I am finally free to sit down at my laptop in my skivvies with a tall Coke and a short line to the little girl's room.


For the past week I have been entertaining my out-of-town in-laws; I took them to and from the airport, hauled them around town, fed them my famous homemade fried potatoes and scrambled...

cam on you nhieu nhe. tuy tui hong hieu nghia nhung cung rang dich coi sao

Raising the Bar
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Shaping the New You

BY: Natalie June Reilly

Sweat is the cologne of accomplishment.
~Heywood Hale Broun

Hanging from my sixteen-year-old son's doorway is one of those manly chin-up bars that brings out a guy's desire to continuously prove himself and his strength to others. My younger son bought it -- with his own money -- for his big brother this past Christmas and the two of them have since had countless contests. Since birth these boys have looked for ways to outdo one another.

Now -- as the only female living in the house -- I tend to just wander by their manly chin-up challenges, usually with an attempt at coaxing them into using their Herculean strength to help me -- their mother -- carry the huge piles of warm laundry from the dryer to the couch to be folded. Usually, they're too caught up in their own competition to notice me. That was until the other night when my younger son, Alec, grabbed my arm as I ambled by Billy's bedroom, which was beginning to smell like a sweaty gym sock.

"Let's see you do one pull-up, Mom," Alec grinned.

"Are you insane?" I laughed, knowing that I couldn't do one pull-up to save my life, much less my children's lives.

"Just one, Mom. We're not going to let you go until you do," Alec replied.

Both he and his brother stood tall, caging me in, their arms folded across their chests. I let out a huge sigh, knowing that I had to try. I reached up for the bar; this was not going to be pretty. As I hung from the bar, my arms quivering, I felt my eyeballs roll to the back of my head as I tried to pull myself up.

"At least try, Mom," Billy coached.

"I am trying!" I cried, sweat now beading on my brow.

The boys both laughed at me while I hung like a wet noodle from the bar; they encouraged me to jump into it if I had to. After what felt like a bad day at boot camp, I finally was able to get my chin up over the bar.

"You're going to do one every night until you get stronger," Alec insisted, as I slunk away in shame to my bedroom.

"Yeah, right!" I huffed.

The funny thing is, Alec has enforced that I do at least one chin-up every night and I am finding that it's getting easier and easier for me to pull myself up. What's even funnier is that I secretly do chin-ups during the day when the boys are at school, in hopes of really impressing them one day.

Oh, I doubt I'll ever get to the level of my kids, but it just goes to show that we are all capable of doing things we never would have believed we could do. With just a little bit of sweat and encouragement, anything is possible!