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By Lisa Batten Kunkleman It’s like a treasure hunt searching through other people’s antiques and collectibles. Some memorable items leave us full of pride while others leave us full of questions like, “What were we thinking?” or “Why in the world did we decide that was a good thing to possess?” My husband and I […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman It’s Empty Nest time again. Time to either cry or celebrate, depending upon your point of view. It’s a little different for us this year because we’re sending five family members back to college instead of the usual three. Each of our twenty-year-old triplets came home for the summer, two of […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman Do you ever have one of those days when you finally get the free time and quiet you’ve been craving, only to find you spend so much time deciding what to do first, that nothing gets done? That’s me. Today, I’m in my mother’s lake house, looking out at the glassy […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman I could write all day about our menagerie and explain that Hubs and I usually have three dogs, one cat, and two horses. That number changed when our college kids flew back into our empty nest bearing two more critters. A puppy named Tucker and a kitty named Zor. Let’s just […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman Tending a puppy is a reminder of what life is like with toddlers around. Exhausting. Time consuming. Frustrating. Impossible. I’ll try to remember that most dogs do end up house-broken and finish teething. I made it through the toddler-years-times-four, and my kids are all potty trained and no longer bite. […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman Families all over the place are experiencing reverse-empty-nest-syndrome. The birdies are flying back in from college with either big plans for work, internships, and trips or perhaps big plans for lying on the couch and playing video games. A summer of recuperation from the rigors of college life, they might […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman (Originally Posted in The Charlotte Observer in 2014) Ready or not, high school class registration for next year is about to begin. Elective courses range from automotive services to yoga to oodles of other classes to consider– including marching band. This isn’t yesteryear’s stereotype of geeky kids playing the school fight song. […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman How can you tell if animal behavior is good or bad? While I was out of town, my man Dan sent me a short video of our male horse bullying our mare. He was aggravating her with his head and trying to bite her rear. When I got home Dan called […]
Lisa Batten Kunkleman If a horse named Mojo reared up like a wild bronco with a twenty-something man in the saddle, would you expect a fiftyish woman to get into that same saddle? My first clue to keep my feet on the ground should have been the extra twenty pounds I had to lift to […]
By Lisa Batten Kunkleman Parenting young adult children is a whole new experience. If you think parenting and protecting children from birth through the teen years is tough, look out for the twenties.There’s a huge difference between being invincible at twenty and cautious at mid-life. I’m definitely in the cautious at mid-life stage when […]
