Everyone has a Christmas Camelot -- that magical moment when you look around a room filled with all the people you love and your heart swells so big it nudges the tear ducts in your eyes. This year, our Christmas Camelot happened midway through the holidays on a frigid Thursday in Cecil, Wisconsin. Smoke curled [...]
My son Vinnie's worst day of school turned out to be his first. In fact, he stormed out of kindergarten in an uncharacteristically foul mood and firmly announced he was not going back. "My teacher called me Vincent," he said."She wrote it on my desk." "Technically you are Vincent," I said. "It's a great name, [...]
My kids and their cousins belong to an exclusive club with three basic tenets -- kindness, generosity and wit -- that exemplify its founders. The Green and Red Pepper Club, "Our membership is always mushrooming," represented perpetual president Grandpa Vince's delight with his growing number of grandchildren, whom he called his "pepper pals." Every year he celebrated [...]