Christmas – the Tournaments

Karen McCullough Posted on by

The weather blessed us with a couple of unusually nice days (for December) leading up to Christmas, so the children had a great opportunity to play outside. The swing and the balls all saw plenty of use, but the Cornhole set got the most interest this time.

This article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornhole will tell you everything you need to know about Cornhole except why it’s called that. After some Googling, the only reason I could find involved speculation that it was so named because the beanbags used to be filled with ground corn, hence throwing the corn into the hole.  Why not?

In any case, my 12-year-old grandson decided to organize a Cornhole tournament and talked almost everyone in the house at the time into participating. He arranged pairings and brackets and tracked the winners of each round. I’m sorry to say I only made it to the second round, but my husband was the winner (and has a lovely certificate as a result).

My 10-year-old grandson got a build-it-yourself Foosball kit for Christmas and spent much of that day and the next putting it together. Based on his brother’s success with the Cornhole Tournament, he organized another one using his new game.

The contest generated a lot of fun, laughter, dismay, and tense moments. The final match came down to my son-in-law (youngest sister’s husband) and my oldest grandson’s girlfriend, Lisa. A tight, hard-fought game finally went to Lisa by a score of 9 to 8.

 

Christmas – the Gathering

Karen McCullough Posted on by

I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season, whether that means a quiet, relaxing day, time with family, or celebrating in whatever way you prefer.

We were blessed to have a large group of our family with us at Christmas, both daughters and their children, and even our first great-grandson. That meant lots of games, jokes, laughter, cocktails, and conversations.

Only my son and his family were unable to make the trip from England this year to be with us.  We totally understand, though. It’s a huge and expensive undertaking for them to fly here. We hope to see them later in the year.

Meanwhile, Christmas here was crowded and chaotic, but also a great deal of fun. I feel tremendously blessed that my children get along with each other well, as do their spouses and offspring. We’ve had the occasional drama and disagreements, but there have also been reconciliations. I also know how fortunate I am to have lived long enough to meet my first great-grandson.

Christmas morning meant a huge pile of presents under the tree for the sixteen people gathered to receive and open them.  Yes, sixteen people. My living room isn’t huge, and sixteen people crowded the place. Somehow we all made it work. And breakfast meant large pans of food, which still generated plenty of leftovers after everyone ate their fill.

Since several people were obligated to other branches of their families, we only had eleven people for dinner. Again my dining room isn’t huge and we had to put all the leaves in the table and still scrunch a little to get everyone seated, but it worked. Thanks to many people pitching in to prepare and provide food, we had more than enough to feed everyone, with leftovers to consume in the days following.

I’ll have more posts in the coming days on a few special notes about things that happened over the holidays to make them even more special, so stay tuned.

 

Happy 2024!

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Happy New Year! I’m still recovering from a great holiday season with family so I’m not quite prepared to jump into a new year yet. But I’ll post an update on the holidays, the goals for 2024, etc., soon!

What I Wish For Everyone For the Holidays

Karen McCullough Posted on by

This will be my last blog post before Christmas since I have armies of family members gathering in the next few days. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone and all the joyous reunions, conversations, meals, laughter that ensue.

There will be lots of cooking, a few crafts, church services, gift exchange, and feasting.

But most of all there will be the joy of seeing so many family members together and being reminded of the love we share.

I hope that all of you can experience some of the same this holiday season.

 

The Eccentric Christmas Tree

Karen McCullough Posted on by

I squeeze a lot of ornaments onto my tree. I’ve even occasionally called it cluttered. But I think it’s also a happy tree. Most of the ornaments have some personal meaning for me and/or my family. Some of them are heirlooms, having been handed down from my husband’s grandmother or my parents. Many are hand-made—by myself, my late mother, relatives, and particularly grandchildren. Actually, there are a lot of grandchildren-made ornaments on my tree. They’re some of the most special ones.

Here are a few of my special ones:

Made by one of my grandsons!

I made this one, probably 15 years ago.

Made by my mother.

Artwork by one of my grandsons

I made this one. The crystal at the bottom is from a chandelier that hung in the dining room of our house when we bought it. It was a beautiful chandelier but had seen better days and was replaced.

This one came from Lele, my husband’s grandmother.

The jeweled dragon on my tree.

The Christmas Balls – It Takes a Neighborhood

Karen McCullough Posted on by

I’ve talked about this here before, but every year, I’m reminded afresh that one of the most wonderful and magical Christmas decorations I’ve ever encountered is something that happens right here in my own neighborhood!

About twenty years ago, one of our neighbors rigged up a new decoration in their yard – a ball of chicken wire with strands of lights wound around it and hung high in one of the many large old oak trees in the area. Then they did another and another. Others were so intrigued by the effect that they started putting up tree balls as well.

Before long the entire short street in this very suburban area was festooned with the balls, and surrounding roads began to pick up the idea as well. Now, our entire neighborhood, Sunset Hills, in Greensboro, North Carolina, has become famous for the display.

The effect is magical. In the darkness, the balls appear to float high in the air, becoming giant, colorful baubles surrounding you. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to photograph them. Capturing them in a 2D medium flattens out the effect and without a tripod, the balls tend to come out smeared and blurry-looking. Even professionals have thrown up their hands in despair when trying to reproduce the beauty of them.

Getting the balls high in the trees is a challenge. We use a slingshot to send a weight with cord attached high into the tree and over a branch. Others use fishing rods, tennis balls, and potato guns. We don’t do as many as some others, but we do manage to hang ours pretty high in the trees.

People drive in from all over the city and outside to see the display, which does lead t one downside: traffic jams in the neighborhood. For the last few weeks in December, it can be hard to drive around the area. Just getting our car out of the driveway can take a while Occasionally traffic gets so backed up it leads to gridlock.

But the neighborhood makes an effort to turn the volume of a traffic into a positive thing for the entire city. There are several stations set up for collection of food donations, which have provided hundreds of pounds of canned and non-perishable stock for a local food bank. An event called Running of the Balls https://www.therunningoftheballs.com/ also provides meals for a food bank.

I recently found this drone footage of the area with the balls:

I’ve tried to see if I could pick out my house, but I can’t. Still, I feel sure that a few of those hundreds of balls showing in the video are ours.

December is for Decorating, Shopping, Baking, Cooking, Wrapping, etc.

Karen McCullough Posted on by

This is my absolute favorite time of year. I love pretty much everything about Christmas celebrations: the lights, decorations, music, baking, and wrapping presents. Most of all, I enjoy getting together with friends and family, some of whom I may not have seen for a while.

I don’t love the cold weather, but I can live with it, especially since it doesn’t get that frigid here in North Carolina. I don’t love fighting crowds in stores and parking lots, so the advent of online shopping was a godsend for me.

But I thoroughly enjoy decorating – the house, the tree, the outside lights, etc. I’m not much of a cook, but I do like baking cookies, something I only do at the holidays.  (If I baked cookies all year long, I’d end up eating far too many of them! I have no will power when it comes to cookies.)

I like the challenge of the Christmas dinner, though these days I’m more of an executive, directing the various kids and grandkids in what to prepare and how to serve, than an actual chef.

Wrapping presents is a fun thing to do while keeping my eye on any of the many football games going on at this time of year.

The only Christmas prep I don’t really care for is cleaning the house to be ready for the invasion of family and friends. But it’s worth the work to have the company of all those beloved people.

The Ghosts of Christmas Present is Available

Karen McCullough Posted on by

I originally wrote this short story for an anthology that released a couple of years ago.

I can’t honestly say where the idea for it came from. As I recall it started with the image of a young woman pulling into the driveway of the house where she grew up and noticing how gloomy and uninviting it looked. The place is rather ramshackle and neglected. And though it’s just a few days before Christmas, no decorations light or soften it. Lindsay doesn’t want to be there.

Since at that point I had no idea why she was there, and why she didn’t want to be but had come anyway, I had to start asking myself those questions.

This is the way I generally work. A story starts with an idea or a couple of images converging in my head and I look for what’s behind them.

It wasn’t hard to combine the gloomy house with why she didn’t want to be there. Her upbringing there had been less than happy. I began to fill out the details of that… Cold, unfeeling foster parents who were in it mostly for the money and didn’t approve of unnecessary expenses or celebrations.

So why had she come? Probably because someone had asked her. Who might that have been? It had to be someone she cared about and who cared for her while they were growing up. Someone she felt she couldn’t deny. A foster sibling, most likely.

Why was Josh, her foster brother, there, though, and why did he want Lindsay to join him? You’ll see. And why was Lindsay even more horrified when she learned Josh had brought along his best friend? Is there any way to salvage a merry Christmas from this mess?

You’ll have to read the story to find out!

Read An Excerpt 

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CMDDXLNJ
All Other Markets: https://books2read.com/u/mdP5Gd

What I’m Working On

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Because the holidays are upon us and I’ll be hanging up the writing soon, I wanted to share where I am with various writing projects.

I’ve spent most of the current year working on one book with the working title of Treadwell House – Sanctuary. The first draft is finished, and I’ve already done some significant revamping on it, but I’m not quite satisfied with it yet. I’m giving it the holidays to marinate in my head before I do a final rework.

I’ve also written a couple of short stories in the last month. One is a Christmas story that I’m especially happy with. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet.

And I’m currently writing the first draft of the next book in the Market Center Mysteries series. This will be book 4 of a 5-book series. I left my heroine in a somewhat unhappy state at the end of the book 3, Playing at Murder. She’s begging me to help her move on and resolve some issues. This book will be set at a pet products trade show, with the possible title of Leashed for Murder. Or maybe Unleashed for Murder. Or maybe even Collared for Murder.  Stay tuned.