Tag: Family
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Top 10 of 2025
You’ll have to forgive me for my delay. The plague has befallen the Shand household, and I write to you with a fever, intrusive coughing spells, and brain fog. I blame any incoherencies found below on my current state. This year was another year of big life changes—milestones, if you will—not just for me personally,…
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A Belated Thanksgiving
There are a two times of year that make me think about writing a blog more than any other, and that is Thanksgiving and New Year’s. I’ve had traditions over the years to write blogs on these holidays, and this year on Thanksgiving, as we were packing up the kids and the snacks and the…
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The First Thanksgiving
That is, for Charles. Today is Charles’ first Thanksgiving, and I have exactly ten minutes to write this blog. I don’t do well on a time crunch, so you should not expect an Abe Lincoln Gettysburg Address. To set the expectations accordingly, you can look forward to a series of photos of Charles being cute,…
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“So Long, and Thanks for All the Cheese!” – parting words from my appendix
At first I blamed the chimi crawl, three Dominican hamburger-sandwiches I’d eaten on Saturday night for the sake of a magazine article. They tasted very good, but shortly after eating them I experienced acute and severe stomach pain, and three days later it still hadn’t completely subsided. On Tuesday afternoon, my still present, low-grade stomach…
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The Story of the Pork Roll (otherwise known as Sir Hamselot)
My dad is a difficult person to shop for. (Just ask the set of golf clubs he never used that mysteriously disappeared.) Sometime around the 14th flannel shirt we gave him, he finally acquiesced to my mom’s and my plea to give us a Christmas list. This year the list included ski socks and a…
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Joyful Resurrected: Reasons for Gratitude on My 32nd Birthday
In 2017 I undertook a project called The Joyfulness Project in which I blogged every day, for an entire year, my moments of gratitude. It’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to pen down my joyful moments, but last week was so full of joy that I need to spend a moment to…
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A Blog While Waiting at the Airport
Sorry for my blogging absence. I considered writing a belated Valentine’s Day blog (I’ve never not blogged about Valentine’s Day), but who wants to read a story about a holiday that everyone hates over a month after it happened? Not even me. So instead, I’m publishing a terrible blog about nothing for the sole purpose…
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In the Spirit of Thanksgiving: A Blog
Today is the day designated for giving thanks, and I expect everyone out there to be doing something much more important than reading my blog. I hope you all are stuffing your faces with turkey, delighting in sweet potatoes, and enjoying pies of every kind, while watching football and hugging loved ones and remembering all…
Travel & Food Writer 