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While I was growing up, my family always celebrated Christmas Eve and New Years Eve with my Uncle Donnie, Aunt Vicki, Jennifer, Ashley and Cody. We also spent many summer days swimming and barbecuing together and sometimes going to Liberty Land.

On the Fourth of July we enjoyed lunch and swimming at Ashley’s house. Uncle Donnie, Aunt Vicky and Cody were also there. It was a nice way to spend the day and catch up with everyone. It’s also nice to see our kids play together. We don’t get to visit as much as we used to, but we still have fun when we get together.

I was also pleasantly surprised the other day to receive an e-mail from Jennifer, who lives in Minnesota. The e-mail contained a slide show featuring her daughter’s senior pictures and a few family photos! It doesn’t seem possible that she has a daughter graduating high school.
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Conley and I were driving home the other day when a police officer did a U-turn in front of us to go after a car that was speeding.

The blue lights caught Conley’s attention in the back seat and he asked me what the policeman was doing. I told him he was probably going to catch the car that had just passed us and give them a ticket.

To this, he offered the ever-popular four-year-old question, “Why?”

I told him they were driving too fast and that is why they were getting a ticket.

Now, it didn’t occur to me that to my four-year-old son tickets are a good thing. He acquaints tickets with riding rides, winning a prize or going somewhere. It didn’t take me long to realize he did not understand that in this case getting a ticket was not a happy occasion.

“You better hurry up, Mom,” he told me. “Why?” I asked him. “You have to go fast so we can get some tickets, too,” he said grinning.

I explained to him that when you get a ticket from a police officer it is because you were doing something bad and you have to pay money as punishment for getting in trouble. I also told him that driving too fast can cause an accident, which he took very seriously.

The next day he told his grandma that you can’t drive too fast because you might get a ticket, and even worse, you might crash.

So often, we want to make the police be the bad guys for writing the tickets, but my four-year-old son really got it. It’s not about driving slow so you don’t get a ticket. It’s about driving safe so you don’t get in an accident.

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