Some of my memorable stories

It has come to my attention that this year is my 10 year anniversary with the company.

The letter says this month, but actually it's in December. Either way, y'all know how nostalgic I am. I spent the afternoon reflecting on my career...how far I've come and how I've regressed. But seriously. Since I've been thinking about it here and I wasn't terribly busy today, I spent the last couple of hours digging through the archives. I thought I'd share with y'all a few of my favorite stories from the past 10 years. Most are pretty old, all of my North Augusta Today stuff is gone, thanks to a virus in the database.

When I think about my stories, though, these are a few that rise to the surface.

Mother finds son she gave up in 1984

http://chronicle.augusta.com/life/people/2010-05-06/mother-finds-son-she-gave-1984

Rationing the meal money

http://m.chronicle.augusta.com/life/food/2010-03-11/rationing-meal-money

Every family has a history

http://chronicle.augusta.com/life/people/2010-02-28/every-family-has-history

Woman gets dying wish to see her parents

http://old.chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2008/12/25/met_505327.shtml

(She lived two more years after this. :) )

And from the WAY BACK files:

The famous pigeon racing story:

http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2006/04/06/oth_76291.shtml

Exchange students share their views of our country:

http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2005/07/03/liv_457680.shtml

And a paraplegic drag racer, who kicked butt on the strip:

http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2004/08/29/nas_426817.shtml

The older stories seem much better, but then again, we had more time and editors to devote to developing and polishing them. Now it feels like we just churn out copy. I miss those days.

Chris's car

I'll keep this one short, because I's tired!

My boy got his first car today and let me tell you, he is some kind of excited!

I won't get into all the gory details, but basically a good friend needed to get rid of her family's second car and she had a great price on it.

I didn't know how I'd come up with the money to buy it, I just knew I had to and it was possible. Turns out, God was way ahead of me. Some of the people who love us offered to help.

One of the perks of being a parent is getting to surprise the heck out of your kids. I think I was more excited about this than he was! While he was still waiting for more information about how long he had to come up with the money, and while he undoubtedly spent more time daydreaming about his new car than listening to his teachers today, Robb and I drove to  Columbia to buy the car. We barely made it home before Christopher did!

We waited in the driveway for him to come home. His girlfriend's mother drove him home, and he jumped out of the truck just beaming!

The coolest thing has been watching him take responsiblity for it already. The driver's side tail light was out when we got it. The very first thing he did was drive it to O'Reilly's to get new bulbs, and he fixed it on the spot. Looked like a pro, too! I asked him if he'd ever done anything like that before and he said "I've watched it once..." But he handled it, fixed it, it worked and everything. Then we went and showed it off!

All evening he's been calling insurance companies to find the best rates. Y'all, I fully expected to have to pretty much tell him who to call and what needed to be done each step of the way. All I did, pretty much, was said "to get this thing on the road you need a, b, and c." He took that and ran with it. I am so proud of him!