Merry Christmas everyone. I’ve spent the last few hours lounging around, preparing my stomach for a first class Italian Christmas Eve celebration at my parent’s house. This has been a tradition in my family for many years, ever since I moved out of the house in 1985

For openers, they’ll be serving baccalà salad and spaghetti with baccalà tomato sauce. For you unfortunate, non-Italian folks out there, baccalà is really just dried, salted cod fish fillets, soaked in cold water for several days to remove the excess salt, and boiled until tender. To make it into a salad, you would mix it with black and green olives, garlic, oregano, basil, roasted red peppers, salt, pepper, olive oil and some parsley (I’m sure I left out some spices, but you get the general idea, right?).

I would like everyone to meet my grandmother, Beatrice Holecek. Grandmothers are special people you can make so many memories with. My grandmother would bake cookies, pies, cakes and all sorts of goodies to spoil her grandchildren.

I have so many memories of the things we used to do, like going to the playground and feeding the ducks at the pond. I loved to run errands with my grandmother in her 1968 mint condition Chevy Monte Carlo (garaged, of course). This woman had one heck of a lead foot – I swear to God the woman couldn’t cruise a parking going less than 40 mph.

I feel very sad right now. I know that sentence isn’t very descriptive, or very imaginative, and there are probably several different ways I could have written it that would have made it far more interesting, but I’m having a hard time searching for the words right now.

You see, John DeBlase And Heather Leavell-Keaton did some pretty awful things to John’s son and daughter, three-year-old Natalie DeBlase and five year-old Jonathan “Chase” DeBlase. They were the kinds of things that intelligence agencies do to each other’s agents when they capture them and the captured agent refuses to answer his capture’s questions.

I lived in the Houston area for about 6 years, I absolutely loved it. I loved the different cultures, the great food, the historical landmarks, shopping and never got bored or ran out of things to do. Yes, the traffic was horrible and it was hot and humid.

We also had to evacuate for Hurricane Rita but aside from that I had no complaints. I traveled into the city for work and lived about 30 minutes out, if there was no traffic, which was rare.

Inside the Houston city limits there are plenty of seedy areas that most people would try to avoid if at all possible. There are lots of gangs and crime in general. The National Gang Threat Assessment group reports Houston has more gangs than any other city in TX with 225 different documented gangs. Houston has a population of 4 million people, not including the undocumented residents, so I guess it’s no surprise.

This is Ashley Kirilow of Burlington, Ontario, founder of the charity Change for a Cure. Inspired by her ongoing battle with cancer, she started the charity in October 2009 to raise money for the University of Alberta’s research into a new cancer fighting drug.

Ashley Kirilow said that beginning on April 29, 2010, her 23rd birthday, she would walk from Burlington to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to personally deliver the money to the university. Change for a Cure volunteers say they raised $20,000 for the charity, but the proposed walk to Edmonton never occurred and the University of Alberta never received the money.

See, there was a big problem with this whole thing: Ashley Kirilow never had cancer. She made the whole thing up and pocketed the money for herself.

When Bill Mullins-Johnson went to bed on June 26, 1993, he never dreamed that in a few hours his life would become a nightmare. He awoke to his sister-in-law’s screams and, racing upstairs to his little niece’s bedroom, he found four-year-old Valin’s lifeless body in her bed. He and his brother tried to revive her but it was too late. Little Valin was dead.

The police arrived and began asking questions. Bill told them truthfully he lived with his brother’s family and that he had babysat Valin the night before. This made him Suspect #1, and within 12 hours of finding his niece’s body Bill was charged with first-degree murder.

Everybody take a minute to reflect on your own childhood.What about your favorite place to go or funnest things you did? What about memories of loved ones or playing with your friends? Unfortunately, not all kids remember happy times with their loved ones. This, my friends, is a story about a beautiful brown eyed angel named Andrea.

Andrea was born to Michelle and Paul Gonzalez in Alabama. Eventually Andrea, her older brother, Michelle and Paul packed up and moved to Illinois. Not long after getting settled down Michelle gave birth to another son, this child was not Paul’s child, so he went back to Alabama.

For most decent human beings, children are blessings. After having a child, you may find yourself drawn to other children around, and maybe even have some maternal instinct to want to protect them as your own. I know that’s what happened after I had my son.

I never really liked kids, but after having my own, I had this overwhelming feeling of compassion for all children. Stories about child abuse hit me especially hard after the birth of my son, and I know I am not the only one to feel that way.

Now, maybe this is a far stretch, but all good parents would not want any harm to come to a child, whether it be their own or someone else’s. Agreed?