On a visit to the small Texas town of Amarillo last year, I attended the World Championship Ranch Rodeo a global gathering of the nation’s best working ranch cowboys, and as I strolled through the sea of competitors and their families, something stood out for me when it came to the children that the ranchers had in tow: none of the kids had phones in their hands. Instead of sitting in solitude, hunched over devices with their eyes glued to screens, I saw clusters of children huddled together on the floor, playing with horse figurines and toy trucks. I watched on as they trotted and teetered their trinkets along surfaces, completely immersed in imaginative play while their parents chatted nearby.

Brent Smith and Barbara Ferchuk’s dance journey began just out of high school when they enrolled as students at the Arthur Murray dance studio in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and never looked back. A subsequent move to Vancouver brought opportunities for performing, competing and teaching at the renowned Arthur Murray Dance Studio there. They became devotees of the teaching system that has been in constant development since 1912, after seeing what it could do for people.

Whether its a week or weekend, HB is an easy vacay from Vancouver. The best of Huntington Beach in 36 hours Photo Sandra Thomas.

Paradise doesnt always look the way you expect it to. My husband Harvey and I were just looking for sun, sand and lots of RR. What we got instead was IV antibiotics, nebulizers and anti-inflammatory drugs at a very efficient private hospital in Cancun, Mexico. All I can say is thank God we have travel medical insurance! My beloved Harvey started getting a nagging dry cough and a tight chest five days into our two-week vacation. The morning of day six, he said Maybe we should go to the resort doctor about my cough.

Over the course of their lifetimes, people will be wedding guests on several occasions. During the height of wedding season, weddings can run into one another, as the format and the festivities are similar at various ceremonies. Couples interested in setting their nuptials apart may want to enhance the wedding reception with a few unique ideas.

As a retiree who’s no longer perpetually exhausted from working full time, I now have the pleasure of taking courses at will. My husband Harvey, 10 other couples and I just started a six-week course called “The Art of Marriage” and I’m hoping to pick up some valuable pointers. The course is offered from a religious perspective, which presumably will align with our mixed secular/religious lifestyle. I’m just relieved to hear that marriage is an art, not a science. I was never good at science. Next week it will be Harvey’s and my ninth wedding anniversary (and 12th year together), and while there are still plenty of stars in my eyes, there are also some spots. Detached retina, maybe? Floaters? No, just some blind spots I need to fill in with a good dose of patience, compassion, and acceptance. Having married at age 53 for the first (and hopefully only) time, I had no experience with serious long-term relationships. My longest relationship prior to Harvey lasted three years, and I’d never lived with anybody before. So, getting married was like a crash course in Relationships 101. Testing the waters constantly on all sorts of issues, we’ve come to a mostly peaceful place of understanding. Like most couples, we don’t always see eye to eye. And there’s the challenge.

When Jiang Cheng first tried a bit of concealer during his first year of university in China it gave him self-confidence and he was instantly hooked.

The Christmas holidays can be a stressful time when it comes to finding the right gift for that special someone. Will you get the right size, colour, or style?

Should I make a career as a university teacher or a hearing specialist? That’s the question that faced Herman Li when he neared the end of his PhD in Linguistics specializing in speech and hearing sciences at Simon Fraser University.