If someone said they’d pay you $1,800 to stay off social media for six years, would you do it? Could you?

In 2016, Lorna _______ her 12-year-old son Sivert to stay off social media until he was 18. If he made it, she’d award him the _______ on his eighteenth birthday. On February 19, 2022, Sivert received his _______. Sivert thought it was a great _______ at the time. “I thought it was _______ indeed. What’s 6 more years?” he recalled.

“It’s the _______ money I’ve ever spent,” said Lorna. “We are not against social media, but it’s the _______ use of it. It’s about not letting yourself get _______ affected by it.” Lorna has three older daughters, and she’d already seen problems from their _______ activities. When one of her daughters was 16, Lorna ________ her phone. Her daughter later thanked her for doing so, as it improved her mental health.

Sivert said it wasn’t that ________ to live without social media for six years. “There wasn’t a time when I thought of giving up,” he said. “Staying away from social media also meant I had more time to ________ my studies and sports instead.”

Other parents have seemed ________ trying a similar challenge with their kids. “I advise ________ the behavior you want to see in your children. If they see you before the ________ all day, they will follow your example,” said Lorna.

My grandma is good at gardening. She could make anything bloom (开花), _______me. In my eyes, she was inspiring and _______. For most of her life, she lived on a farm, where she brought up four children, and buried my grandpa.

I visited her on weekends. After the gardening work, I was _______ to climb the mountain, singing songs and gathering flowers. Sometimes the plants scratched me. She would say, “Beauty has a _________. I hope it was worth it.”

“Yes, ma’ ma,” I’d say. “ _______ was.”

I loved gathering flowers on my own. But what I loved best was gathering them with her. Even then, as a child, I knew what I wanted most from my grandma was not her flowers, but her _______. She’s been gone for years, but sometimes, when I _______ down to pick a flower or pull a weed, I see her _______, not mine.

I thought I’d grow up to be a gardener too. I told myself, someday my children had children, I’d be a gardening grandma. Then the grandbabies started showing up, and I discovered I’d much rather run after them _______ go digging. Actually I’m no gardener. I’m a __________, not a planter. I differ from my grandma in lots of ways, but this: I will always carry __________ me a heart she made from her own.

I needn’t plant a garden. My children are my flowers. They delight and complete me with a beauty that is worth any price. All I need to do is __________ them with time, water them with love, and hope that someday, when they hold their first grandchild, they might see my hand.

It was a rainy, December day 30 years ago. A cold hung in the air that _______ you to the bones. But I was even_________the temperature would drop a few more degrees so at least it would snow. My wife and I were_______ in a line at a volunteer fire department building with our two-year-old daughter, Beth. It was going to be her first-time_______   Santa and my wife had brought her_________along to catch the moment.

When Santa_________appeared with his bag of gifts, most of the other younger children_______in fear at this strange man with a big white_________and red suit. My daughter didn’t, however. She wasn’t_________at all.

I think it was because her grandpa had a beard even ________ than Santa’s. Instead, she jumped up and down with________   in a little circle almost coming out of her snow boots in the process.

Seeing her happiness, Santa__________her first. “Ho Ho Ho! What do you want for Christmas, little girl?” he asked. Beth didn’t say anything. She just__________and gave Santa the biggest hug in the world.

My wife laughed and I smiled seeing this__________moment of Christmas love. And all of the sudden that cold, damp firehouse seemed__________and bright. Or perhaps it was just all of us being filled with the__________of Christmas by watching my little girl__________ her love and delight.

These days my little girl is 32 but I____________enjoy every warm, loving, hug she gives me and I still carry that Christmas moment in my____________and mind to warm me any time this world seems too______________or unwelcoming.