One of those funny things...

As I have mentioned before, Moms family were very close to each other. They lived in a modest home, where love and laughter were companions, and the seven siblings grew up being the best of friends.

One of the things I noticed about my mothers family, was if someone did something very nice for another, the one who was the receiver of the gift, sometimes knowing of the expense that was sacrificed, would often try to help with the cost, by donating part of the money involved. To which the giver often would sneak the money back in some way without the receiver knowing about it, like in a pocket, or purse, or perhaps in a bag that was carried, or a book, or shoe. Until later on when they would accidentally find it. Well much to my surprise, that tradition is still in existence. A year ago I was helping my 2nd cousin with pictures for her book. I had a box, and a scrapbook that my mother had kept. My mother was very good at keeping inventions, clippings of newspaper articles about the family, announcements etc.
My Cousin Dorothy, and her daughter, Fran, spent countless hours working on the book about the family, and putting all these extra clippings of mom's into top load sheets and putting them into a binder, so they would be protected. They even bought the binder and the top load sheets. I gave my cousin $10 dollars to help with the cost, that's all I had at the time. Tonight, One year latter, my daughter Jennifer was looking through some things and said "Mom, did you know you have $10 in this box?"
I thought I was the smart one, and had gotten away with it, but you know... you can't out smart a fox!

Update: As of last night, the money is back in their court!