【推荐1】Unless your parent is a head chef or bento box（便当盒）master, school lunch is usually nothing to write home about. For artist and father Dominick Cabalo, however, his son Nicholas’ lunches are an oil painting cloth for creativity. Cabalo makes carefully designed drawings on each of 12-year-old Nicholas’ paper lunch bags, usually representing popular lively characters and colorful superheroes.

Cabalo began drawing on the bags about three years ago to help Nicholas make new friends in elementary school. “I noticed he was a bit shy when it came to talking to others,” he said. “So by creating a piece of artwork to ‘break the ice’, kids would come up to him and start talking and hopefully a conversation, or better yet, a new friendship, would start.”

Though Nicholas is in middle school now, he still asks his dad to draw on the lunch bags, and will make requests for characters or drawings that he’d like to see on the next bag. Cabalo has drawn about 400 lunch bags in the past three years. He explained that the bags had really helped his son become more confident at school. “He’s broken out of his shell because of this, and I like to think that I had a hand in helping him do this with these bags.” he wrote.

Nicholas keeps most of the bags. “Some come back in better condition than others,” Cabalo said. “We may lose one due to the occasional wet sandwich or leaky drink, but that’s to be expected.” As for the bags that make it home undamaged, Cabalo posts their photos to social media. His favorites are the more time-consuming series of bags that can be joined up to create a larger image, such as the “Finding Nemo” triptych（三联画）.

【推荐3】Parents, do you ever wonder what’s going on in your children’ s minds? Teens, do you ever wish you could tell your parents how you feel about their parenting styles? And are your parents like everyone else’s? One East Valley teacher is helping bridge this gap (隔阂) with a unique survey.

Scott Reed, a psychology teacher from Hamilton High School in Chandler, AriZona, says, no doubt, it is very different being a teenager today than it was when their parents were teens.

Social media (媒体) has played a big role in that change. “I think social media puts a lot of stress on us,” said Vedant Thareja, a senior at Hamilton High School. He added that he had female friends who felt stressed to look a certain way, because of pictures of famous people they saw on social media, and were disappointed (失望的) when they could not achieve that look. Lexi Lamond, a 16-year-old Hamilton High School student agreed. “Everybody is comparing themselves to everyone these days,” said Lamond.

Both students are part of Reeds class and took part in a survey of parenting styles. The survey showed teenagers felt their parents were often wanting them to compete with another teen who is doing better than them, or a brother or sister who outshines them. Teens also showed that they wanted their parents to stop trying to solve all their problems. Sometimes they just needed space to talk and deal with things themselves. Teens said they felt their parents were trying too hard to place themselves in every part of their lives.

One point that mom and educational expert Katey McPherson found insightful (有见地的) was that teens said they could not meet their parents’ expectations to “be perfect” all the time.

Reed’s survey offered great insight into the mind of a teen and the role they wanted to see parents playing in their lives. Mental (心理的) health experts suggest parents teach their children the skills of solving problems, getting along with others in a healthy way, and ways to manage stress so they would be prepared to deal with any disappointment and failure that could come their way as they grew into young adults.

【推荐1】A Plan for an Adventurous Hiking across Antarctica

Helen Thayer is to celebrate her 60th birthday in a special way. She is bound for a three-month, 1, 500-mile solo hike across Antarctica.

The journey will be lonely and desperate at times. In the Antarctica, where temperatures can drop to 40 degrees below zero, she plans to walk at least 12 hours a day, with about five minutes of rest every hour. Anything longer will make her body temperature drop too much. Anything too tiring will make her sweat and freeze. The worst thing that may happen to her is to hike into a headwind. She has to battle against the wind that is constantly pushing her. This part of the journey is slow, hard work and depressing, but she is determined to make it.

She spent two years getting in shape for this venture, with a workout plan that included 10-mile runs, 20-mile hikes and hours of weight training each week. Thayer also put in a daily hour pulling a pack loaded with concrete, to train her for the pack—full of carefully weighed items—she’ll carry across Antarctica.

Every little thing counts. The handle of her toothbrush has been cut off to make it lighter. Her wedding ring is in her left jacket pocket keeping her link with husband Bill—because it could freeze on her finger and cut off circulation.

For three months, only her journal will keep her company. No music, no books. “There’s going to be plenty to keep me occupied and boredom will not be a factor,” she said with a smile. Thayer has two reasons for her journey. First of all, she wants to use the journey to raise money for charity, Oxfam. What’s more, “I make this plan mainly for my kids—through what I can gather through my camera lens and my notes for them. I want them to learn how to set goals, plan for success and be the best they can,” she says.

【推荐2】On December 26, 2014, a fierce fire destroyed the home of Terry Harris, 60. Terry's grandsons Kenyon, 14, Broderick, 11 and Braylon, 9, were spending Christmas night with her. She and the three children died in the fire and following collapse of the house in Washington Court House, Ohio.

Sick with sorrow, Terry's son Ricky Harris and his wife, Traci, the boys' parents, welcomed friends into their home just down the street from where Ricky's mother's house had once stood. One of them was Michael J. Emmons Jr. who'd driven eight hours from Delaware, to comfort Ricky, an old high school friend.

"When I heard the news, I felt deeply sorry for him," Michael says.

On the garage floor of the Harris' house, a relative had laid out more than 200 charred and waterlogged   photographs, including shots of the boys wearing their basketball and wrestling uniforms or posing for class pictures, saved from the fire. Michael, a doctoral student in preservation studies at the University of Delaware, saw in the sad scene an opportunity to help. He called Debra Norris, chair of the university's art conservation department, for advice on how to save the photos.

"I thought she would recommend a restoration service," says Michael. Instead, she asked him to post the photos to her right away.

Every day for two weeks, Debra along with ten photo-preservation graduate students and dozens of other teachers and local conservators carefully cleaned dirt off the photos with tiny brushes. An alcohol solution removed tougher dirt.

Three months later, Debra and Michael delivered a box of restored photos to the parents.

"I would love to see my mom's face, knowing that all these people cared," Ricky says.

【推荐3】Part of buying a home is making it your own. That can mean a huge number of things, from the simple act of repainting to something more adventurous, like adopting a brand-new lifestyle.

For the Wright family —Yvonna, Brett and their two daughters, Marley and Lola — creating a home of their own meant stepping outside their New York City comfort zone. It was a major shift, but they found a whole new level of contentment not too far from where they started. Now, the Wrights are raising chickens, keeping bees and planning a future as a farmhouse family in the Hudson Valley, just north of Manhattan.

As longtime residents of Harlem, Brett and Yvonna Wright didn’t always consider farm life their destiny (命运). But after finding success in the worlds of entertainment and publishing, they felt the need to build something their whole family could own for years to come. The brownstones of Harlem were difficult to leave behind, but the promise of open space, fresh air and boundless nature was too charming (迷人的) to resist.

The Wrights’ journey to homeownership wasn’t without obstacles. Their daughters were understandably a bit skeptical about moving. It can be difficult to have your life uprooted at any age, and for city kids moving to the country, the culture shock includes adapting to a whole new lifestyle.

Since buying their home, farm life has suited the Wrights even better than they had hoped. The charms of county life won over their daughters more quickly than anyone could have expected. Now, they are helping Mom and Dad with their business, Lomar Farms. It might seem like a total reinvention, but this family is well equipped to create a life as sweet as honey.