I hate to bring it up, but it’s time. Summer is tick season, and nothing grosses me out more than these nasty little buggers. My skin is crawling already.

Remember to have your pets treated with tick prevention since pets often bring a tick inside the house with them. (We use Bravecto on our dogs and it lasts for 3 months.)

When you and/or your kids come inside, be sure to check yourself and teach your kids how to do it, too. Help them check the spots they can’t see.

Also, if you’re helping to take care of aging parents, be sure to remind them about this. My mom (who is in great health in her 70s) loves to take care of her potted plants and flowers outside. When she had an itchy spot on her back last week, she asked me to take a look since she couldn’t see it. It turned out to be a tiny tick! I was able to get it off, but it reminded me that older people who live alone will need help now and then to check for possible tick bites that they can’t see.

I found this in-depth, straightforward article on USA Today about what you need to remember about ticks — how to prevent a bite, how to remove a tick safely, the chemical you can put on clothes and shoes to prevent ticks from getting on you, and the window of time before risk of disease transfer happens.

It’s a great piece that taught me some things I didn’t know — like how ticks can transmit not only Lyme disease but 14 other diseases. Yikes.

Northwest Arkansas has so many fun outdoor spaces to explore, so it’s important to know how to protect yourself and your kids (and grandparents) from tick bites you might get during an outing. If you do find one, remember to get as close as possible to the attachment point and (using tweezers) pull straight out — no twisting or squeezing.

Stay safe out there, mamas! Have a happy summer!

I had a 30-minute window of sunlight near the end of a rare, 76-degree day in late June, and I didn’t want to miss it. So I grabbed Mac’s harness and asked if he wanted to go for a walk. He did.

We could’ve headed for a nearby walking trail, but instead I walked our neighborhood and then a nearby circular drive nestled into a small pocket of domesticated woodlands.

Mac and I had walked and sniffed three, maybe four loops around the circle when I saw something move in the corner of my eye. When I turned, I saw two eyes staring back at me. A young deer had stepped into the grassy field bordered by the road, and we’d spotted each other at the same moment. We both froze, shocked to see the other.

I pulled Mac close and prayed he wouldn’t start barking or pulling at the leash, but he was as stunned as I was. Mac and the deer stood perfectly still, their noses twitching in the gentle breeze blowing between us. Maybe Mac thought the deer was a freakishly tall dog, but thankfully he wasn’t inclined to start trouble. So I marveled at the deer’s light brown coat and long, graceful legs. I felt grateful for how close we were — just two local girls out for a walk on a cool summer evening.

I assumed the deer would head for the woods after she saw me. But then I realized she’d have to run past me to reach the edge of the tree line. Likewise, I’d have to pass her to get to the road leading out of the secluded neighborhood. We’d accidentally blocked ourselves in without realizing it.

After a few more moments of silent observation, I walked left, hoping the deer would see a wider, safe path back to the woods. But instead, she walked the same direction at the same speed. So I stopped, paused, and reversed direction. If she wanted to zig, then I’d happily zag so we could both get to where we wanted to go.

But the deer reversed direction a moment after I did, as if she were mirroring me across 40 yards of grass and wildflowers. I stopped and waited, hoping a better idea would occur to me.

Then without warning, the deer began to sprint straight at me. Our eyes locked, and I didn’t know what to do. I’d never known a deer to be aggressive, but what’s the protocol for this situation? Do I raise my arms, yell, and try to make myself look scary? Does that only work on certain kinds of bears? Do I lie down and play dead?

The deer was picking up speed, quickly closing the distance. My fear spiked as I realized, absurd as it sounds, that I was about to be hit by a deer. And judging by her size and speed, it was definitely going to hurt.

As she closed in, I could see her eyes so clearly, and she could see mine. With only a few feet left between us, she jerked toward the tree line. As she ran away, so did we. As we neared the path leading out of the neighborhood, Mac and I looked back toward the woods. There, just steps from the tree line, the deer had stopped and was looking back at us.

I tugged Mac’s leash, and we scrambled up the road that would lead us home. We’d both had enough adventure. Perhaps the deer felt the same way because, with one graceful leap, she disappeared into the trees.  

When I got home, I recounted this unusual story to my people. And I’d like to think she did the same with hers. I’ll never forget it.

Maybe she, too, will remember the day she went for a walk and saw a weird, mostly hairless deer standing on two feet that was tied by a string to a smaller, curly-haired deer with floppy ears. Just three odd creatures meeting on the blurry border of the places we call home.

Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her books are available on Amazon.

By April Wallace, Northwest Arkansas mama

If you haven’t already heard, or seen a million pictures on Pinterest, sensory bins are all the rage for toddlers. They come in many shapes, colors and sizes to exercise our children’s budding fine motor skills. Pincer grasp, coordination of hands and use of the wrists all take practice to master and sensory bins are a fun way to encourage it.

My problem with sensory bins? Some were just a little too complex to put together while minding my newborn at the same time. And some of them were far too expensive for me to stomach. (I’m looking at you, the person who suggested buying a particular table just for this…)

What really spoke to me were the occasional ideas I’ve run across that were incredibly simple and as cheap as can be. Being cheap and simple didn’t make these ideas any less fun for my toddler Henry, who is soon to turn 2. On the contrary, he’s had a blast.

So here are five sensory bins we’ve made recently. They’re not the best five of all time that you could make or superior to others in any way. But if you’re looking to be a sensory bin maker, these are a few easy and cost effective ways to get started.

1. It’s a bunny’s world ~ Cost: $1.88

Once Easter passed, I had all these plastic eggs lying around and quite frankly I didn’t have the energy to pack them up neatly just yet. It occurred to me that Henry would enjoy using the big ones as scoops, so I borrowed an idea from the totschool hashtag on Instagram.

I threw an 88 cent bag of Great Value brand frozen peas in my cart on a routine run to the grocery store, and once we were home, I put them in a rectangular Tupperware bin with a few large carrot-shaped Easter eggs that I got for a buck from the Dollar Tree.

Henry got good practice taking the lids off, and used the bottom halves to scoop and dump the peas. Then he had some pincer grasp practice with picking up the peas that didn’t land in the bin.

Once I saw how he liked to play with it, I added an old set of 3 plastic bowls (you know, the kind you used in college but stopped once you bought a nicer set) to the mix. He could pour the peas in any of those, then practice dumping the bowls from one to the next. Another time I gave him a measuring spoon and a cylinder bottle, which he immediately took to carefully spooning peas into.

He had so much fun with this one that I refroze the peas (being careful to label them so we wouldn’t accidentally eat the now-well-handled vegetable for dinner) and we’ve done the activity a few more times, making it even cheaper per use in the long run.

Bonus activities to pair:

Read “That’s Not My Bunny” by Fiona Watt

Read “Yum Yum Baby” by Rosalee Wren

Sing “Little Bunny Foo Foo”

2. Let’s move it ~ Cost $5.30

One rainy spring day, Henry was staring longingly out our dining room window at the mud puddles forming in our yard. I was still feeding my newborn every 90 minutes to 2 hours. We had no toddler sized rain boots yet, not to mention a lack of energy to chase and clean him afterward, so I thought it would be easier for us to play with mud inside.

I turned to the totschool hashtag once again and came away with a play mud recipe. Use 1 cup of cornstarch ($0.92 for Great Value brand), half a cup of water and 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder ($1.84 for Great Value). Mix it up in a Tupperware or bin that you don’t mind your little one playing in. It’ll be stiff at first, so add water until you get a consistency that allows some give, but isn’t watery.

Then I covered our coffee table in a cheap poster board (I paid $2.54 for a set of 8 posters at Walmart) and drew roads with a permanent marker for him to drive his miniature construction vehicles around on. We already had these toys, but monster trucks and various other vehicles are available at your nearest dollar store. I placed the play mud at one end of it so Henry could use the vehicles to push, dig and load the mud before driving it around and dumping it in various configurations around the “construction site.” To make it a little more life-like, we added a few little gravel rocks from our backyard that Henry had conveniently already carried in a day or two earlier.

This one entertained him off and on for an entire day, then he proceeded to request it for days after. I found that the mud is easy enough to vacuum from rugs and wash off of toy vehicles once it’s dry and your toddler is sleeping or playing in another room—far enough away to be unable to protest.

Bonus activities to pair:

Read “Digger and Tom” by Sebastian Braun

Read “Construction Site: Lift and Look” by Felicity Brooks

Watch “20 Trucks: Digger” brief video/song on Youtube

3. A snack in the desert ~ Cost: $5

I threw this sensory bin together on a Friday afternoon when I needed some uninterrupted cleaning time. My only supplies were a bag of oyster crackers and a handful of safari animals from the Dollar Tree. At this stage, Henry still tends to put most everything in his mouth at some point, so having edible pieces whenever possible helps. I placed the oyster crackers in a short plastic container to symbolize a dry, sandy desert floor, put the animals standing among them and let Henry’s imagination guide him. He had the tiger and lion roaring at each other, the zebra galloping through them and the elephant trumpeting off to the side. After a while they were lined up all ready for a race and waiting on Henry while he ate some of the desert floor.

Bonus activities to pair:

Listen to “I just can’t wait to be King” from the Lion King

Use the figurines one by one and ask if your little one if he or she can make the right animal noises

4. A bug’s life ~  Cost: $5.44

My outdoor-loving toddler is beginning to be aware of insects and loves pointing out ants crawling on the ground, ladybugs that found their way inside, and butterflies that flit around him in the backyard. So I thought this idea from another totschool Instagram would be ideal. Use a simple one pound bag of dry black beans ($1.44 for Great Value brand) for the base to look like dirt or dark ground. If you have the Boon Lawn drying rack for bottles and sippy cups (like I do and many of my friends), you can use that as an extra surface. I bought a few giant bug toys from the Dollar Tree for a dollar each, including a fly, a bumblebee, a beetle and a grasshopper. I like that they’re jumbo sized, which makes it easier for me to remember that they’re not real when I encounter them throughout the house after Henry’s played with them.

Henry used this sensory bin to have the bugs creep, crawl and fly, but he had much more fun moving the black beans around. He poured them into the fake grass and brought his dump truck into the mix, pouring black beans in the bed and dumping them back into the bin. Once I brought a hand broom and dustpan into the mix to mitigate the beans spilling everywhere, he enjoyed using that to manipulate the toys and beans, too.

Bonus activities to pair:

Read “Bugs Galore” by Peter Stein

Sing or listen to  “The Ants Go Marching,” the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and/or “An Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly.”

5. A trip to the beach ~ Cost: $6

My family is going to the beach for our summer vacation, and while you can always talk with your toddler about it beforehand, there’s really no understanding what the ocean is really like until you get there. When I ran into these little buckets of play sand and plastic animals at Target for $3 each, I jumped at the chance to give Henry a better visual of our destination ahead of time, and a little preparation for the type of fun he could have.

I bought two play sand buckets, one with toy animals and one with toy bugs. I dumped them together in my shallow Tupperware bin, and then once again following a totschool idea, I filled a tall plastic box with a couple inches of water and a squirt of dish soap and toy fishes. I set the plastic buckets next to the pretend beach and ocean, along with a toy canoe Henry sometimes uses at bathtime.

This combination was so captivating to Henry that we had to move the entire set out to our backyard while we grilled our dinner a couple hours later. The next day I set it on our front porch while I got some work done in front of our house. Clearly, he’s going to use this one until we actually arrive at the real beach.

Bonus activities to pair:

Read “Chu’s Day at the Beach” by Neil Gaiman

Sing “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid

April Wallace is a stepmom to one smart, funny teenager, mama to two beautiful and curious little boys and wife to a very kind and generous man. When she gets a few minutes to herself, April loves to run local trails and read fiction.

Let those freshly polished toes breathe while you’re wearing your favorite sandals. And your fingernails will stay safe from biting (or peeling) if you keep them polished with a shade that’s far too pretty to mess up.

According to Cosmo, here are three of the hottest colors nail artists are applying this summer:

• Sky blue
• Lavender milk
• Lychee pink

To see the other colors that made the list, click HERE to see the Cosmopolitan magazine’s article titled “The 6 Summer 2026 Nail Colors Cosmo Editors and Nail Artists Are Already Obsessed With,” written by Jasmine Hyman on July 14th.

Friends, I hate to brag, but I think this must be said: I’ve raised two dogs who are exceptionally good spellers. Despite the fact they’ve never even sniffed a dictionary, these pups have memorized exactly which letters combine to form the words they know best.

​And don’t bother whispering because dogs can hear things four times farther away than humans can. That’s why most dogs know the FedEx truck will be rounding the corner in roughly two minutes, long before we hear even the faintest rumble.

​We humans are pretty good listeners, too — when we want to be. The phrase “out to eat” always makes my ears perk up, along with my mood. And Tom can spring out of a deep Sunday afternoon nap if someone mumbles the word “cookies.” Even our cloud-based virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa are programmed to respond when they hear a pre-programmed “wake word.”

​Just like those smart speakers, the dogs are always listening, too. Even during naps, they keep one floppy or pointy ear open for words that are worth waking up for — both the good ones and the scary ones.

​At our house, we learned the hard way to never say the word “vet” within earshot of my mom’s rescue mutt, Freckles. If she hears even the whispered spelling, she’ll dive straight under the king-size bed and wriggle to the middle, where it’s harder to reach her and drag her back out.

​Almost all dogs get excited over words like “treat,” “outside,” or “walk.” Our stubby-legged Corgi barked so loudly every time I said the word “outside” that I started finding ways around it. I’d come home from errands and ask Tom, “Has he been to the place with grass lately?” (I didn’t want to say the “o-word” if he’d already been there because then he’d insist on going out again just to re-sniff every blade of grass.)

​The workaround phrase worked approximately three times before the dog caught on. Instead of keeping him in the dark as I’d hoped, I simply taught him more words without meaning to. We had to add “grass” to the list of words we cannot say or spell without sending the dog sprinting to the back door in a barrage of barks.

​In mid-May, our daughter and her 90-pound Goldendoodle service dog, Mac, came home for the summer break. Mac brought his own vocabulary, including favorites like “bone,” “cheese,” and “pool.”

​It has been several years since our adult kids have been excited about the annual opening of the backyard pool, but Mac’s thrill-o-meter hits level 100 every time he sees that pool water sparkling in the sun. He bolts straight to the shallow steps, looking back at us to check for permission to bail in.

​Last summer, we bought him a pool toy that looks like a realistic, floating fish. When we toss it into the deep end, Mac launches out across the water with his mouth wide open — ready to scoop up the fish and swim it back to shore.

​We’re amazed at how smoothly he glides through the water with his wet, blonde curls plastered against his head. He points his nose toward the pool steps as his long legs work silently under the surface. It’s only his tail that sticks up and tilts rhythmically from side to side, like his own built-in rudder. Mac would swim to the point of exhaustion if we let him, so we have to lure him out of the water with the promise of a b-o-n-e, which he gets to gnaw on while one of us blow-dries his hair.

​Are your dogs good at spelling, too? I’d love to hear your pet’s most unusual vocabulary words, so send them my way. And as we head into fireworks season over the next week or two, remember to protect your dog’s nervous system. If the booms and bangs are loud to our human ears, we can only imagine how much louder and scarier they are to a dog’s more sensitive ears.

I recommend distracting them with a special t-r-e-a-t and plenty of extra l-o-v-e.

​Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her new novel is available on Amazon.

The barbecue is phenomenal (try the brisket!), but on this last visit I wanted to take home a giant bucket of their Orzo Pasta Salad that’s served as a side dish. It’s light and bright, plus it’s served cold, which is so refreshing on a hot summer day.

Here’s a copycat recipe I found online for this pasta salad. Can’t wait to try it!

Ingredients:

• 1 pound cooked orzo pasta
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 large red pepper, finely diced
• 2 cups fresh baby spinach, chopped
• 1/2 cup freshly shredded parmesan cheese

For the basil vinaigrette dressing:

• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 cup fresh basil leaves
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tsp honey or sugar
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Cook the Orzo: Boil the orzo in a large pot of salted water until al dente (8–9 minutes). Drain and rinse with cold water to cool completely.

Blend the Dressing: Place the olive oil, red wine vinegar, fresh basil, garlic, honey (or sugar), salt, and pepper into a blender or food processor. Blend until completely smooth and bright green.

Assemble: In a large bowl, combine the cooled orzo, halved tomatoes, diced red pepper, and chopped spinach.

Toss and Serve: Pour the basil vinaigrette over the salad and toss well. Gently fold in the shredded parmesan cheese. Chill for at least 1 hour before serving.

In this month’s edition, let’s talk skin care. Recently, I was asked to be a guest on a local TV talk show to discuss my new novel titled “Checked Out.” (Available on Amazon and Audible!) The hosts were so kind and looked so great on camera. We had a great conversation. It was all going so well…. until I actually watched the broadcast later from the comfort of my own home and had to come face to face with… my face. There’s nothing like a TV appearance to make you realize maybe it’s time for some new skincare products.

First up is SkinMedica Retinol Serum 1.0. I saw this one on a great sale during Amazon Prime Days so I snagged it because of the discount and the really great reviews it gets from users and the Wirecutter review site. So far, I really like how it feels on my skin, and I can definitely feel that tightening sensation after I use it, which is nice. It is pricey, so definitely try to catch it on sale. But so far, I’d definitely say it’s worth a re-purchase for me.

I use the retinol serum at night, but in the mornings I’m using La Roche-Posay Pure Vitamin C12 Serum for Face. If you need a serum that hydrates and brightens (yes, please), this one is worth a try. It gets more than 19,000 ratings on Amazon and gets 4.5 stars out of 5. That’s pretty impressive for any product but especially for a skincare product, which tends to trigger a lot of strong opinions. I mix a few drops of this serum with my usual moisturizer, and it soaks in quickly and feels great on my skin. It’s too soon to judge true results, but I feel a tad brighter already.

A few months ago, I realized the first minute of the day felt consistently scary. Mornings were nothing like the peaceful, idyllic images you see in coffee commercials. I wasn’t waking with a slow yawn and a gentle stretch. I was bolting straight up with such a jolt that it spiked my heart rate even before my feet hit the floor.

For years, I’d used the same alarm sound on my iPhone clock app. And although that sound hasn’t changed, my body has. The progesterone level of women in their late 40s to early 50s falls off a cliff, often taking the nervous system with it. Little did we know that progesterone not only helped us grow babies, it also protected the brain from overstimulation. Annoyances that didn’t faze us 10 years ago are now tap dancing on our last frayed nerve. Biology can be a real kick in the teeth sometimes.

That’s why the same sound that simply woke me up for years is now the sound that sends me into “fight or flight” the moment my eyes fly open. And I certainly don’t want to start each day trying to calm down from the first 10 seconds of consciousness. So I set out to find a kinder, gentler alarm clock that wouldn’t trigger panicky swatting at the snooze button.

After some research on the Sleep Foundation’s nonprofit website, I bought a clock with a two-phase alarm system. About 10 minutes before the scheduled wake-up time, the clock plays 30 seconds of a mellow sound like a chime or a long note that gradually fades into silence. It’s equivalent to someone whispering, “Hey, it’ll be time to wake up soon,” before they tiptoe back out of your room. It’s lovely.

Then, about nine minutes later, a different, peppier melody begins to play and keeps going until I fully wake up and turn it off. But it’s all very soothing — no instant, loud blaring like I’m waking up in a bomb raid. Speaking for myself and my hair-trigger nervous system, we love this thing. When I’ve slept well for seven or eight hours, this alarm clock’s gentle nudging is all I need to wake up and feel just like those calm, happy women in the Folgers commercial.  

But there’s a catch. (Isn’t there always?) Middle age is also infamous for disrupting sleep quality. And after the occasional night of not-so-great sleep, it’s harder to wake up than it used to be. So maybe what I need is an alarm clock that will whisper sweet bird sounds in my ear, but then — if that doesn’t work —  it should blast me with an air horn, call me names, and threaten to key my car. Can I get one of those on Amazon?

My 19-year-old daughter is such a chronic snooze button abuser that she’s now using an alarm clock app that forces her to complete math problems before she can turn off the obnoxious siren. But I know that won’t work for me. Even if I guzzled three Mountain Dews and a Red Bull, I still wouldn’t be able to add fractions under pressure. I’m a former English major who knows her limitations.

What I need is a Jekyll and Hyde alarm system — soft on the good days, harsh on the lazy ones. So I’ve combined my new gentle alarm clock with my old, terrifying one. If the slow onramp to wakefulness doesn’t work, I have a backup system using the old alarm, which simulates waking up in a horror movie just as the killer wearing the hockey mask kicks down the door. You know, just another Tuesday.  

Sleep well, dear readers. And do all you can to protect your nervous systems.

Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her books are available on Amazon.

I’m about to tell you something I’ve never told anyone, and it’s going to sound crazy. It’s weird and 100 percent true. Brace yourself because it’s about periods and prayer, but I’ll keep it as PG as possible. Here goes.

The summer after I turned 14, I was scheduled to go to a week-long Christian summer camp in another state where the average temperature was in the high 90s, and the most popular activity was swimming in the creek. But the week before camp started, my period started. It wasn’t the first period I’d endured, and that’s why I knew the timing would be disastrous.

I’d been having periods for about five months by then, and despite what I’d heard from friends in junior high, the period didn’t start and stop within a week. And it never showed up at regular intervals like other people’s well-mannered periods did. Mine was a reckless flash flood that showed up without warning and overstayed its welcome to the point of absurdity.

During that first year, it could last as long as two to three weeks. Even worse, this was no tame trickle. The intensity required frequent trips to the bathroom, and if I waited even five minutes too long, it could soak through my clothes and risk the kind of public humiliation that I was certain would kill me dead, right there on the bloody spot.

But what could I do? I was one week into it, and I knew it wouldn’t stop in time for camp. So I prayed, mostly because I had no other options. I prayed so very hard for a short period. And the day before I was scheduled to leave for camp, it stopped completely. I was stunned and unsure if I could trust it. I packed supplies in case it came roaring back, but it didn’t.

For one glorious week, I ran, swam, and got to be a carefree kid at camp instead of a young woman wrestling with a cranky uterus.

On the long ride home from camp, I thought maybe the period had stopped because my system was finally beginning to regulate into the more predictable cycle that medical pamphlets had promised me. But the next morning — back in the safety of my home — there it was again. It resumed and lasted for one more week. It had never happened like that before and has never happened like that since. It was my first brush with something that felt like a miracle — my own little parting of the Red Sea.

Like many kids who grew up going to church before or during the 70s and 80s, I knew how to pray but didn’t enjoy it. I was taught the rhyming “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer, which traumatized several generations of kids because it included a request to take our souls if we died before breakfast. (Not kidding. You can Google it.) It didn’t make it easy to drift off to sleep afterward.

As I got older, I prayed by borrowing the formal phrases I heard church elders pray aloud on Sunday mornings. And I was always nervous about praying the “right way” because I didn’t want to tick Him off and get kicked out of the God club. For years, praying felt like an internal, repetitive performance that I hoped would please whoever was up there listening.

Looking back on it, I think my first real prayers were diary entries. Writing helped me be honest. It’s not like I was going to mail the thing to God, after all. So I’d write down all the difficult, scary, embarrassing, desperate things in my head without fear of judgment. The process made me feel lighter and more hopeful, just the way prayers often do.

I’m in my 50s now, and there have been times in my life when I’ve prayed a lot and other times when I haven’t prayed much. Like many people, I’ve had dark times when I’ve wondered if any of it is real. But the second I feel doubt, I remember that week when I was an overwhelmed 14-year-old girl who prayed for help and received it  — an unexplained, weeklong pause from puberty.

To this day, I’m certain it was an answered prayer. Perhaps a higher power had been reading between the lines of my turbulent mind all along.    

I’m still not as disciplined or as “good” at prayer as perhaps I should be. But I’m trying not to get too caught up in my head about it. In 2012, the writer Anne Lamott wrote a short book titled “Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers,” and it reminds me that it’s okay to keep things simple. If God knows everything, as I believe He does, He already knows the details behind a plea for help.

Exactly how that help shows up is a different, more complicated thing. The way Anne put it in her book is this: “I try not to finagle God. Some days go better than others, especially during election years. I ask that God’s will be done, and I mostly sort of mean it.” (Me, too, Anne. Me, too.)

The prayers of “thanks” and “wow” deserve their own columns, so I’ll save those for later. In the meantime, here’s a tip from one imperfect prayer to another: No matter the situation, it’s always good and wholly appropriate to simply ask, “Help.”

He’ll take it from there.

​Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her books are available on Amazon.

Click on the name of any of these events for more information.

Botanical Garden of the Ozarks: Terrific Tuesday Nights

Terrific Tuesday Nights are back June through August. The first event will focus on garden games. Lawn games and sidewalk chalk will be provided. Just bring a blanket or lawn chair and enjoy the evening. Free to the community.

Date: Tuesday, July 7, 14, 24

Time: 5-7:30 p.m.

Location: Botanical Garden of the Ozarks, Fayetteville

Priceless Nights at the Amazeum

Wednesday nights at the Amazeum are priceless. You are invited to visit every Wednesday from 4:30 – 7:30 pm to experience our exhibits at no cost or for a small donation.

Dates: Wednesday nights in July

Time: 4:30-7:30 pm.

Location: The Amazeum, Bentonville

Gulley Park Summer Concert Series

The City of Fayetteville is proud to announce the 30th Annual Gulley Park Summer Concert Series, returning this summer with six free Thursday evening concerts at the Gulley Park Gazebo. Lawn chairs spread across the grass. Blankets under the open sky. Food trucks lined up and ready. Dogs on leashes. Neighbors catching up—and often becoming friends somewhere between the first note and the final encore. New dance moves. Familiar faces from our incredible local music scene. This season will celebrate local creativity at the Gulley Park Art Market, held in conjunction with the Gulley Park Concert Series. As a key attraction in Fayetteville, the Art Market showcases an array of artists and makers.

Date: Thursday, July 2 and 9

Time: 7-9 p.m.

Location: Gulley Park Gazebo, Fayetteville

Moulin Rouge! The Musical

Enter a world of splendor and romance, of eye-popping excess, of glitz, grandeur, and glory. A world where bohemians and aristocrats rub elbows and revel in electrifying enchantment. Welcome to Moulin Rouge! The Musical! Baz Luhrmann’s revolutionary film comes to life onstage, remixed in a new musical mash-up extravaganza. Directed by Tony Award® winner Alex Timbers, Moulin Rouge! The Musical is a theatrical celebration of Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and — above all — Love. With a book by Tony Award® winner John Logan; music supervision, orchestrations, and arrangements by Tony Award® winner Justin Levine; and choreography by Tony Award® winner Sonya Tayeh, Moulin Rouge! is more than a musical — it is a state of mind.

Date: July 8-12

Time: Varies

Location: Walton Arts Center, Fayetteville

The Jones Center’s Summer in the City Splash Bash

Splash Bash delivers vintage summer fun. If you summer memories include running through sprinklers on your lawn or devising other ways to cool off, this event is for you. Enjoy inflatable water slides, water balloons, games, and activities, music and dancing in the Jones Center’s backyard – with a special Toddlers Zone for the little ones. Bring your swimsuit and join the fun at this free community block party.

Date: July 11

Time: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Location: The Jones Center, Springdale

Amazeum 11th Birthday Block Party

This Birthday Block Party is a vibrant, interactive celebration of block-themed STEAM play for all ages. Throughout the day, guests will explore a variety of hands-on experiences that reimagine what “blocks” can be—inviting creativity, movement, making, and imagination in all forms. This open-ended celebration encourages guests to build, create, and experiment at their own pace through engaging, exploratory play that blends art, engineering, and discovery. Join the Amazeum to celebrate 11 years of play with a day full of imagination and discovery for the whole community.

Date: Wednesday, July 15

Times: Member Hour: 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
Regular Admission: 10:00 AM – 4:30 PM
Priceless Night (Pay-as-You-Wish): 4:30 PM – 7:30 PM

Location: The Amazeum, Bentonville

House Party at the Momentary

All ages. All free. All in a fun supermarket experience. Featuring artist Lucy Sparrow, this Super Party blends retro-inspired activities, felt-based artmaking, food-centered engagement, and music-driven energy. Additional activities will connect to the work of Chuck Ramirez in Ordinary Wonders expanding the exhibition’s exploration of consumer-culture, food, and memory.​​ Make your own felt shopping buddy inspired by Lucy Sparrow: The Beginning of Convenience  roller skate outside with DJ-ed 80s and 90s hits and enjoy a concert with Arnie Brenn. Plus, explore The Beginning of Convenience along with artist Lucy Sparrow.

Date: July 18

Time: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Location: The Momentary, Bentonville