For the past three years I have had the pleasure of writing columns for the Fort Mill Times about my experience in our area as a west coast transplant. I want to thank my editor, Michael Harrison, for giving me this opportunity and you, the readers, for reading my column.

I have noticed since moving to Fort Mill in 2009 that solicitation within communities is pretty high. We had the odd person out in Seattle, but nothing like this, and certainly not as many religious groups.

I am writing this column on Dec. 14, 2012, but it will not be published for a few more weeks, so I apologize if reading this opens new wounds that began to heal after watching the news today.

As a follow up to my last column, about “giving thanks,” I would like to address the question, “How much is too much?” The gift giving season is here and no matter what celebration you participate in, gift giving will be involved.

November is a time when we start to really get into the holiday spirit. We think of family and friends and all the things in our lives that we are thankful for. People (me being one of them) fill their Facebook statuses with words of thanks towards people, places and things and random acts of kindness are encouraged.

Remember my last column? About how putting my “baby” on the bus was more traumatic for me than I thought it would be? Yeah, I got over that really quick.

You know, being Mom is hard.

Recently, I have noticed an uptake in the amount of runners that I see along the side of the road while I’m driving the kids to various activities (or myself to the Starbuck’s drive thru). I must admit, I was starting to feel like I was missing out, so I signed up for a half marathon and joined a local running group called Liquid Awesome.

When we lived in Seattle, we had the benefit of no bugs or humidity during the summer. Of course, “summer” was a relative term out there, since it did not get above 85 most days and those temps lasted about two weeks.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.