It Started with Camping

Turning lemons into lemonade. Polishing rocks into diamonds.

15 stars!! Please write more. Jim and Kim acted like a married couple even before the wedding...

Your story touched my heart with sympathy, understanding, family togetherness, and most of all Love.

As a stepchild growing up with a stepsister and having a stepfather, I relate quite well. However, our internal relationship wasn’t always as idyllic as your story, but very relatable.

Also my name really is Steven, or Stephen as dad sometimes liked to call me.

Wonderful story that should touch a lot of broken families and most importantly, all the kids that need love!

Nice! Gave it a five, but thing it is 4.5-4.6 quality.

Thanks Dave!

Since it has been a while since It has been published. I have digested the comments.

Thanks for giving me a name to what Uncle Charlie was doing in my story, deus ex machina.

I am stilling to try to create the reasons for why my characters, Why they are at the place they are at.

Using Philip Van Doren Stern's "The Greatest Gift" short story (known as "It's a Wonderful Life" in Hollywood) there has to be some heartache and trauma to get a story to its conclusion.

At least no one said, 'I use a lot of clichés except I didn't say anything about lasagna?!?!?' like in one of my other stories I would really like to know what the cliché for lasagna is, since I love Italian food.

Thank you all for your input.

OD51

Nice love story. Keep writing and sharing your talent please.

Cheers

SAGE

Awesome love story. You should be proud of your work.

A nice _romance_. As Demosthenes384bc put it, it's pretty "Hallmark-y," but still pleasant.

I did wonder about a first-year middle-school teacher being able to afford a $75,000 truck and a three-bedroom house at $250,000 or more. Uncle Charlie solved that, but it was just a deus ex machina, not a genuine plot-point.

Fantastic story.

Little bit too much "Hallmark-y", but after reading some of the LW stories I come over here for just this kind of story. Some gaps in depth in some areas, but otherwise great read. 4.7*

Life has a way of really sucking sometimes, yet through it all, Good can be found, it just needs to be looked for. Sometimes it finds you when you least expect it to.

Ending with the line about wearing out beds? Really? Sort of a lame ending to a decent story. Delete that sentence, and the story is immediately 20% better.

that's a lot of death and destruction to set up a story

A wonderful story, thank you. Keep on writing, please!

Delightful story with great characters. Out of heartache and trauma comes a wonderful love and life together.