Flashback Friday

Well, it's Friday again (hooray!!!) and it's going to be a busy day. We had a doctor's appt for Livie this morning - just to check on her speech progress. I told the doc that she's doing great! I said if she can name all the Star Wars characters, then by our standards, she's perfect. :-) Then we had to do some birthday shopping for some friends who are celebrating their 1st and 3rd birthdays tomorrow. And, we stopped by and picked up some great clearance clothes at Farm and Fleet for the kids. Now, I'm off to clean the house before Pete's parents get here and we take them out to dinner for their 35th wedding anniversary. They're going with us tonight to see Madie perform in her Pom-Pom performance, before heading up to Pete's sister's house. ANYWAY, thought I'd pop on here and do my "Flashback Friday" entry - want to again mention I got this idea from our friend Kristen who does it on her blog. The picture above was taken a few months after our wedding back in 1999. We lived in NY our first year of marriage and it just so happens that that same year my sister started at Word of Life and Micah was in his 3rd year there. So, all of us kids were within an hour of each other. Fun, huh?! Well, mom had her stroke actually THE DAY we left for NY. It was awful having to leave and not know what was happening to her. One of the hardest things I ever had to do was leave. Really tested the whole "leave your family and cleave to your husband" thing. But, a few months after her stroke, dad brought Em out to school and he stopped at our place to spend the night. Before he headed back home, we decided to take him to Cooperstown to the Baseball Hall of Fame, which was only about an hour from us. He had been there once before with mom when they brought Micah out to WoL that first year, I believe. But, mom wasn't nearly as interested in the place as dad was. But, she humored him. :-) He was super excited to know Pete was going to be there. Way more excited than knowing I, his beloved daughter, was there. You see, once Pete became a part of our family, they've liked him WAY more. They think Pete's just the best and somewhere, down the line, I'm in there too. Like 12th on the list, maybe 15th. But, Pete's up there - top five easily. I mean, he golfs, like the Cubs, likes the Bears, and he's republican. Really don't have any other criteria other than those things if you want to get in good with my dad. :-) So, we spent the day there, seeing all the great stuff they had displayed. Dad telling us the history of everything we ever wanted to know (and didn't). I remember one of the highlights was seeing Harry Carey's glasses on display. He was the announcer for the Cubs for years and years. So, that was pretty cool. It was a fun day and one of the many trips we took that first year we were married - ya know, back before we had kids and couldn't go to Walmart, let alone a museum!! That's us standing in front of a picture of Ty Cobb. Aren't you impressed that I know that?! Of course, when you start sorting baseball cards at the age of 1 and get woken up in the middle of the night to celebrate Kirk Gibson's homerun when you're 10, then you have to be up on your baseball info!!