40 years ago today...is a day that changed our lives like nothing ever did before...!

We became parents!
And anyone who has a child knows that life can change for the better with that major event created from love.
Yes, Hubby and I were very young, and still we did it the old fashioned way, since we were married for over fifteen and a half months by the day that our bundle of joy arrived, a boy!
And that dear sweet child was the spitting image of his daddy by the time he was a few months’ old, big brown eyes and toe-head blond hair. I had been given a picture of Hubby at eight months of age and it was uncanny the resemblance!
Love is so wonderful when it becomes unconditional.
And thankfully to this day that man, our son, has proven his mutual love for us, what a guy!
Like father like son.

Our eldest child did everything by the book as if it was written for him by him, rolling over, sitting standing walking and talking, all as if he was in collaboration with Dr. Spock.
He was a very happy child, always smiling and affectionate, and curious when we would go for our stroller rides along the bicycle path behind our condo, later on we would go with him on the back baby seat of our bicycles and long rides to parks in the area, twenty-one mile round trips.
As a toddler he was enrolled in Montessori preschool for two years prior to his brother coming along.
While a student he was tested and beyond his years mechanically on the I.Q. test he came away with a 145 plus score!
He got along well with other children and played well with them and always had many friends, which has continued into adulthood.
He played a few sports: soccer, surfing, swimming, beach volley ball, and water skiing, and SCUBA; he played the piano, and the guitar and he would play pool as a teen on our own pool table with his brother later on in our game-room. Camping, boating and fishing and crabbing were all family initiatives and we all got to go to places via reasonable camping locales, wherever we went, it was for the love of the out-of-doors and on rainy days we would go into museums.
In the summers we would join the library programs for the kiddy story telling, when he was small. And he swam from the age of three with lessons at the pool at our condo, it was actually funny since the life guard who taught the class had to chase him around the pool to get him to jump off of the diving board in the deep end with the other students, he was frightened but finally jumped off the board and swam to the ladder and then went back several times with joy, full giggles, doing it again and again…and later on he continued his lessons with his baby brother at the Y when his brother took water baby classes with me in the water. He was very young when he received his SCUBA certification, only thirteen. In high school in his senior year he did do dual enrollment with the local college for electronics and he received an A!
He went to college for an AA degree, and he made the Dean’s List, he was more capable, but it was his choice not ours and he worked for Nissan as a certified mechanic for several years, then, Sears, and for the last several years, fourteen, for Busch Gardens as maintenance mechanic for the amusement park rides.
It is dangerous work, with a lot of responsibility.

He has had many loves in his life, actually, three that were serious and long term.
As a man he is complex but loving and giving, the strong silent type, and the kind of guy that has your back and is very dependable. He was right here with a bunch of friends for us right after Hurricane Charley destroyed our home back in 2004!
I used to tease him when he was just a teen that if he wasn’t my son he would be a great best friend, since no matter what, he was there for you. He showed that with all of his friends as well. In recent years he has been a Red Cross blood donor that is so wonderful, he has given quite a bit… but to be fair I only know it has been a few years that he has been doing that, but not the quantity.
And so in closing in the gushing of the thoughts of our first born who is on vacation with his sweetie and we called already this morning to wish him a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I always remember it took him twenty-nine and half hours to finally arrive and Hubby and I played cards while in the labor room. Since the contractions were very regular they couldn’t send us home…I went in on a Monday night after we drove my MIL to the airport for her trip to Europe, and he was born on Wednesday morning at 7:48 A.M.! BIGGEST TA DA!
But he was a little guy of only five pounds twelve ounces and nineteen inches long, but tripled his weight by eight months old! The pediatrician yelled at me, since babies are supposed to do that by a year old…oops! Although, he was never ever a fat child, way too active, just right, but balanced with being taught computers in kindergarten in our NJ school systems. And by the time he was ten we had our own and he taught us how to use it. Over the years he has built his own computers, and he is our own private knowledgeable person/go to guy, for any purchases that we have made over the years in the technology realm.

I see that my little display of mother-gushing is over a thousand words… but there is so much more I know that I forgot… but he is the man we hoped that he would become and that is a decent caring capable independent human being who is concerned for others and the world around him.

Thanks son, for being you…

Love Mom and Dad

On that note of note, allow me to be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and ask you to kindly count all your blessings and share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?