Family is so important...

OK...so it's 2am (oopppsss...2:30am) and I'm up. I can't sleep. Mark is out of town tonight and I don't sleep well if he's not here. I guess I feel more safe when he's here. The same thing happened last week when he was in Eau Claire for training and let Thrivent put him up in a hotel for one night. So tomorrow night he'll be home and I'll be able to sleep. In the meantime, this will be short because I have a Dr. appt. at 8:10 in the morning. That means, if I'm lucky, I'll get just under 4 hours of sleep. I'M EXHAUSTED...

but since I'm up, I want to tell you some more about my family. Of course you know how wonderful my husband and my daughter are. They are my world. But ranking pretty closely to them are my Mom who is an incredible woman of God...always so patient with me. She and my Dad should have kicked me out of the house a number of times while I was a teenager. Unconditional love at it's best human example. My Dad died in 2000. That was hard. He had been really sick for a really long time though, so he's been healthy and whole, living in heaven for just over 7 years already. My sister Jo (married to Mike and Mom to Barry and Shane) is the best big sister one could have. She's so kind and loving and caring and quiet....things I'm not. Then there's my big brother Geno (married to Tammy and the Daddy to two Golden Retrievers...Wrigley and Katie). Let's just say that while we were growing up we didn't get along the best (thank God for protective big sisters), but now we're tight. He's so loving and kind and sweet. Man I miss him!! I haven't seen him for a really long time. And then there's Ali Rae (married to John and Mom to Andrew, Sophie and Jack)...my baby sister. She's an incredibley gifted hair dresser (a talent I definitely DON'T have) and has been through a lot in her life. She's a really strong woman and I'm proud of her. I'm proud of ALL my siblings...and my Mom and Dad, too. I'm way too tired to get ALL their pictures on this site tonight, but since I have already put a picture of Jack (my youngest nephew...just 3 months younger than Hope) on this site, I thought I'd work my way up to my next youngest niece/nephew. Sophie is almost 6 already and is almost done with Kindergarten. She's something else. Very dramatic and funny...and really bright. Her music teacher loves how she sings in her opera voice. Andrew (I always call him my baby because I was in the delivery room with my sister when he was born and spent a lot of time with him the summer he was born) is almost 18 and will graduate from high school in just under a month. I'm going to cry my eyes out when I see him graduate. I'm so very proud of him. He's such a great kid and so talented. He took after his Aunt Mel and was the Student Body president of his high school his senior year. Pretty cool, huh?? He's got tons of friends, was on prom court last year, is an AWESOME baseball player, is smart and very handsome. Andrew goes into the Air Force on Sept 11 (symbolic??) and I'm very proud of the decision he's made. Yeh, I'm scared as hell to think that he might someday be sent to Iraq. Hopefully this mess will be done by that time.

Anyway...here are some pics of Sophie and Andrew. In the very near future I'll post pics of my other nephews (Barry and Shane). After that I'll get to my sibs! Mark's family is after that. Everyone will get their "15 minutes of fame" on our blog.

Night night!

OK...so I don't know how long ago this was taken...maybe 3 years ago or so...but Andrew is pitching.


Is he cute or what?? This is one of his Sr. pics


Bathing beauties: Sophie and Hope (this was a while ago...Hope didn't have much hair then)


OK...so this picture is a little old (BH...before Hope), but it's one of my favorites of Andrew, Sophie and me. They were visiting us and this picture was taken at a German Restaurant. YUM!