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If you visited my ‘Going To the Chapel‘ page…
I told you there was a ‘happily ever after’ and here it is…
They say a picture is worth a thousand words so I guess this section’s pages will have the equivalent of a billion words… HOWEVER, I am waaaaaaaaaaay behind on this page…
My goal was to be chronological but I have hundreds and hundreds of pictures – many I’m not sure of the exact year and every time I start to work on this page I hit that hurdle and get side tracked.
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In the meantime… As I’m writing this in June 2018, Selena is about to graduate and will turn 18 at the end of the month. She chose to have her graduation and birthday parties combined and early (2nd week of June) so as not to conflict with the parties of kids she wanted to invite. She wanted a Mardi Gras theme and between family and friends bringing food and beverages and the tasty Cajun cuisine we ordered from Nanola the party was a huge success!!
One of my duties in the weeks leading up to it was to put together a slideshow we could loop throughout the day… I spent weeks putting it together and finding what I thought was just the right music and converting old VHS-C videos to digital so I could include them… by the time I was finished it was about 90 minutes long!! Great for a loop – not so great if you really wanted to watch it… If you’re in the latter group and have some time to kill, click the image at left and kick back for a little retrospective… 🙂
I suppose a little background is in order…
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Julie and I met back when I worked the front desk of the local YMCA (minimum ‘rage’ and all the pride I could swallow)… We started dating on August 14, 1993 when I invited her on a trip to East Providence, RI… I was on the writing and teaching staff as well as a marching member of the Capital Brass Sr. Drum & Bugle Corps out of Albany, NY and thought she might like to ‘get away’ so I brought her along on the long bus ride but I’m sure she had no idea what it was all about…
We arrived at the rehearsal site early in the morning but by mid morning it was already sweltering. By mid-afternoon it was well over 100 in the shade (and we were in the sun)!! Thank goodness for the ice cream truck that happened to roll by at which point I gave the drumline a well deserved break and treated them all to ice pops and popsicles.
Julie kept an eye on some other member’s kids (she’s always been great with kids) so the adults could try to focus on practice in the extreme heat. A couple run-throughs, cold showers, a light bite then off to the stadium to get dressed and warm up. The corps placed 5th that night behind the Caballeros, Crusaders, Hurricanes and Les Metropolitains but Julie came in first in my heart and 11 years later – TO THE DAY (August 14, 2004) – we were married!! Over those 11 years we dated off and on… Selena was born in June of 2000 – 6 weeks premature… FULL DISCLOSURE… I am not Selena’s biological father – he made a baby then made tracks and wasn’t heard from again for years!!
But I can still remember the day she was born… I was working for a small computer shop in South Glens Falls at the time and Julie was in the hospital because of some severe pains she’d been having unrelated to the pregnancy (later diagnosed as Endometriosis) and they had decided to induce labor. I ran over on my lunch break to see how she was doing… as she lay in bed, she took my hand… AND HER WATER BROKE!! That’s it for me – I’m outta here!! You’ve been great!!
Being a ‘preemie’, Selena had a rather lengthy hospital stay before she finally came home but she had me wrapped around her finger from day one… and still does!!
She was so tiny I always called her my little ‘peanut’ – look at the size of her – probably about 3 months old in the picture at left…
Of course my Mom was thrilled to have a grandbaby at last – something I’m sure SHE was beginning to wonder would ever happen… The scene at right would become a common one – Selena loves her ‘Nana’, Mom loves Selena and Selena loves to EAT’!!
That eating would turn out to be at the root of some serious health issues she’d develop…
Every so often she would get a raging fever – hot to the touch even – and couldn’t keep water down let alone any food!! Then she’d get all dehydrated and end up back in the hospital with an IV… this went on and off for years before her pediatrician finally decided to test for food allergies and it turned out she was severely allergic to dairy (and a host of other things but dairy was the worst) – she couldn’t even come in contact with any one or any thing that had come in contact with a dairy product!! We ended up carrying Epi pens and it was a nerve-racking time to say the least. It took a while – several years in fact – but fortunately she outgrew most of them – especially the dairy – and has been making up for lost time ever since!!
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I do have some other family too…
I already mentioned my Mom… she turned 88 in June of 2020 and we would usually be preparing for her ‘summer tour’!! She loves music so attending as many summer concerts as possible (and sampling their food offerings) has become the norm – whether I’m playing or not.
But a hip replacement in February, COVID and some really bad information given to her at the Pines where she went for rehab which prompted her to give away her clothes and furniture, give up her car, her apartment and her independence has combined to essentially make her a prisoner… as of October of 2020 I haven’t seen her since the first week of March and there’s sadly no sign of that changing… and that hip was never an issue…
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My brother Larry is an accomplished bagpiper…
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Larry and his wife Terri both retired from the Warren County Sheriff’s Department in 2019…
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We have a half-sister Cheryl who lives in MA with her husband Carl…
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Our Dad passed away in 1986 after a lengthy battle with Diabetes and bleeding ulcers that eventually took part of his leg and much of his eyesight…
He graduated from Greenwich Central School in Upstate NY in 1936…
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He played on the baseball team…
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And was a member of the school band (pictured below behind the snare drum)…
In a strange twist of fate, some 69 years later (2005), I was hired as the district’s Micro Computer Specialist… my office is in the building where he went to school and I walk across that very stage almost daily… his diploma is in a frame on my wall… 🙂
Enough of my yammering – let’s see some more pictures!!
Please click the sub-menu headings under ‘We Are Family’ to jump to a specific year… Enjoy!!