Just Start Typing...

I called my daughter today to ask for some advice on how to start a blog and she told me to "Just start typing..."




...so I'm typing.


I had this great idea to create a blog to document our trip to Italy. So I set it up (correctly...I THINK) and here I am, sitting in front of my computer...typing...just as my daughter instructed. Please let me know if I'm doing this wrong.



First, some rules. I am not a writer or journalist, nor do I pretend to be. Please do not post comments concerning: Punctuation, spelling, grammer. If I want to end my sentence with a prepositional phrase, I will. If you feel the need to post mean comments, stop reading and leave. Go to the blogosphere somewhere and get lost. Ok, I think I am ready.

I am going to start with the title and what it means to me, we hear this saying many times in our lives, as in now preparing for this trip, and when people say it I want to respond yes......because I deserve it, I don't, but I want to. No one really understands how much dedication, and hard work that it took both of us to get to this point in our lives, My daughter says I should write a book, if I were to write a book about our life together the title would be "It must be nice." So, I guess this can be my book......Here you go Christi.

I would start it this way. Fall of 2000 driving up to Minnesota taking our first born to college, I think that Christi and I fought basically the whole way up there. We helped her unpack, met her roommates, filled her fridge with as much food as possible and said our goodbys. And as we stood in the hallway and she closed the door I saw a six year old blond girl with pink upside down glasses and a pony tail to the side of her head, slowly closing the door. Michael looked at me as if he saw the same thing and all I could do was say stop, I can't cry. The 5 hour drive home was spent just looking out the window and realizing how fast the time has gone as how much of that time Christi spent with us while we grew up along with her.

Michael was 16 and I was 17 when we met on January 17, 1981. I graduated from high school early because I had enough credits and I just wanted to get the heck out of high school. I was starting a full time job with the government the next day, but a friend of mine was having a graduation party that night and of course I had to go. Back then the drinking age was 18 (oops, I guess I wasn't old enough to drink) so every senior within 20 mile radius was going to be at this party and I could not resist going.

Michael was a junior in high school and part of a big rock band. Everyone knew who they were (at least at Burlington High School) and I only knew him as Micki's brother. I was very good friends with his sister during high school, so she would always talk about her "brothers band." Anyway, he walked in with his twin brother David and a group of girls surrounded both of them as they entered the door. My friend April and I just looked at them and said, "Lets go up and grab Michael and David and pretend that they are our boyfriends." so we did, and it began....

In October of 1981 I found out that I was pregnant with Christi. Wow, I so did not expect that. I was 9 months into a new job, Michael was a senior in high school and we had to tell our parents.....I think that was the worst, telling our parents. My mom was acutally with me the day I found out, because she took me to the doctor thinking I had the flu for 3 months, because I was throwing up constantly. The doctor asked "Is it possible you are pregnant?" UMMMMMM, well I am on the pill, but sometimes I forget to take it. When they sent me down for the test, the technician gave me the results and told me not to look at them until I gave them to the doctor. Of course I looked at them and it seem like the word "positive" filled the page. That is all I saw was POSITIVE. I handed over the results to the doctor and she confirmed it and my mom just sat there...Then she said "wow, I guess I'm going to be a grandma"

Now, this next is a touchy subject....again I want no responses from anyone about what I am going to say. I had a decision to make was I going to give my baby up for adoption, have a abortion or keep the baby. Don't forget Michael was 16 years old. The reason I chose to keep the baby was two actually. One was my moms comment, for some reason that just kept playing over and over in my head, and the other was the doctor who told me my only two options was: Abortion or adoption. She told me I couldn't keep it, I wouldn't be able to take care of it. So it was spite, I was going to prove to everyone that I could do this, and I wanted to make my mom a grandma.

Christi was born on May 18, 1982. She was 6lbs 5 oz, she was 6 weeks early, was in a incubator for one week. When I had her, I could not even hold her because she was not breathing. She was immediately taken out of the room, worked on, and put in a incubator. All I could do was touch her through those plastic gloves attached to a glass wall. Needless to say two weeks later, she got out of the hospital just in time for her dads high school graduation.

We moved to Parkside in the fall of 1982 because Michael was starting college at UW Parkside in the pre-med program. We lived in a one bedroom upstaires flat with no heat except a huge space heater that would turn on at 5:00am so that it could be warm by the time we all woke up. Michael, myself and Christi slept in a twin bed, we had no tv the first few years, couldn't afford one. We ate cocoa wheats for breakfast, lunch and dinner because that was all we could afford. I had to use the money we had left over for diapers, formula, and food for Christi. It was our life, it was hard, but we were so young, we just did it.

We got married on June 23, 1984 and I think almost everyone who attended had bets on how long this marriage would work.. How could it? We have a 2 year old daughter who by the way was at her dads high school graduation, her own baby shower (because she was premature) and now her parents wedding, we had no money, had to open up our wedding cards to pay for our DJ and...... Michael is in a band.

After 4 years at Parkside, Michael decided to change his degree from Orthopedics to Chiropractic. He always wanted to be a medical doctor, but he said he just couldn't go on 8 more years of college with kids. I don't think he ever regrets his decision to be a chiropractor, he has done very well, but he gave up a dream, and sometimes that makes me sad. Needless to say he moved to Davenport Iowa in January of 1986 to attend Palmer College of Chiropractic. I did not move with him because, yeah, I was pregnant with my second born, Mikey. I wanted to stay in Burlington to deliver him so I wouldn't have to find a new doctor in Iowa.

Mikey was born, February 21, 1986, Michael drove home from Iowa in a snow storm, it took him 8 hours to drive to Burlington, he had on two coats, a long one that he wore with his suits and a ski jacket...Why? I have no idea, but when I saw him, I was so happy to see him I didn't care. I do need to ask him why? I think he was just so nervous. Anyway Mikey was 8lbs 151/2 oz, and a boy. I so wanted Christi to be a boy but now I have a son, and a fat one, and a boy that in the years ahead would give me all my gray hair. Six weeks later Christi, Myself and Mikey all moved to Iowa. Could we of made this journey of our lives any harder? Two kids by the time I was 21, Michael is in graduate school and I am working three jobs just to survive. I don't know how we did it. I worked M-F at a full time job during the day, at night I worked at Chi Chi's as a cocktail waitress, and on the weekends I worked in the mens department at Sears. On my nights off, Michael would work at Domino's delivering pizzas and reading his homework assignments while driving. He got held up by gunpoint and knife two many times to count, just for pizza delivery money. We had a system, he took care of Mikey every morning, I took care of Christi. Girls need their hair done, etc, etc.

We could not of survived in Iowa if it wasn't for my sister, Linda. She drove down every Wednesday to babysit my kids because that was the only day we could not come up with a sitter and both Michael and I worked day and night. Yeah, her boyfriend at the time who is now her husband was going to Palmer as well, but I knew that she would always be there on Wednesdays, and she was. I don't think I every thanked her for this, so here you go Linda. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Michael graduated Palmer in 1989, we moved back to Burlington and now it's 20 years later, wow. Christi is 27 and Mikey is 23. I'm so sorry, but I can't stop calling him that, he's my 'Mikey" or Chipmunk. I gave him that nickname because he use to laugh just like Alvin from the Chipmunks...But you know what? I wouldn't change one thing, not one. OMG we made mistakes as parents, but we all grew up together, I think we have a awesome relationship with my favorite daughter and favorite son....Who by the way each tell me I like the other one better. And I have a husband who is my best friend. When something good happens, he's the first person I call, when I need to cry his shoulder is always there and when I need a hug, his arms are always around me. I don't ever get sick of waking up by him every morning or going to sleep holding his hand every night.

I am so looking forward to spending time with him on this trip. We never had a honeymoon, got married on Saturday, went back to work on Monday. This is it, this is our dream, we have been planning this trip and saving for this trip for 10 years. And I want to document every moment and if no one reads it, that's ok. But if you do, please enjoy.

Talk to you in Italy.........