October 22: A Red-Letter Date

My oldest son was born yesterday.

I'm sorry; that was misleading.  He wasn't born yesterday in the literal sense (and I didn't mean to imply that he's a gullible naif, either); he was born on yesterday's date...thirty years ago. 

That's right: the little newborn peanut sleeping peacefully on his exhausted mama's chest in the above grainy, pre-digital-age snapshot is now a thirty-year-old husband and father to three daughters of his own.  Have thirty years really passed since 1983?  It truly seems like only yesterday.  And no matter how old he gets, there will always be a part of me that sees him as that newborn baby boy who first made me a mother and changed my life, in every possible way, for the better.

My husband and I went out to Notre Dame last weekend for the ND v. USC game, and afterward we flew with our youngest son (who is a junior there and has his fall break this week) out to CO to spend some time with our firstborn, his lovely wife, and our three beloved granddaughters.  (As they would say, "We love them BI-I-I-S much!")  And then we're going to catch the ND v. Air Force game this coming Saturday, since the AF Academy is conveniently located right around the corner from our son's home.  Back-to-back Notre Dame football games, with a week of Papa and Grammy bliss sandwiched in-between: it doesn't get much better than that!

En route to CO on Sunday, we encountered some problems getting out of Indianapolis, where we'd driven after our ND weekend to meet up with our #4 son, who was stopping at an Army base there to take care of a bit of admin on his way back from his six-month deployment in Afghanistan.  We had dinner with him Sunday night and he shared a hotel room with us, and then we parted Monday morning because we were flying west to CO and he was flying back down to his home in VA.  But we always fly stand-by (which you know if you visit here often), and every flight out of Indianapolis was overbooked for most of the day.  (Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos had just been in town to play Manning's old team, the Colts--which may have had something to do with it!)  So we got stuck and couldn't get a flight out until after 7:00 p.m.  But then we heard from our returning hero, and his first flight was delayed until about 7:00 p.m. as well, so we were able to meet up with him again and spend the whole day hanging out with him in the Indianapolis airport, which was a bonus.  I'm convinced that our delay on Monday was all in God's plan, so that we could spend some extra time visiting with our fourth son.

We finally made it to Detroit, and then caught a late flight to Minn-St. Paul, where we spent the night.  Then yesterday morning we flew to Denver, got a rental car, and drove the rest of the way to CO Springs.  Phew!  Mission accomplished.  (Every trip these days feels like that Steve Martin-John Candy movie "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles"!)

I meant to blog yesterday, in honor of the birthday boy, but I was just completely wiped out from all that jet-setting.  So I thought I'd honor him today, and while I'm at it tell you that my husband's older sister (who happens to be the godmother of our oldest son) became a grandmother for the first time yesterday.  Her firstborn, a daughter who was named after me, gave birth to a baby girl--on the very same date that I gave birth to my first child oh-so-many years ago.  My husband commented on how special it was that the two Laura's became new mothers on October 22, albeit three decades apart.  This niece was also born on a special date in the history of my love story with my husband: she was born on the anniversary of "Will you go with me?"--which I blogged about once before, if you're at all interested in checking that out.   And best of all, our niece and her husband named the baby after her beloved grandmother, my husband's late mother.  Needless to say, the whole Pearl family was touched and teary-eyed hearing that this sweet newborn baby girl would have the honor of sharing a name with Grandma--a woman responsible for rearing a pretty incredible string of Pearls who have all kept their Catholic Faith and gone on to have large and loving families of their own.

There are so many blessings abounding in our family these days, especially when it comes to our children and their cousins.  There's so much to be proud of, so much to be happy about.  Birthdays, weddings, engagements, career successes, military accomplishments, new babies...I said it the other day, but I'll say it again:

I usually try to link up with Jessica over at Housewifespice for What We're Reading Wednesday, but all I've been reading today is Goodnight Moon and Sandra Boynton board books (not that those aren't terrific in their own way!).  Maybe I'll join the link-up again next week.  But for now, I must go--the twins will be awake soon, and then it's play time!