A Dream Come True

For many years Joseph and his dad planned to visit every Major League Baseball Ball Park (that's a mouth full).  They drew maps and talked about the details, but sadly it never happened.  Vince passed away two years ago and Joseph's desire to visit the ballparks became stronger.  He talked about it for days...how he wanted to go watch the Braves Opening Game.  He's been to the opening home game many times, but never the first "official" opening game.  He also wanted to start his adventure of marking off ball parks.  During an Apples of Gold bible study about loving our husbands, Julie challenged us to participate in things our husbands enjoyed to do.  Well this was my chance.  I am not a big fan of road trips, but everything fell into place and off we went to watch the Nationals and the Braves in Washington DC at Nationals Stadium.  I fell in love and I know God placed this new desire in my heart to travel all over the country with my husband visiting ball parks.  Of course with three kids we will have to do it slowly, but when they are a little bit older, absolutely they will come with us.

Joseph was overjoyed!  But as we traveled this trip became more special.  It brought back so many memories of Vince.  Memories of all of us going to the Braves game, going over to his house or him to ours and sitting down watching the braves game.  Remembering how excited he was to get Josiah a baseball bat with his name carved into the bat.  We didn't realize how emotional this trip would be, but it was.  It was almost like Vince was with us because absolutely without a doubt if he was alive he would have been in the back seat coming with us.  Joseph's childhood is filled with memories of Braves games with his dad.  As soon as I realized that I understood his love for the game.  And now that Vince is gone the love is stronger because it's something that still connects him to his dad.

We had an amazing time.  The road trip could not have been smoother except for our first night when Joseph decided to eat a bag of sunflower seeds, a couple of Diet Mountain Dews and a 5 hour energy drink!  Talk about an upset tummy.  I was worried we were going to have to turn back, but no way was this going to stop my man ha!  We prayed, went to bed and thank God he was a new man in the morning.  We arrived in D.C Thursday morning, pulled up to the first parking place we saw and the guy charged us $40 to park!  Seriously!!!  We were going to keep looking, but didn't want to get lost and Joseph was blowing up in excitement to get into the park... so we paid and parked.

Walking up to the stadium... My husband was so giddy!

The Presidents

Nationals Park

*More posts to come*