I was just lying on our couch in our family room on Sunday afternoon.  We had just returned home from having brunch with some friends and both my husband and our son were napping upstairs.  The breeze coming in through the downstairs windows was especially warm and I could hear one of our neighbors cutting their grass nearby.  Our cat was stretched out in a sunbeam along the floor and you could smell the last days of summer in the air.

I must have fallen asleep for a little while because when I woke up, the movie I had been watching was over and the Little League World Series was being aired instead.  After a much needed stretch and waking up a bit, I continued to watch all of the little {and some not so little!} ten and eleven year olds run the bases and I actually found myself laughing out loud! But my laughter had less to do with the baseball game and more to do with remembering where I was the last time I watched this very same thing on tv…

It was August 27^th, 2009 and my husband and I had woken up here, in one of the most beautiful hotels in all of Italy.  We had taken a well-deserved vacation to Europe for ten days where we had been spending most of our time in Rome.   But since our anniversary was coming up, we splurged on an overnight trip to Florence.  Like the rest of Italy at that time of year…it was hot!  I mean, really, really hot!  I was in the tail end of my first trimester of being pregnant with Hudson and the heat was turning my morning sickness into all day sickness {note to self: schedule next trip to Europe for when you can actually enjoy the wine!}!  So on the morning of our anniversary, as we slowly woke up in the most decadent of king sized beds, we turned on the television, only to find channel after channel of Italian shows…except for one…ESPN!  And it happened to be showing the Little League World Series, which was more than good enough for us!  With the scorching sun beaming down on all of Florence, we just stayed in our air-conditioned room, curled up in our giant bed, breakfast in hand, and watched three games of the most delightful baseball!  It was heaven!  And still makes me laugh to this day!

Two nights later, we arrived back in Canada to a cool autumn air that changed seemingly overnight!  It was raining harder than it had in months and as we drove from the airport to our home in the middle of the night…I think that both Steve and I knew that things would never really be the same; that in a short while, a little person was going to enter our life and make everything different…make everything more beautiful.

Three days after we arrived home, exactly one year ago today, we saw our son for the first time on an ultrasound.  Our fifteen minute appointment ended up taking over two hours because our little man didn’t want to sit still long enough to let the technician get the measurements that she needed.  So for two blissful hours, we got to see our baby…see his little heart beating and watch his little body moving.

It was one of the best days of my life!  And I love how baseball will forever remind me of it…{and these will remind me of what our son was like a year later!}…