Bootsie

Thanksgiving was wonderful, too much eating of course but a great time with family. I am so blessed to be coming into Trevor's amazing family. I have never had a sister so to be getting multiple is exciting!! Our families are very different. Being involved in his family has been a great experience and I have really learned from it. When you grow up with two parents and just one brother, life is a lot different then growing up with two sets of parents and 9 brothers and sisters!!! But I love them all and I am so lucky:)

We spent Thanksgiving night with my dad's parents and my great-grandmother Bootsie. She is going to be 100 in January. 100. Wow. She has lived such an amazing yet simple and fulfilling life. Her parents immigrated here from Milan Italy and raised her and two siblings. She married Edwin, and raised three children. Their life was simple growing up on Chorro street but she raised the best grandmother a girl could ask for. I have learned so much about life from her. She says "I have lived a good life, seeing my children, grand children and great grandchildren grow. My Edwin has been wating for me for twenty five years and I am ready to go see him." And it breaks my heart. The kind of love she still, and always has, had for her husband. I only hope I can love Trevor with that unconditional and everlasting love. I know I can but sometimes it is difficult.

Mary has definitely taught me that life is too important to sweat the small stuff. Each day is a gift. Take full advantage of the days you are given because you never know when it will be taken from you. I have asked her many times how she lived such a fulfilling life and she says the same thing every time, "Just live. Be happy. There will always be peaks and valleys in life. It is never perfect or the way you imagined. Make the best of what God has given to you, he gave it to YOU for a reason." She is the best woman I have met in my life.

We call her Bootsie because she always called my brother and I 'her little Bootsies.'