Marie & Anthony

I’m happy to be home! Last week was my annual business to Orlando for the Global Pet Expo, which was interesting. I don’t love to fly, but the flights were great. I got to fly on the New York Jets’ official airplane, and my nephew, 6, was excited to hear about it.

The tradeshow was business as usual—a lot of work with minimal downtime. The real excitement happened to me personally. On the second night, my room flooded while preparing for a business dinner. Water was coming out of the toilet for no reason; suddenly, I heard water flowing, and in 10 minutes, it went into the hallway. Of course, I had to switch rooms, and I missed dinner. Later that night, someone tried to enter my room while I was sleeping at 2:30 am; thank goodness I locked the safety lock. Unfortunately, the front desk forgot to “hit save” when I switched rooms and gave a key to a new guest when they checked in at 2:30 am. As you can imagine, being woken up by someone trying to get into the room was quite terrifying. I worked everything out with the front desk the following day.

The highlight of the trip was getting to spend time at Disney Springs. Where I got dinner at one of my favorite restaurants and went shopping, I could not wait to get home to see Anthony and my pups, and I missed them so much when I was away.

We have so many amazing women in our lives. Both our moms are amazing people, and they have so much love to give. They love their grandchildren more than anything in the world. We also have amazing sisters, sister-in-law, nieces, aunts, and even Marie’s great-aunt: our seven amazing nieces, all with unique and dynamic personalities. We love watching them grow into incredible, strong young women. All the women in our life have successful careers and are excellent mothers.

The most shining woman in our life is my Great Aunt Lee. Aunt Lee is turning 110 this April. She has lived an extraordinary life. Aunt Lee has been a nun for over 90 years and has dedicated her life to helping others. She also taught mathematics at a local college for most of her adult life. Aunt Lee is just the sweetest and kindest person in the world, and we can’t wait to be able to introduce her to our future child. She has been praying for us every day. Adoption has always been part of Great Aunt Lee’s life; her two sisters adopted to grow their families.