A Lovely Night with Family.... remembering....

I had a very nice time with the Wallace family in Middletown, DE last night.  Nancy is my niece by marriage.  My late husband is her uncle.  Nancy is married to Jeff Wallace and they have a son Steven.  Nancy also has a son, Anthony Boylan who is grown and already out on his own.

Steven decided to play football this year at Middletown High School.  He is really growing into a lovely young man.  I get to see the Wallaces a couple of times a year.  Usually for holiday meals, so it was nice to be seeing them for a different reason.

I had to be at their house at 6:00 PM.  I was a hair late as I have totally forgotten how much traffic is out around 5:00 PM rush hour.  I tend to be at home during those busy hours.  I also tried a short cut that I thought I had remembered and it was not quite what I had remembered, but I did get there in time to move from my car to their car and off to the school.

The reason for the evening was the "Beat The Beast" night where they honor or remember those who are fighting cancer, have won the battle or who have passed away.  At the beginning of the school year they were given the option to purchase a pink football jersey with the nae of the person they want to remember.  Steven selected his late Uncle Charles and had the name Rudewick on the back of his jersey.  Nancy emailed me on Wednesday evening to see if I would be interested in comeing to the game.  She had just found out that she and hubby Jeff would be walking on the field with Steven and invited me to join them.

We arrived in plenty of time to get to the gathering place.  Nancy did get a picture of me with Steven, but I have not gotten it yet.  But here is a picture of the waiting area and the football team warming up on the field resplendent in pink jerseys.

Steven is number 74, so we were at the end of a long line, but it was a very special moment listening to the information about Rudy being announced over the PA system and proud;y walking along the 50 yard line with Steven and his parents.

We then opted to stay for, at least part of the game.  It started out badly for the Cavaliers as Mount Pleasant took the opening kick and ran it the length of the field for a touchdown.  The rest of the first half Middletown struggles to score two touchdowns on their own while keeping  Mount Pleassant from scoring.

Each time Middletown scores, the cheerleaders ran to a couple of boxes and threw little, blue footballs into the crowd.  They are sponsored by Nino's in Middletown and are worth a free cheese pizza.  I missed getting one, but a friend of Jeff and Nancy gave me the one that he got.

They were also giving the rally towels out to everyone, so Nancy made sure that I had one.

This was the score at halftime and we got to joy the halftime show.  But Since Steven was told he did not have to suit up for the game and he was getting chilled in the cool night air... as were the rest of us, we opted to leave after the band finished.

Once back at their house, we warmed up and chatted about our memories.  Nancy has just moved her father, my brother-in-law, into an assisted living facility so they had been going through all sorts of memories and stuff as his house has sold and they will be going to settlement on Thursday.  I got home a little after 11:30 PM so it was later than usual bedtime for me.

I got up after 9:30 AM today.  I took a moment to take a picture of the little football, the rally towel AND the jersey that Steven wore.  He gave it to me last night, another very touching gesture.  It was an evening of loving memories and new, special times.