Hi! My name is Mary.
I am married to my childhood sweetheart.
Because I learned to know him when we were just kids, he is still Timmy to me, Tim to most other people. I am more in love with him than ever! What a guy! He keeps me grounded!
Our only daughter Shana is married to Jeremy, and they gave us 3 wonderful grandsons, Hunter, Sawyer and Tanner. Our only son, TJ, we had to say goodbye to when he was just 29, losing his life in a softball accident.
I wrote a book, telling his story and ours after we lost him, and that is probably how this whole website came to be.
Growing Up!
Tim and I grew up in Hartville, Ohio. Tim came from a family of 7, and I from a family of 11. Both of our families are a big part of our life. We enjoy our huge family gatherings and our kids had a host of 1st cousins to grow up with.
Tim and I worked with the youth at our church for 20 years. They were fast paced, very exciting and often challenging years, but we wouldn’t trade the experience for anything!
Mission Work and Traveling
Years ago, Tim and I got to go on a Missions trip to Venezuela, with others from our church. This was our first experience of International travel and we loved the opportunity of being dropped into another culture, seeing how other people in our world live, love and serve our awesome God.
That kind of put the travel bug right into us, and we love, love to travel! We got to go back to Venezuela two more times! We love the friends we made there, and the beautiful, loving people of South America.
My sister lives in Germany and that took us over there to visit her, and we were hooked! We fell in love with Europe, and have now visited it many times, always with a different group of friends or family, and every trip has been incredible!
Someone told me once, that if you go on a trip, and after you come back home, the trip becomes even more awesome, then you nailed it! We so enjoy seeing our big, beautiful world that our God gave us to enjoy, and absolutely love meeting peoples of other cultures too!
Tim and I also love ‘the cross-country route’ when we travel, driving country roads, trying to ‘get lost’ which is hard to do now days because of GPS. Discovering new and never ‘read about before places’ is an adventure I will never tire of.
One of my favorite pastimes is ‘traveling’ on the internet. I love to search places to visit and map out a route to take on a future trip.
Biking
We also love biking and pat ourselves on the back, for accomplishing a 350 mile trek from Middlebury, Indiana, to our hometown of Hartville, Ohio, along with 100 other riders for 5 days, on the annual Ride For Missions. That bike ride has been crossed off our bucket list, and we now enjoy more leisurely riding, on bike paths and loving the beauty of the earth we see while we ride.
I Love Writing!
Another thing I love to do is write about our travels, the beautiful places we have seen, the very interesting people we meet and get to know, and, also those we have traveled with! Traveling is amazingly fun, and educational!
I love to write about life, the people that amaze me, and even those who don’t so much. God made us all unique and with different incredible gifts, and it is beautiful to see it in the random people you meet. One thing for sure, God loves us all, not one person is more special to Him than the other. We have one life to live, and we should live it to the fullest, all the while remembering what our main mission in life is! Living with His abundant Grace and Love is truly the best life there is, and we must spread it around to every one we meet.
Of Course the Grandchildren!
And of course, our very favorite thing to do is spend time with our 3 grandsons, who we call our Boova. We have a date with them every Saturday night, while their mom and dad have one of their own! Also, attending their sports activities makes for a good time too, watching them play and having fun.
Our life was drastically changed after we lost TJ. If we had to give him up, he in turn gave us and others a gift, which was life giving to the organ recipients he helped, and the beautiful gift of friendship we now experience with 3 of the recipient families. They are ever grateful for the gift of life, and we, ever proud of what he did!
Tim and I now live in South Carolina, along with our daughter and her family. After living in Ohio for 63 years, we accepted the challenge of moving away from the only ‘home community’ we ever knew. It wasn’t hard, because we were moving down to be with our family, and we love it here!
I never even considered having a blog, but after writing TJ’s story, it seemed like there were even more stories inside of me that wanted to get out, so I may share a few more.