Minardi Family
We sisters probably are a blur of families now that you have met the five of us involved in On This Day Designs. I wrote the introductory blog but did not talk directly about my family. We are a family of 8 that grew to nine in 2010 when my eldest daughter, Rebecca, married the love of her life, Andy. Andy is now a part of our family, my newest son. Last October, we grew to a family of ten with the addition of, not a grandchild or daughter-in-law, but my husband's uncle. Uncle Tom settling in with us has been a wonderful experience. I worry at times about the things he had to give up moving here. But he seems fine with being whisked away from North Carolina to the cooler climes of Ohio. We also have two sons living at home. Joseph will be heading off to college soon and our youngest son, Mark, will enter high school in the fall.So two transitions for those boys in a few months. Our second born is Jack. He graduated from college last spring and lives in Austin, Texas which might as well be Australia! I keep searching for inexpensive plane tickets. I want to visit him and I would like to take Joe and Mark along but it is just too expensive. Luckily, Jack came home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and he will return in the spring for Joe's graduation from high school. We had a very special time at Thanksgiving because Jack brought his girlfriend, Laura, with him. She is a wonderful person and she quickly became part of our family.
Our middle children are twin daughters, Kellyann and Dianne. They are juniors in college and we miss them so very much. They will both be home this summer. With their majors (Political Science and English) and the lack of jobs offerings for newly minted English and Political Science majors, my bet is they both will be moving back home for a year or two or three after they graduate!
Presently, Dianne is studying abroad in Italy and she bought 20 medals of Pope Francis for me. I designed a pretty necklace with that medal and St. Francis of Assisi. Here is that necklace made with the medals directly from Italy. My sister-in-law, Nancy, informed me that she has seen those exact medals on various websites, but I consider my medals special since my daughter bought them for me to create jewlery with. Dianne told me the Italian man selling the medals laughed when she bought 20 of them! Stay tuned for a few posts about studying abroad, transitions from high school to college and elementary school to high school.