Funerals can get you thinking.

The entire month of January came and went without a single blog post from me. I have been more active on YouTube recently, but I don't want to let any more time go by without posting here. 

Life is crazy busy right now. My youngest is playing flag football through a local rec league right now and is still on a club baseball team. My middle son is playing basketball through a local rec league and has been going to open gym for volleyball at his high school. Tryouts are this week. My oldest finally got cleared to return to baseball after about 11 months (he tore his ACL). He has been practicing with the team since returning to school in January after the winter break and has been staying after practice to hit in the cages or will go to an indoor batting cage if he has free time. Tryouts for baseball are next week. He missed his entire Sophomore season due to his ACL and has been working hard to get back into baseball shape and is hoping to make Varsity, but will be happy on JV. 

Two weeks ago I went to northern California for my great uncle's funeral. My sister and I drove up and back. With stops, it was 14-15 hours each way, so we drove up on Tuesday, Wednesday was the funeral, and then we drove home on Thursday. Overall, it was a really nice trip. I enjoyed the time with my sister. We stayed with an aunt and uncle, which was really nice. Got to see a couple of cousins and another uncle at the funeral that I don't see very often. The actual service was nice. There was a brief program at the cemetery and then we went to a church for a service and luncheon. My grandparents and my great uncle and his wife were best friends and so whenever we would go to my grandparents each summer, they would be there as well, but he was 94 and I'm 41, so by the time I was born he was already 53 years old and by the time I was 10, he would have been 63 or 64 years old, so it was interesting to learn a bit about him as a child and younger adult through a video of pictures of him throughout his life. 

My first cousin once removed (pretty sure I got that right) is the one that planned the service. She is my great uncle's daughter. She did something that I thought was fantastic. My great uncle loved putting together model airplanes. He had tons of them that he had put together over the years. So at the luncheon, they had a bunch of his model airplanes out on the tables as centerpieces and everyone was encouraged to take one home with them as a memento. I absolutely love this idea! What a great way for each person to remember him.

This got me thinking and at my funeral I want there to be baseball cards on display and I want everyone to be able to take one home to remember me by. Now I don't plan on giving away my Hank Aaron or Nolan Ryan rookie cards this way, but there are plenty of awesome cards that are meaningful to me that could be given away in this manner. For example, how about the 1999 Topps reprint of the Nolan Ryan rookie card symbolic of my run of Nolan Ryan playing day Topps cards or this 2001 Fleer Platinum Postseason Glory card featuring Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling holding up the 2001 World Series trophy for my Arizona Diamondbacks.

These are the perfect types of cards that I think would be perfect to give away at my funeral and then best part is I have another 50+ years to pick them all out. I might even write something up about each card and why it's meaningful to me to be included. It should be fun!

Let me know what you think about my idea!