Family First

It’s amazing how fast the days go by. Sometimes that’s not such a bad thing, like when you’re away from your family and looking forward to getting home. That gets me to my main point, which is; what is the most important thing to me. It’s not hockey, although that ranks pretty high. It’s my family. That’s what makes everything worth while. I met my wife a long time ago, and we wanted to start a family. That was the big goal. That was it, not how much money we would make, or any huge career goal. We wanted to be able to raise a family and we knew we would have to work hard to pay the bills, and support that goal. We were very young, both of us just out of college, and we set out to do just that, raise three boys. As time goes buy we found it wasn’t as easy as we expected. We both ended up working long hours, and that still goes on today. Before you know it, you end up trying to juggle work, sports, and family time. It doesn’t get easy. In fact it sometimes seems almost impossible. The years don’t slow down. They speed up. You go from raising toddlers to young men in what seems like a blink of an eye. You can’t lose focus though. The one thing we all have shared over the years has been those hockey games, and those lacrosse games. All those early morning practices or heading out to games, and all those late night rides back home through snow storms. There have been many hot days at the lacrosse field and many where we were getting soaked during rainy day games. Splitting the kids up in two cars and traveling in opposite directions north, south, east, and west to get to games has been the norm. But we always tried to be together as often as possible even if it was only at the rink for a few hours. Family time also was hockey time and lacrosse time. Somewhere in there we also had to work long hours to pay for all this great fun. You don’t always know how you’ll do it each season; you just do it one day at a time. My wife taught me that. Sometimes I forget and everything seems impossible to do. You need to be good at what you do, and you need to put some effort into it. You’ll get a lot back in ways you may not even realize. I’m looking forward to going home to the family, and I’m looking forward to some more hockey, and lacrosse – the important things in life. Yes I still have to go to work when I get back, but it’s worth it. Plus, I luck out every year and get great players with parents doing the same thing. It's not easy, It's hockey, It's Lacrosse, it's family, and I love it!