FMK - Florida

When you are born you will live in Florida. The sunshine state. The weather here is great, most of the time. Every now and again we have a week like this week. You see, Florida is a warm state. It is supposed to be warm to hot most of the year. Today, it hovered around freezing. Currently, at 10:38 pm it is 38 degrees. That is cold. Not the coldest I have ever been but cold nonetheless. Your mother and I left New Jersey for a number of reasons, the weather being one of them. In Jersey, it gets very cold. Below zero cold. And that... is unreasonable. But here, it's good. The reason I am writing about this tonight is because it occurs to me that it will be awhile before you see snow. Sure you will see pictures of it and movies that have snow covered locales. But the actual stuff, who knows. And that really kind of sucks. Some of my favorite memories are waking up on a chilly winter morning and listening to the local news, KYW 1060 AM from Philadelphia. And I would wait patiently for the announcement of whether or not my school was closed. I knew that I would have to make up the day at the end of the year but I did not care. All I could think about was calling my best friend Nick and making plans for the day off. Those plans were simple at first, go sleading at the ditch. Where I used to live had a big ditch that would get covered in snow. It had great hills for sleading. Once we got older, those plans turned into football or snowball wars or other such nonsense. It was fantastic. There was nothing better than going out to simply play. To just be kids free of any type of worry. Those days were perfect. You got to hang out with friends, do some cool shit, and come home for hot chocolate. Your Mema was clutch with the hot chocolate. Everytime I walked in the door from a day of snow-time, withing minutes there would be hot chocolate. And the good stuff, Swiss Miss, with whipped cream. And not just for me but anyone I brought over as well. My house was where all the kids came to. Everyone lived my mom. Just like everyone will love your mom. I know she cannot wait to have you experience the same sort of day and bring you and your friends lemonade or sweet tea or whatever the hell else is popular when you get to that age. I know she cannot wait to do this because she is going to be an awesome mom. One for the ages. I just know you are gonna love her.