Our Family is Growing

By Dennis DiPaolo

There must be something in the water, as the Seasonal family seems to have someone pregnant all the time now.  

Amanda delivered a son, Braeden Ryan, on September 24 (6 lbs, 12 oz, 20 in.) in Germany.  She is living there with her husband Nate, while he’s stationed there with the Army.  Amanda actually hasn’t worked here since she got married, but we’re still in touch.

I had noticed in the past how often people buy a car within a few months of being hired by us.  Now I’m noticing a trend towards getting pregnant instead.  Mia and Robert had a baby daughter, Honor Beth, on January 27 (7 lbs, 20 in).  She is back part-time now.  We wish she could be here more, and we know many of you look forward to working with her, too.

You might notice that Stephanie S is due at the end of the summer.  Now, stop for a second.  That’s Stephanie S, the married cashier, not Stephanie B, the single college student!  Jay is about to become a father, too.  He left us to get a full-time job.

Staci and Damien are both back from their tour of duty in Iraq.  Mimi is helping them plan for a big wedding now they are stateside.  You may remember that they had a small one right before Staci shipped out, so they could qualify for survivor’s rights from the military.  That’s really common for young soldiers shipping out to a war zone.  I don’t want to jinx it, but we’re hoping that Uncle Sam may assign them a baby before Staci is sent back for another tour!

Speaking of the military, Tim did Army boot camp at Fort Knox, joined an infantry unit based in Colorado, and is headed for Afghanistan mid-summer.  Dalton is scheduled to join the Marine Corps at the end of the summer.  The Marines don’t promise assignments before a recruit completes basic training atParis Island, so he has no idea what the future holds.

Our pool table installer, Matthew, was diagnosed with leukemia in January and immediately went to Dana Farber for chemotherapy.  You probably don’t know him unless you had a pool table serviced or installed in the past seven years.  We scheduled a bone marrow registration day in conjunction with our MarchBlood Drive, and he is due for a bone marrow transplant about now.  Probably not one of us – the odds of that would have been 10,000 to one.  We have all learned a lot about how you can save a life with a blood stem cell or bone marrow donation.  Registering takes five minutes and swabbing your cheek for some cells.  If you are a match, the stem cell donation is about the same as donating blood.  The bone marrow donation is somewhat more complicated.  Ask us about it or go to www.crir.org for more information.

We gave out some scholarships this winter:  Trina to Nashua Community College,  Maria to Hesser College, and Dalton to Southern New Hampshire University.