For my girl…

You come from a long line of very strong women.

 Your Great Great Great Grandma Urena Babcock, born in 1859. When she was a young woman, she left West Springfield, Pennsylvania as Urena Tickner and went into the wild woods of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and found her true love in a trapper named Ruben Dubois, and her daughter Myrtle DuBois, who ran away with the Circus at 13 and found that handsome teamster driver Harry Dougherty,

and her daughter Nell, who eloped and ran away with her mothers Boss’s son and after 4 children and 12 years of domestic slavery to her father in law, she bolted from that lonely farm for a better life. And from her daughter Rena May who rejected the prejudices between Protestant and Catholic and Eloped one week before high school graduation to marry the love of her life , a big Irish Catholic guy who loved her to bits, your Grandpa, who worshiped her.

Yes, you come from a very long line of strong single minded women who weren’t afraid of a little traveling music to set their sails to.

And oh, the journeys you’ll have, the adventures with your true love into the future you’ll both so brilliantly make. I love you guys. You were born with the strength and wonder to make this, as Tidyman would say “the time of your life.”