The Year of Firsts!

Wow it has almost been a month since I have written in this blog. Had a pretty tough day today that started when I listened to the Taylor Swift song Hey Stephen which was followed by his renewal card for his drivers license showed up in the mail reminding me of Stephens upcoming 21st birthday,  I had a very emotional phone conversation with Jeff Melby who was Stephens boss at Play it Again Sports and to top it off is day 2 of the Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament so I got thinking a little more about our families upcoming "Year of Firsts!
Stephen passed away 4 days after Thanksgiving, since then we have gotten through our first Christmas, our first New Years Day, our first birthday party for Anthony without Stephen, our first Valentines Day, our first birthday party for Alex without Stephen, the first high school hockey season has been completed, both of his adult league seasons have been completed, the first Minnesota High School Hockey Tournament will wrap up this weekend. We know that we have more birthdays coming up as well as the first summer at the lake without Stephen. We will meet each of these firsts with sadness and many memories. I miss watching and talking sports with Stephen. I know he would be watching every minute of the State Tournament like he did every year. He so enjoyed going to St. Paul with his friend Ben Leitch to watch it live. I will never be able to watch the NCAA Basketball Tournament the same anymore without checking with Stephen to see how he was doing on his bracket. Even though the teams will not be announced until later he would already be getting ready, then after that he would be getting ready for the NFL draft, the Stanley Cup, and so on! Almost every sporting event had some significance to Stephen, he loved them all.
On the other hand we have had good firsts too. We witnessed the first Alumni Hockey game in Stephens memory  held on December 29th, on Valentines Day I delivered for the first time the new Stephen Reynolds Cup to the Litchfield Dragons as Willmar and Litchfield start that rivalry again. We would like to thank Terry Tone and Matt Schrupp for making this happen. This spring we will have the first Stephen Reynolds memorial scholarship given to a Willmar High School Student. We are continuing to work on starting a foundation so hopefully I will have more to share on that in the future. We will be planning a summer event in Stephens memory so stay tuned for more information. This Fall the boys soccer team will be sporting a #5 patch on their undershirts, just another reminder of his spirit.
We have the monument ordered and we are hoping it will be in place by Stephens birthday but more realistically it will be in place by Memorial Day. We ordered a bench for Stephen with a hockey rink etched on top. I think he would really like it. 
We miss him every day, and we know somehow he touches our lives he will be forever in our hearts and memories.

Mike