April In May

Today, May 16th is April Rustemeyer’s birthday. Happy Birthday April!

April is from California, Missouri (near Jefferson City). She is a big Cardinal fan, and works at a bank. Gee, that sounds kind of familiar doesn’t it? I love how April came into my life… it is just a fun story. Nik and I met April and her Mom, Jane, at Cardinals Winter Warm Up in January 2007. We were all camped out in the autograph ticket line way too early in the morning. For those of you not familiar with Winter Warm Up… you spend a lot of time waiting in line, so you just start talking to strangers to pass the time. We got to talking to April and Jane, and then just kept running into them here and there throughout the weekend. We just really enjoyed sharing our Cardinals stories with each other. At the end of the weekend April came over to Nik and I and said something like this. “None of my friends back home are really into baseball, and you guys have just been lots of fun to hang out with. Do you want to exchange email addresses and keep in touch, maybe get together in St. Louis for a game sometime?” The rest is history. We did keep in touch, met for a couple of games last July and just had the best time ever. April and I both work at banks, and Nik and Jane both work at hospitals in “non-patient care” capacities.

Anyway, so this spring April went with Nik, her sister, Angie and I to Spring Training. We all had so much fun. We just all kind of click. We are girls who actually love the game and know all about the fundamentals, but definitely are in tune to the fun personalities and pretty packages of the Cardinals as well.

April gets credit as the original rhinestone Cardinals tank top creator. Her original idea inspired the rhinestone Franklin tank tops we all wore at Spring Training, and now Frankie has spotted them a couple of times at Busch this spring when Ang, Nik and/or April have sported them when sitting near the pen.

April is a small town/farming community girl too, so we have commonalities far beyond baseball. Oh, and she has the coolest tattoo on her shoulder. She designed it herself and each component has special meaning... just very cool, and just very April!

Happy Birthday April!