30 in 30 Day One: This Is Me

This is me. Sometimes I like to be silly and goofy.

I am starting a new 30 Day Challenge – I want to write 30 Hubs in 30 Days. I also want to post 30 pictures in 30 days. Sometimes those efforts will collide…some days they won’t. Either way, I am going to try to do both.

Today, both challenges collide…I need to post a picture of me…and tell the world 15 things about me…not that the world really cares about these things, but it’s a part of the challenge so here goes…

1. I am a wife. I have been married to Dave for three and a half years. He is the love of my life, and my rock. He is pretty amazing and treats me wonderfully. This is a big change from my ex-husband who treated me as if I wasn’t good enough for him. Dave makes me happy. He tells me every day – sometimes many times during the day – how special I am to him and how much he loves me. Sometimes, it is still difficult to believe him. But he tells me enough, so it must be true.

2. I am a mom. I have four children – two I gave birth to and two I inherited when I married their father. My children are very important to me. In many ways, they are my best friends. Tabitha is the oldest, and seems as if she has everything all together in her life. She has a wonderful husband who has loved her for more than fourteen years and a wonderful little boy. She will have another child in April. Tami is the second oldest of the four. She has always been my adventurous one. At five she was on an all-boys tackle football league. Just because she wanted to beat on the boys. As an adult she has decided that she wants to be happy and be the perfect mom for her baby girl, even if that means that she had to go through a divorce to ensure her daughter’s happiness. Courtney is the third oldest. She is my inherited daughter. She is a very independent young woman and works hard to make the dreams in her life come true. One of those dreams is to be the perfect for her little boy and the other dream is to become a nurse. Jordan is our youngest, and the only boy in this group. He is an amazing young man that wants to see only the good in people, and hates it when he sees only the bad. He wants to change the world one day, and I fully expect him to do it…in his own way…in his own time.

3. I am a grandmother. I have three grandchildren, with the fourth due in April of 2013 and a fifth due in July of 2013. Miles was our first grandson, and one bright little boy. Although only three, he can recite his alphabet and knows the sounds of each letter. He can count to ten – sometimes twenty, when he stops long enough to go that high. He has more energy than a class full of three year olds. He can climb higher and jump further than anyone his age. Except maybe his cousin, Jaxon. Jaxon is our second grandchild. He is two and a half. He is also very bright for his age. He can tell a story better than an old cowboy in the bunkhouse. He loves to tease and loves to have fun. He is already pretty stubborn about things. If he thinks one way about something, it is almost impossible to change his little mind. Olivia is our first granddaughter. She is the youngest of the grandchildren until April. She is only six months old, but is already crawling around the house chasing her much older cousins. She wants to be the center of attention, which is just fine with the boys, who absolutely adore her. I can’t wait until April to meet our newest angel!

4. I am a sister. I am the second oldest of six. My older sister is my hero. She is the one I have always looked up to in life. She hasn’t always made the right decisions in her life, but she has always made the best of those decisions. She has been married since she was 17 and has three wonderful children. My younger sister is my best friend. She is my partner in crime and the one who does everything she can to make my life more fun. She is determined that even my worst times, I will have some fun. My youngest sister is the core of her small community. She is involved in the schools because of her sons, and involved with the community because her family has lived there for generations and she wants to keep it going for the next generations. My younger brothers are my heroes. One has been in the Army or Army Reserves for all of his adult life. He is always there for me when I need something. I know I can count on him. My youngest brother has done so much on his own. He made decisions early in his adulthood that didn’t please our parents, but were what he wanted from life. And he has made the absolute best out of those decisions.

5. I am a teacher. When I was a little girl, my heroes were my teachers. I was always amazed at their knowledge and how well they could share that knowledge. I decided at six years old that I, too, would be a teacher. I have been teaching the most wonderful children for the last fifteen years. It is a job that is a part of my heart as much as a part of my life. It’s a job that I can never imagine willingly giving up.

6. I am a Christian. I know. I should have put this first. God is the most important part of my life. Without God, I would have none of the things that I love so much. Although I do not attend church, I credit everything good in my life to the faith I have in my God.

7. I love to take pictures. They are not always the best pictures in the world, but they always make me happy. I have been taking pictures since I was fourteen with my first Polaroid camera. I see things and I just want to capture that memory forever. Just last week I had more than fourteen hundred pictures on my phone alone. I don’t know how many I have on Shutterfly or Dropbox, but I am sure I will run out of room to post sometime soon.

8. I love to write. I have loved writing since I was in fifth grade and Mr. Wasinger convinced me that this was a wonderful way to share my feelings, thoughts and what knowledge I had. Writing takes me away from all of the problems of the world, even if I am writing about all of those problems. Through writing, I have told many stories and met many people who share my passion. I may not be the best writer, but that won’t keep me from writing more.

9. I want to start my own school. This has been an idea that I have had for many years now. I want to start my own school for children with behavior disorders. I also want to start a school with a one-room school philosophy. A school where students of all ages work together to help one another learn. I want a school where I am allowed to teach the children what they need and not just what is on the next test. Where if one day, I want to take a field trip to the zoo to explore the different animal, I don’t need to legitimize the trip with how it will help on some assessment somewhere down the road. A school where children will be free to be children and not data on some bigwig’s chart.

10. I love kids. I have always loved kids. I loved my nephews when they were born when I was still a teenager and loved playing with them and teaching them. I was always the girl surrounded by younger kids, because they knew I would be silly enough to play their games. I couldn’t wait to have kids of my own and now love every minute I get to spend with my grandchildren. I love the kids in my class as if they were each my children. I love seeing them develop into young adults.

11. I love animals. When I was a little girl, I once convinced my mom that we needed fourteen dogs, thirteen cats, four chickens, two guinea pigs and a cage full of wild mice for our house to be a home. I was the child that had every animal under the sun “follow” me home. I have many pets throughout my life who just made my life better just because they were in it. One of my best friends today is my little pug, Frank.

12. I love people that are forgotten. I don’t just feel sorry for them, I love the way that they can get through one day at a time with just the clothes on their backs and the wits in their heads. I can’t imagine living the life the homeless lead. I know that many homeless people are that way due to drug and alcohol abuse, but that only makes me want to help them even more. Not necessarily just to help them stop the abuse, but to help them get over the problems that caused that abuse in the first place. Whenever I see a homeless person, I want to know their story.

13. I like to travel. I don’t get to do much traveling, and with the exception of barely stepping over the border to Mexico, have never been outside the United States. But I have traveled throughout the states, and want to do so much more. I want to see every state before I die.

14. I want to make a difference. I want to do something that will help a large group of people. Not just ten or twenty, but hundreds and hundreds of people.

15. I don’t know how I will make a difference. There is not much else to say about this. I know what I want to do, but don’t know how to make it happen…

Well, that’s it. Me, in a not-so-little nutshell. My life in less than 1800 words…