Many of you know me by what I write about on this blog, which have been marriage, facing issues, overcoming these issues, and other things. But I want you to know me on a personal level and to get to know the real me behind my freelancing, then I should start with my background. So I would like to start with an overall background of my younger years and as the blogs progress, I will focus on specific time periods or people that impacted my life.

I was born and raised in a small town called Byron, Georgia, where I grew up playing in the dirt with little toy cars and running around with a wild imagination (in my parents yard mind you). I have a older sister named Leah, who partake in our dirt playing cars adventures and in the winter, we would play barbies for hours on end until my mom ruined it by making us do chores. Boring! I have a younger brother who has autism and his name is Brandon. One of my favorite memories of all of us is when we played with barbies, he would always get out his GI Joe doll and take my little Indian girl doll and acted like the Indian girl was beating up the GI Joe doll. It was pretty funny to watch.

My parents are Andy and Beth and with them, I grew up in a home where we laughed a lot and spent time together. My dad was one of those people who liked getting the newest and coolest gadgets when it became more affordable, so we might have been behind the times on our video games (everyone was getting Xbox and we were playing Saga, but hey, we had fun!), but it didn’t stop us from enjoying the things we had.

My entire family is located in Central Georgia and it didn’t take us but 30 to 40 minutes to get to my grandparents’ house. We probably got together with my dad side of the family once a month just for cookouts, holidays, and watching football. Yes, I grew up having to love the Atlanta Falcons and the Georgia Bulldogs. We despised Georgia Tech, so I’m sorry if you’re a Georgia Tech fan and find this slightly offensive. We got together with my mom’s side of the family probably every other month and holidays. 

But on July 4^th, we would invite both sides of the family to our house and always had a blast. My dad and uncles always got into fireworks and we would shoot off big and little rockets when it got dark. It was amazing to me that we could have both sides of the family and have such a good time. I know many, many families cannot say this, but I was fortunate and bless to experience this type of unity when I was younger.

I know this was all a little bit jumbled, but I promise, the next blog will be more focused on my memories with my immediate family. So stay tuned for a more focus blog and to learn more about who I am besides the writer.