heart blog: my story part 1

hello to my favorite part of the day! [being with y'all]

I know that heart blog day can be kind of emotionally draining but I thought that I would get down to telling you guys exactly how I became the Lindsay y'all get today! You know a lot of heart things, I try to mix in some of my superficial loves with some of my heart blogs but today is truly my story. From birth to now, so to make this blog not SO long that y'all get bored, I am thinking of dividing it up. Not sure how many parts yet but we shall name this part 1.

I was born in Birmingham, Ala in 1990 to a mother, father and older brother. I feel like being a family of 4 always makes you feel closer but maybe that's just how my life felt. I grew up always being a mama's girl. She has always had a job that she would be able to take us along: kindergarten teacher and small business owner. I was always extra close to my mom and brother, mostly because my dad worked nights and when he wasn't leaving for work, he was sleeping so I never knew much about that fella. When he was awake, he always looked out of it which growing up I would just assume meant he was sleepy from working nights. I later on realized that other friends of mine that had parents working nights weren't in the same situation with their parents [more later]. Growing up, we were also incredibly close to my maternal grandparents and my mom's brother and sister-in-law. They never had children so they wanted to spend time with us as much as possible. I think this is why I cherish my niece and nephew so much, especially while we don't have kids because I remember how much I loved my Aunt Becky and Uncle Al. You see Uncle Al from time to time on the blog, I see him almost everyday still, unfortunately my Aunt passed away in 2011. My Mom's Mother and Step-Father would also have us over almost every weekend and I loved getting to spend time at their house. I wish I had cherished it more then but now I have the memories for a life time. I am INCREDIBLY close to my Step-Grandfather, he was the man with the most positive influence in my life. My sunshine :)

[Micah and my Aunt Becky #mytwoangels]

[my sunshine and me]

As I said my mom taught kindergarten so I began Kindergarten when I was 3 and would end up graduating from K5 twice [don't ask] ha, it's just what happens when your mom teaches. I started 1st grade at 6 years old and my mom had decided to home-school my brother the year before when he was in the 3rd grade due to bullying at his private school. By my 1st grade year, my mom had been offered the job of owning and running the home-school group [Alabama has strict laws for home-schooling: you must report to a cover school, you must complete 180 days and you must turn in grades every 9 weeks].

My mom had always instilled in my the attitude of a worker bee. Her last year at the kindergarten, I received the award for Little Miss Helper which would lead into her job now running the school. It was named Woodland West Christian School and was connected to the church my paternal Grandfather preached at the time. Mom worked about 3 days a week back then and mom's office was in the church [which can be very scary by the way, churches are creepy] and when I would get my school work done for the day I would began filing paper work, taking messages for her, cleaning the book shelves and getting paperwork in order.

[mama and us kiddos]

Starting around 2nd grade my brother and I were fortunate enough to have some extracurricular activities. He started Karate and I began Gymnastics [I quickly found out I was horrible at this and wanted to do what my big brother was doing]. When I started Karate with Micah and automatic competitive nature happened with us. Our instructor knew that when we would spar he better keep a watch on us because we would go at it. I am SO thankful for these memories now. I've mentioned before that I tried to start back Karate a few months after Micah passed away but it was simply too hard to look over and not see him standing beside me in class. We were able to complete the testing for our 2nd degree black belt in 2001 and there is nothing like receiving that together. Testings are hard, 6-8 hours long and at the end, each person testing would get beat with a bamboo stick so when you are finished and you pass, well it's emotional. I do think I will have my kids do karate, if they don't like it then so be it but nothing is like the confidence that this particular sport gave me. 


I think you get the idea now that my mom, my brother and I were incredibly close. When we started Karate, my dad would take us to class and etc and I think those are memories I will cherish as well. My dad had the tendency of being a pageant mom when we were active in anything so occasionally that would suck the fun out of it. But I will never forget how proud he would be of us after a tournament or testing. It was a nice feeling. To add on to Karate, we began Shooting Sports together...now I didn't last long in this sport. I think I had my feel of boy things and I needed to do something a little girly plus Micah was far superior than me and my competitive heart couldn't take it ha! I would go on to participate in Baton Classes, Horse Back Riding Classes, Modeling Classes, Cheernastics, etc. The only thing that stuck as much as Karate in my life was the 4H club that we had through our school.

I will finish today with talking about my love for 4H. It's not what your thinking. No cattle, no dairy farmers, nothing like that. I found my love of Public Speaking through this club with Public Speaking competitions, Dairy Demos & Egg Demos [think cooking shows]. I think the 4H Club is such an underrated club in schools now. It really makes me sad because most of my high school friends and experiences came from this club. It really had a huge influence on me and I'll always sing it's praises.

I've heard that everyone has a story and I truly believe that. Let me know if you guys relate to my story! More to come!