Introducing my family.

I can do many things but telling about my family is a little harder. For one, I have trouble sounding humble about my children, and yet, I also tend to be more honest than either of them care to me to be most of the time. My daughter is more private than my son, but she is much stronger too. I guess I need to go about this a different way.

 I guess I will start with my daughter. She has always loved to accuse me of putting her brother first in everything, so I will do her first today. That may or may not turn out to be wrong. Actually, I am sitting here laughing as I enter all of this. When my daughter was a teenager, I literally could do NOTHING to please that child. When she was in Elementary school, and I was taking a friend of hers home one day, I said something, that she apparently did not find as funny as I did, and said " that is my mom, she is funny, sometimes."  Of course, being a good mother, I have never let her forget it either. While we have had our differences, and believe me, we have had some major differences, she is and always will be my pride and joy. I have called her sunshine since she was born, and she has accepted that I will call her this till I die. It is the way in our family. My son will be my baby boy. (at 6'2" and 350 lbs, most people have trouble seeing that!) I was my mothers, and ironically, there are times I miss it. My daughter has been described as having an old soul. She was ready to grow up long before she was in high school. I had to remind her to be a kid, and to let others be kids too. She has had times where she was too much of a kid, and that made it hard, because she had always been so grown up. I had to watch her when her brother had started kindergarten and she hadn't yet, because I would catch her doing his homework for him. The same in the first grade. Anyway, she has been a daycare teacher, and loved it, but can't afford to work there and still go to school. She is working as a photographer full time, and as a color guard coach for the local high school color guard team, and then taking classes online to try to get a foot into college while I get straightened out medically and her brother gets settled financially. My daughter is an artist, and a photographer. She is taking both in school and some design classes too for now. She can't take her major classes until we get some equipment, but we will work on that soon. She has gone to church with me, and has a strong faith in God, for which I am extremely thankful. She tries to keep us organized, and that in itself is a major challenge. She has shown intelligence by trying to learn from her mothers mistakes. Many of the choices she has made over the years have been good choices. She has been an ear to fellow guard members trying to reach others and help them through situations she knew that I had faced over the years. She was never afraid to ask me for advice on how to help her friends, and I was never afraid to trust her to help her friends. She has worked hard in many ways to try to reach many of her friends with light and truth, and to show them what friendship and true Christianity really means.

My son, oh gee, what can I say about my son. My son has had an uphill climb, that he made worse by his temper and a chip on his shoulder. Instead of trying to push himself when he came home from school, he gave up and gave in for a while. I am hoping, for all of us, that he has finally worked through all of this anger from the things he went through at school, and getting short changed a degree, and a chance at a career, and fighting for that chance anyway. He is used to so much and the companies are afraid of hiring when they don't have to hire somebody because it is easier to hire somebody with a disability than to fire them if you have a problem. Now he has a wife, and has been married since January 6, 2007.  Amanda is a sweet, although quiet young lady who is still learning how to self direct. Because her family was told she had a disability, they decided she would never be able to do anything. She has already increased her reading ability to 6th grade, and is working on books at the 8th grade level and above. She and Michael have joined Gather to help improve their reading and writing skills, and to learn to help them interact with more people. Making connections and getting to know people, writing, and learning, are the things they want to learn most being here on Gather. Both Michael and Amanda love to talk about things they like. Amanda is an animal lover. In fact she is hoping to eventually get to where she knows enough to go to work for the zoo, or a vet. someday. The sooner the better in her opinion. When we are able to afford cable, she watches the Animal Planet shows and Discovery Channel and anything she can find on animals, wildlife, and nature preserves. Her favorites are reptiles *shudders*, especially the poisonous ones. The cobra, komodo dragon, and the python are among her very favorite animals. Cats are the other big catagory for her. Tigers, cheetahs, and leopards are the big ones, but she happily settles for the local domesticated variety.  My son prefers a more electronic beast. He likes Fords the best. Though in the NASCAR world, he never got over the loss of the INTIMIDATOR, Dale Earnhardt. He never did understand why people got so mad when he said he liked ford cars so much but was an Earnhardt fan. He does admire a nice paint job on a Monte Carlo.  Michael is 21 years old, and will be 22 in October. They tried to tell me he was going to be a Halloween baby, but he wanted his own birthday, so he came the day before Halloween. His wife just turned 21 last April. They are planning on waiting to discuss having any human children until they are older, and settled on their own. Meanwhile, they have their cat, Grace, that Micael presented to Amanda when he asked her to marry him on Christmas eve 2006. They also have shared custody of Rosie, the family dog, which Melissa claims too. That one could get ugly.

If you want to connect to any of them they are listed under

Melissa W (artymj1387) 

Michael W (mlw1030)    

Amanda W (darktigress430)

Normally, I would put the links on here, but I am relegated to using a library computer right now because we don't have service at home this week, and I am having trouble getting anything to work right. My apologies for that problem! I Hope you all have enjoyed spending the time getting to know my family.