MAY 15th, 1978

Happy Happy Birthday Lizzy dear,
Happiness will come to me all year,

If I had a wish, then it would be,

A big cheese cake and ice cream just for me.

I am turning 20 today. Ok, that's a lie. I'm turning 29, but 29 is the standard age that people lie about so I thought I'd lie about being 20 so you would believe me about really being 29.

I thought it might be fun to look back on myself through these years. A lot has happened to me since I came out, all puckered and slimy, into the world. I grew up in very small town Rigby, Idaho. I lived just 5 houses down the street from our red brick chapel. We had a ditch in our back yard and a ball diamond behind that. I grew up wearing jean cutoffs over my swimsuit all summer, because one never knew when mom would take us to Rigby Lake, or when someone would dig a mud pit, or when a neighborhood hose fight would start. Winter was all about the snow. We would get snow drifts 4 feet high and the snow was so crisp you could walk on it. We would dig tunnels and pretend that we were lost and had to forage for ourselves in the winter wonderland.

My best friends were Tiffany (That's us with the matching pigtails, we knew each other from birth and were convinced that we were twins. I'm the blonde one that looks like a boy, yes a boy with pigtails in a hippie dress.) and my cousin, Laura (we are the ones snarfing down on chocolate beaters). It was a carefree, fun life full of sunshine and dirt. When I turned 6 Tiffany moved to Pennsylvania and I thought I would never get over it, but life went on. When I was 8 I found out that I wasn't the only friend in my cousin's life and that broke my heart, but life went on. At 9 my family packed up and moved to mid state N.Y. Everything seemed wet in N.Y., even the air; but I had never seen such forests and trees. I also started public school in N.Y. in the 6th grade (mom had homeschooled all of us). It was the neatest thing to have my own glue sticks, highlighters, even my teacher was just mine.

I grew up fast in N.Y.

and learned a lot about life, boys, social rules, and heart ache. When I was 15 my dad was found to have cancer. In 1 1/2 years I watched my 40 year old dad become an 88 year old feeble man. My mom still had us kids to raise so we moved back to Idaho so she could have the support of her family. We moved to Rexburg, Idaho where my dad lasted long enough to see mom settled in her own home. He passed away on August 19, 1994. It was fun being back in the sunshine and small town life of Idaho again, but I didn't fit in that town. I stayed long enough to graduate (just two years).

I packed up and moved to Boise, Idaho. I loved it there. I was independant for once in my life. I was free of all responsibility except my own survival. Then I had to go and meet a wonderful guy. My DSSH swept me off my feet at the all too young age of 19. By the time I was 20 I had my first baby, she was born a week after our one year anniversary, so don't bother counting ;)

The rest of the story is pretty much a "They lived Happily Ever After" story. I now have 4 beautiful kids, live near Seattle, WA, still love my husband with a passion beyond words, and have always felt that my life has been the best I know of.

So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

And in case you want to know, I'm making myself a cheese cake, just like I have every year since I was 7 (although now I make the yummy baked kind, and not the Jello kind).