My Life Before the Blog

Ok, so I thought I would give you a brief look at my life before the blog. This will be hard because God's blessed me so much but I'll give it a shot.

I was born May 16, 1987 in St Louis, Missouri while my dad was in Seminary. Only lived there six months before my dad got his first church in Michigan. Lived there 3 years where my brother was born then moved to Mississippi and we lived with my Grandma. Was there like a year then moved to California for a year. As a 4 year old, our house in California was awesome!

My brother and I in California

We had a huge back yard with a monster truck stored in a garage...the owner gave me a ride once, AWESOME!

Moved back to Mississippi until my dad could find another church and then ended up in this tiny town called Leaksville, MS.

This is the church...the house I lived in is off to the left

Lived here for 4 years, and boy was it great. Became a Christian here, at a summer church retreat when I was 8, June 21, 1995 to be exact. I was ages 7-11, prefect age to have acres and acres of wood the run around in, playing tarzan, cowboys and indians, and cops and robbers. A friend, my brother and I made a club with a tree house and everything. We had officers, I was the president of course, rules and everything. We even had 3 tests that kids had to pass before the got into our club, they had to prove themselves that they could handle the outdoors. I had even made up certificates that we gave to all the new members. It was awesome, the word spread around town to all the kids...we had kids we didn't even know come to try to get into our club, probably like 2 or 3 a weekend for about a month or two. We had about 20 kids in our club and we'd have weekly meetings at our tree house where my mom would make all of us sandwiches for lunch and then we'd go down to the dollar store and buy root beer for a quarter. That was the life :)

My brother, dad, and I in our house in Leaksville

Ok, moving on...my dad ended up joining the Air Force and we moved to Fort Walton Beach, FL. We were here for 2 and a half years. I fell in love with the beach here. The water was a clear blue, the sand was so soft it even squeaked when you walked on it because it was so fine. I learned my favorite sport of all time now, soccer, at the middle school right off base, Lewis Middle School, and also learned to play the tuba at the same school. In, I think it was October of 2000 my dad comes to me and tells me we are moving next summer. He then says we are moving to Okinawa. I was so confused, I had never heard about this place, didn't know if it was in Europe like my dad had been wanting or some place in the states I haven't been before. I was totally surprised but super excited when my dad said it was a little island south of mainland Japan. He pulled down the globe we had and the island wasn't even on it.

These next four years are probably the most memorable ones yet. The first 5 minutes in Japan, I was called Godzilla by the little Japanese kid...I laughed my head off. I learned to speak Japanese here, learned to drive sitting on the right side of a car driving on the left side of the road, learned to surf, traveled to Taiwan and Thailand, climbed Mt Fuji, skied in northern Japan, ate my first raw piece of fish, jumped off a 60 ft bridge into the water, sat in the back of a police car handcuffed (ok, it was for a scavenger hunt...but is sounds cool right?), met my best friend Eric, and so much more. It would take me days to talk about all the cool stuff I did there.

A bunch of my friends and I at Aha Falls

My last summer there was the best of all time. You can't drive off-base till you are 18 so it was finally time for me to explore the island. We we would go out camping for a week at a time, finding a different beach each night. Jumping off of waterfalls, getting lost in the mountains, going tubing and getting thrown everywhere because we told the Japanese boat driver to go fast, and building giant bon-fires on the beach while almost blowing ourselves up because the gasoline tank caught fire were some of the things we did that summer.  Earlier that year in 2005 I received my acceptance letter for my ROTC scholarship and to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

College was/is for 40 more days, awesome! Classes were tough but worth it, I met so many cool people, learned a lot about myself and got a lot of experience through my ROTC training. The first two years, I lived in the dorms but after that I had to get out of them. I then lived in a really nice apartment for 2 years and now reside in a house I found on craigs list...after days and days of searching. Living near the beach is totally worth it, but I never once did homework on the beach like I told myself I was going to do :) I got into road biking and mountain biking here and started working at a bike shop so I could learn how to take care of my bikes. I learned to scuba dive, one thing that I will never regret doing, it is AMAZING! I learned to cook in college, something that I love doing now and want to go to culinary school one day just so I can get better. I also became a clean freak, its relaxes me when things are clean and in their place. I am about to begin the next part of my life in the Air Force here in about 2 months and I can't wait!

Ok, so thats it...my life in a blog!