Before we met...

I said this year I wanted to make the effort to re-tell the story of our lives up to this point. I think that down the road as the kids grow older it will be neat to have these stories of Daddy and Momma written down in our blog book so that they can read about it. (And so we remember some of this ourselves :)

Our lives after high-school and before we met-
Daddy 
After he had finished high school he and his best friend from school, Nick, moved to Nashville to attend Nashville Auto Diesel College. They rented an apartment there and began the program to get their degrees. During their time there, these two country guys decided it would be fun to have pets. So, naturally they went and bought 2 de-scented ferrets. (Seriously, you can't make this stuff up). That lasted for about 24 hours before they took them back due to the fact that they still stank. To this day Daddy thinks those are fun and would have one as a pet if Momma would in fact allow a large rat into the house :) . In 2001, Daddy was 23 years old and working at a Ford dealership one town over.

The apartment in the process of being built from cedar cut from the farm

He had moved back to "the farm" where he and his Dad had built him an apartment in one end of the shop there. During that year he left that dealership, worked at a local dealership for a short period of time and then went to work at the local Farmers Co-Op.

He spent a lot of long days in this spreader truck working for CO-OP

He also would help run deliveries for the local Sears store that his Dad and step-mother owned. In the evenings he would come home to the farm, where he helped take care of the place. He also started getting interested in goats (Yes, goats.). He bought a few and started building up a little herd. He went through a string of on-again off-again girlfriends. During that time he attended church at Liberty Methodist, where he was raised, and was close to his family as well as several friends.

Daddy in flight during a race

His hobbies included 4-wheeler racing, which he was really good at (glad I never saw him race though because it would have scared me to death.)  He also enjoyed farming and working on old cars and tractors, duck hunting with friends in the winter, coon hunting with his coon-dogs and spending time on the lake fishing in the summer.

Dad with his puppies

 
Momma- I graduated high-school in 2000, the class of the new millennium! Less than a month after I graduated I packed my little Sentra, along with my Uncle Rudy's truck and with the help of my little, cousin, Katie, headed West to Memphis. That day 2 little 17 and 18 year old girls got caught in a rainstorm on the interstate. So, like naive girls we pull over to the shoulder of the interstate and in the pouring rain we tie down a tarp over my furniture. Live and learn :).

 I moved in with my grandparents when I arrived in Memphis. I enrolled into "Beauty College" there that Katie had just finished up getting her "degree" from (neither of us became a beauty college drop out lol). I worked first for an Aunt and Uncle in their accounting business where I did telemarketing calls. This was not for me. So, I was able to get a job at a dealership. Funny that in 2000 both Daddy and I were both working for Ford dealerships and I didn't even realize that until I began writing this. Another oddity about the dealership where I worked was that I found out while working there that my older cousin, Alyssa had worked there several years before me. Then, later, after I had left Memphis I helped my sister get a job there and my cousin Katie ended up working there as well. So 4 of us cousins ended up working for the same company.( I also did not realize that until I started writing this.)

Memaw, me and Pepaw.  I am so skinny, good grief go eat a cheesburger!

I have really good memories of living with my Memaw and Pepaw. A favorite memory is of how I would be in "my room", that I still consider mine to this day, and how they had magnificent hearing. I could be whispering while talking on the phone and they could hear every word I was saying from the other end of the house :)

"My Room" at Memaw and Pepaws.

 In the evenings my Pepaw would ask me to play their piano and I would play his favorite hymns, Heaven Came Down and Victory in Jesus. This is when I started playing piano again and I enjoy it to this day. My short time spent living with them let me get to know my grandparents better than I ever would have. I am so thankful for that time spent there! I attended church at my grandparents church some of the time and attended my cousins church other times. For most of my stay there I had an on again off again boyfriend who was a music minister at my grandparents church and worked at the Accounting business too. I stayed very busy which helped with the home sickness I had over being 2 hours away from my family. I would try and call almost daily and talk to my parents and each of my brothers. I wanted them to know I had not forgotten them. Little Jake was only 7 when I moved and I so wanted him to know me as being involved in his and all of their lives.

 After 6 months I moved a few blocks over to live with my Aunt, Uncle and cousins. How brave they were for taking in yet another teenage girl to add to their own!

The only picture I could find of the whole bunch

 My cousin, Katie and I spent any free time we had together, either being best friends or fighting over the dumbest of things :) There is no telling how many hours we spent riding around listening to the Dixie Chicks and singing "Wide Open Spaces". (That was before the Chicks fall from grace). We hung together thru breakups, stupid boys, teenage fights and still today remain friends.

Friends through it all..Katie and I (yes I have on a pleather jacket thankyou very much! )

My cousin Stacy and I took a trip in Feb 2001 to Pensacola Florida with my Aunt to see our cousins there. This was my first time to see the beach. I remember...it was cold. Ha! Stacy and I too, would bond over battles with boyfriends, sisters and cousins. I remember the two of us crying ourselves a pity party over a breakup we were each going through. After a good cry we consoled ourselves watching old movies in that upstairs bedroom she had at Marietta.

Stacy and I at the beach 2001

Katie and her family became my second family and I am still today so grateful for them helping me during my stay there and putting up with my ridiculous teenage drama!

Poor, peace maker Julie being a guinea pig to my beauty school practice

Shortly before I finished "Beauty College"  I had my heart crushed, or so I thought. I finished school and had no direction as to what to do. After I graduated from school, my Memphis family threw me a  going away party and I can still remember how sad I was to be leaving and how I felt lost as to where to go.

Last day of beauty school, with all the flowers I was sent that day.

November of 2001 I packed the Sentra and headed back East for home. I was able to find a job pretty quickly and so began my first (short) employment as a cosmetologist in a little A-frame beauty shop. All of my high-school friends were off at college but I met a few new friends at my parents church, Grace Baptist. My brothers were all living at home and so I enjoyed my time with them and really decided to be done with dating for a long time, until I got over my little heartbreak.

So that is where we were as 2001 came to a close.