Welcome to my "About Me" page. The stories you are about to hear are true. The names have not been changed because it was too much trouble.
I started out here ... and ended up here.
In between, some stuff happened.
Most girls enter an awkward stage around age twelve. Being somewhat precocious, I hit mine at six months.
With an older sister, Jeri, and a younger sister, Marsha, I was destined never to take a bath alone again.
I was a middle child, but sometimes in photos I wasn't in the middle, which totally confused me.
I am a 4th generation native Texan, and although there is no solid documentation to back it up, these photos are evidence that I may also be of native American Indian descent with traces of gypsy blood.
There is nothing out of the ordinary about my childhood, except that I was a highly skilled equestrienne with a tendency toward occasional exhibitionism.
Did I mention my awkward phase?
Not surprisingly, I was a bit unprepared for the onset of adolescence. Exhibit A: this photo captioned, "Let's invite three cute boys over. It'll be fun to see which one gets stuck with Lee Ann in her robe and curlers."
This is my Junior High look. I call it the "Agent 99". I had hoped it would thwart the awkward stage. I was wrong.
Fast forward (hurry!) to high school, where I acquired in this order: a cute boyfriend, a red Mustang, and consequently a "C" in algebra.
At a time when other girls in my generation were burning their bras at Woodstock, I was singing alto in the church choir and painting spirit banners for the Homecoming game. No apologies. Just fact.
Now fast-forward to college where I acquired in this order: a cute fiance, an apartment, and consequently a "C" in, well, just about everything.
Marc and I were in Vacation Bible School together when we were only five years old, and we married just after our freshman year in college. Our kids think that's really trashy, but what do they know?
As newlyweds we couldn't afford a dog, so we had children instead. Lauren was born in 1976 and Jason came along a couple of years later.
Apparently they too are of native American Indian descent. Who knew?
We were a family of four, and consequently over the next twenty-odd years there would be very few photos that were not comprised of all four of our faces.
I really took a shine to this "Mom stuff", my specialties being original costume design ...
For several years I created a cartoon strip for my kids' elementary school newspaper. My character, Sparky, captured the very essence of sophisticated 4th grade humor.
You've probably heard this famous quote, "There are two classes of travel - first class, and with children."
I am intimately familiar with the latter.
Before I knew it I found myself swirling in a tide of brownie meetings and baseball games and...
piano lessons and paintball wars and ...
Webelos campouts and soccer practices. Marc and I took to wearing nametags so we'd know each other at the end of the day.
In the midst of all this jolly-good fun, I occasionally managed to carve out a little time for myself.
Does this photo make my ass look big?
You won't believe this, but I am NOT a dental hygienist! I only played one on a mission trip.
Inevitably I became an expert on the care and feeding of teenagers.
That's when all the eye-rolling, door-slamming, curfew-breaking ...
fender-bending, budget-wrecking, silence-shattering fun really began.
Then one day, just as I was getting the hang of this parenting stuff, the kids just up and took off for college.
While it only took Marc about one billionth of a nanosecond to get used to an empty nest, I needed a few trips sans offspring before I really began to enjoy myself.
A couple of years after Lauren graduated from college she became engaged to a wonderful young man named Daniel, and immediately she and I began planning the wedding of my (oops! I mean her) dreams.
Soon afterward, Marc and I moved to Miami because, A: His nice new job brought us here, and B: We figured the surest way to keep an empty nest empty was to pick it up and relocate it twelve hundred miles away.
Meanwhile, after college Jason taught surfing lessons, began playing in a cool band, and jumped out of an airplane (which was a thrilling experience for him.) Finally he got a real job, which was a thrilling experience for us!
And then, just when we thought our lives were about to get boring, along came Aidan and Avery, and we became GRANDPARENTS! Honestly, I have enough photos to create a totally separate feature for this website called "About Them" but I'll fight that temptation...for the moment.
What more can be said About Me except that I am a gracious hostess ...
And a woman who takes everything in life very, VERY seriously.
judy kemp said:
love all the pictures and stuff u share
Elise Coombes said:
When I packed your cookbook, I felt like I took you to Switzerland with me. You would have loved it! We -- my sister-in-law Ann, niece Allyson (16 and wants to sleep all day and be awake at night. I finally told her, everything we wanted to see was closed at 2 a.m.; we needed to tour in the daylight) May Courtion -- the one with the hospitable relatives, and Mary Margaret Byrom from Midland -- were total goofs, speaking limited Spanish to the French-speaking Swiss. My thought: screaming children on 11-hour international flights is the reason God made benedryl.
Sonia Stilwell said:
LOVE LOVE LOVE your website!! You seriously ROCK, and I will keep coming back!!
Sally Marshall Gepp said:
I have been laughing so hard...you are Erma bombeck. I want more...you are so funny! Will you sit next to me at the reunion...please oh please!
Can't wait to see you both....:-)
Connie Squires said:
It's really nice to see that there is someone with as strange a sense of humor as mine. Love the web site. Keep us up on "your life".
Janice Ringler said:
loved your life.....you must be very happy lady
Paula Rodgers said:
I totally enjoyed reading this. I felt like I was almost reading my biography. I was thinking I should do this, and then realized that I would never actually make it happen. Thank you for doing this!
[ See Responses ]
eve schulz said:
from one extexan to another one in the sunshine state,i loved your life story.keep up the great work.i haven't laughed so much in a love time.
Joanne Meagher said:
Very entertaining. It's really late, and I'm really tired, but I couldn't stop! I had to keep reading. You are delightful, Lee Anne! It has been so nice to learn more about you.
denise thompson said:
ENJOYED you sight very much. you truly have a great sense of humor. i will bet your family thinks you are a real hoot!