Amanda....Light of our Life!

Oh my, where do I even begin to describe my baby.  She is one in a million is an understatement.  If you take Mike and I's families and melt them together, you get Amanda.  We always laughed and said that she was born with her hands on her hips giving everyone in the house orders.  You see she was born on a Sunday in the hot summer of July 1981.  Mike and I were pretty sure that we wanted to have three children, but we really didn't have the third one planned to come only 16 months after her sister.  As my husband would say, God has a sense of humor.  He knew we needed Amanda to make our family complete.

Amanda as a Senior in high school.

Amanda was always competitive.....she wants to be the best at whatever she does.  She might get that from her dad.  If you have ever played volley ball with him, you know this.  She will work her hardest so that she can be better than everyone else, no matter what it is.  She wants to be a better cook than me, she wants to win at any game she plays, she wants to make highest grade in the class, even today she is one of the youngest supervisors in her area, maybe even the youngest.

She has a heart as big as Texas.  She has always been for the underdog.  She is always wanting to help others.  She worked hard to help those who have problems.  She read books about kids with cancer when she was in school.  She wanted to counsel kids who have terminal illnesses.  It was really no surprise when she majored in Sociology in college.  Now she is a supervisor in DHS and works with Family Services.  Most people think she is tough, but on the inside she is about as soft as they come.  She might be more like her dad than me.  She gets that toughness from him and the bleeding heart from me.

She loves to have fun.  This probably comes from my mother.  Amanda spent lots of time with my mom when she was little.  Mom would let Amanda have friends over to spend the night and they would cook, build houses with quilts in the living room and they even talked her in to buying hair color at Wal-Mart and the girls colored each others hair.  I think they were about 12 or so.  Mom even took her on some bus trips with her.  They made plans to go to Disney World one summer and the two of them were kind enough to allow Krista and I to tag along.  We had a good time.

She is very much an individualist too.  This was easy to see by the sports she chose to participate in.  Her favorite sport turned out to be tennis.  She also played golf, basketball, and softball....but tennis was her love.  I think it was because she could do her own thing and the final responsibility ended up on her.  She did play doubles some, but she liked playing singles the most.  She was also yearbook editor, President of her class several years, top candy sales person in 4-H, officer in many different clubs.  She was a natural leader, or boss.  She gets that from her dad too.  As I write this maybe she IS more like her dad than me.

The trait that she possesses that is most like me is her tender heart.  Because she puts on a persona of being tough, most people don't realize that you can hurt her feelings.  She will be upset for a while and then she gets over it and is always willing to forgive.  Everyone thought she was a Tom Boy, but in truth she is our Girly, Girl.  She has always loved to dress up, put on makeup and wear high heels and fancy dresses, oh yes and have long painted fingernails.

I thank God often because he gave us Amanda.  She has always kept our lives lively.  She is beautiful inside and out.  Gotta Love Her!!!!!

Amanda with her children on Easter 2013.