Tuesday 27. December 2016

Our first born turned 22 yesterday.  Just doesn’t seem possible that so many years should have gone past already.  When people say the years go by in a flash, to savor your kids when they are small, are absolutely correct.  Feels like her first 22 years went way faster than my first 22 years.

This little girl has gone so far and been through so much in her 22 years, so happy to see how far she’s come and what a strong, independant and beautiful girl she’s become. 

We were living in southcentral Nebraska when she was born, a five hour drive from all our family and closest friends.  We’d been married and living in Lex for over a year-and-a-half when she was born.  We were winging it, both being the youngest in our families.  

By the time she turned three we’d lived in two homes in Lex and had moved back home and were living upstairs of my in-laws bed and breakfast, the home most would know of as The Children of The Corn house. We lived there a couple months until we found what Kirk and his mom thought was a great place to live. Months later we would move in with my folks, the very day I saw a RAT run through the kitchen.  We lived there a couple months or so until we found another decent place to live.  After less than a year we were piss poor broke and my in-laws were over running a bed and breakfast, we moved into the upstairs of their home and lived there for close to two years.  

Thankfully, Kaet has always been one to go with the flow.  From the time she was a baby, traveling was no big deal to her, we’d load her up in the car and drive the five hours to go see our familes for a weekend and she just rode along without a complaint.  

After starting kndergarten in Iowa, at Christmas we moved up to northern South Dakota.  We lived in three different houses up north and picked Leo up while we were there!  She was a great sister from day one, seven years difference in age, she is still his mother hen.  

Thankfully we were finally able to move home for good when Kaet was in the second grade.  We moved in with my folks until we could find a home to buy.  Kirk finally had a buying area where we could plant roots and not move!  We were in my folks’ basement about 10 months when we moved into our new home, an acreage in the school district Kirk went to from beginning to end.  

Early on, in the first grade, Kaet was tested for learning disabilities, after we discovered that she was such a great reader because she would memorize her school book stories, we just happened to notice one evening that she was “reading” the story and turning the pages at the right time, but wasn’t looking at the book.  There was a big fancy name for what her learning hangup is, basically, she’s one of those people that has to learn from memorization, she can’t sound out words or put a puzzle together to save her life…she worked her butt off to get through school and really struggled in college, but she was able to do it and we’re so proud of her!  

Freshman year in high school she fell asleep while driving on a gravel road a few miles from our house.  She’d taken a friend home in the middle of the afternoon, the school bus came upon her, she was standing next to the road in a driveway to an alfalfa field, just standing there.  Her gaurdian angels were with her, she rolled the car, went over a fence, a post hole was in the hood, the license plate showed that the car had also spun on it’s nose.  Oddly enough, the girl who always wore her seat belt for some reason didn’t have it on, she went out the sun roof…the authorities believe she wouldn’t have survived had her belt been on.  She was life flighted to the city, spent one night in ICU and six additional nights in the hospital, she was 100% bed bound until the night before she was dismissed.  It was a long recovery, several breaks and fractures, using a walker and wearing a back brace.  From the fractures to three vertabrae she lost 1 1/2″ in height and has a large scar on her right hip, that’s all…so blessed.

The girlie took dance lessons for years, tap, clog, jazz and technical…played tball then softball until high school and then coached tball for two years, she played volleyball a couple years, gave a shot one year at cheerleading.  She did 4H a number of years, team roped for a number of years and gave a go at rodeoing doing break away roping one summer.  Also worked with the littles youth group at church a few years, she didn’t like it much, but I figured it was good birth control!

Once the girl started working, she started working.  Such a hard worker, for the first time in ages she’s working only one job, there have been times she’s worked two and three jobs during the summer during high school and college, all of her own choosing.  So proud of her!

(Kayla and Kaet)

So proud of this girl, took our challenge to move away to go to college for a year and wound up staying and graduated two weeks ago and three weeks into a full time job with benefits at a bank!  Couldn’t have asked for a better daughter!  Now if she’d just slow down on getting older!



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