Dedicated to my beautiful and much loved daughter   Here you will see her grow up in pictures and find a few amusing stories. There are also a couple of poems she wrote, and anything else I think you might enjoy.                                     At age 5, she just started school. Because it was walking distance she thought she could just come home whenever she felt like it, so she did on the first day. It created quite a scare, the school called because they couldn't find her. An hour later, I found her playing out in the yard. You guessed it, she never did that again after she found out she had to stay there until the teacher said it was time to go home.         At age 7, she really cracked me up when she asked me this question one day during our many chats: She said, "Mom, back in the Olden Days, did you have to go to Albertsons' in a covered wagon?" I still find myself laughing over this one. I'ts one of those things I will never forget, as long as I live.       Here is a poem she wrote at age 10 WHEN I THINK OF YOU WhenI think of you .... It makes me think of flowers blooming in the spring. WhenI think of you.... You seem to come nearer.... Asthe days pass I feel you care. WhenI think of you.... Your love is like nothing else.         Another poem from age 10 IF I WERE If I were happy it would be like a new life. If I were free from this chamber of life.... Sometimes, I feel the future might slip away any day. But now I am sad. I feel so lonely. In my heart there is a cry of loneliness.         At age 12 she wrote this: THE LONELY DAISY With color as bright as the morning sun A lonely daisy stood Ignored by almost everyone Except for those who were truly good. A Little child passed by one day And saw the daisy weep He stopped his happy joyful play And took the daisy home to keep. He put it in his mothers' vase Then saw the daisy smile You should have seen his mothers' face As she took it from the child. The daisy never wept again It was happy as could be For in the child it found a friend And filled a mothers' day with glee               Her graduation picture. School is all finished for her. No college, as you can see in the following picture.                                                                                    A week after graduation, she joined the Army. During her time there she was married and had her first child.   This is one of the pastel drawings Leigh Ann did while she was in High School. She took art and was really very good at it. One of her paintings won third place in state competition. I was very proud of her. Leigh Ann is now all grown up a family of her own.. here she is with 2 of her 3 children. The third, lives away from home. She currently works as a certified nurses aid and takes care of terminally ill patients. She loves this job and it seems to suit her many talents well.  ©2002