Aunt Jackie - The Early Years

Once upon a time, a wonderful happy baby girl was born, to a father and mother who were very happy to get one more girl in the family. Mind you, I was supposed to be a boy. The doctor told my parents I was going to be almost until the moment of birth. So to my father's (slight) dissappointment, another daughter. But he quickly realized that this was a great blessing. In the beginning, it was rolling along really well. I was the one and only baby of the family and that suited me just fine. But it wasn't long until the arrival of Stacey, my eldest Sister's very first baby. This is the first grandchild of our family, so it was an exciting event for everyone. Incidentally, it also made me an "Aunt" before my time. I was reportedly attempting to force Stacey to walk at a very early age, urging her to "Mon, Walk!!!"

However, I adjusted to 'Aunthood' relatively well, and barely just a few months later, since my sister was getting quite good at this, Kristie came along. Kristie made us a "trio", and once I finally accomplished the great feat of teaching them both to walk in my footsteps, we three found great mischief and adventure.

Our Birthdays were always the greatest. Mom and Vickie were always creative with our cakes and tried hard to give us good birthday parties. As you can see in the photo below, I enjoyed more than my share of cake, and looked quite excited over Stacey's Cookie Monster (I believe I remember eating at least one of his eyes).

Holidays were really something special as well. On Easter, we always looked forward to the "Easter Bunny" leaving us great baskets filled with candy and decorated eggs. I must have had some morbid fixation, because I also remember the first thing that got eaten of the chocolate bunny was his ears and little candy eye (if he had one). Honestly I am an animal lover--I don't know what that was all about.


Here is a somewhat early photo of the family before it grew to the great proportion it is now. Pictured above, are My sisters (the tall ones): Jeanne, Debbie and Vickie, and then Me (the chubby brown haired child) along with my two neices, Stacey and Kristie (the adorable toe-heads).

Life moves pretty swiftly, however, and Aunt Jackie grew up and started Kindergarten. I was living life in the fast lane now, and didn't have as much time for leading my two younger co-horts. I had things to do, places to go and boys to enchant, as you can see below. This is a photo of my first boyfriend, "Little Larry" (who never really got very tall), and me on a big date to the Memphis Zoo. Larry's height caused me alot of grief, and by first grade, I was way too tall for him, so I had to break it off. We managed to remain friends though, there were no hard feelings and Little Larry turned out just fine. More adventures will be posted soon. ;)