Somethings You Might Not Know About Me

I think that I mentioned that we moved a lot when I was little. Making friends was never hard. Because of my gift of song and performing infront of people all the time, I wasn't really shy. I WAS quiet and well behaved.

Shortly after "we" married Buddy, my dad, some of his children came to live with us when we moved to KS. I had lived a very quiet lifestyle and had no idea what I was in for. I was 3, Landon was 4, and Brandon was 5. I had lived in a house with just us girls and now there were 2 REALLY rowdy boys moving in. To balance out the wild and ORNERY they also brought with them my Bubba, Cameron. He was so sweet and just dreamy. I had no idea what brothers were, but I very quickly found out. They were mean, played tricks, and beat me up all the time. I am told that that did deter me and that I continually stayed sweet and kind to them. The older kids and my parents kept trying to teach me how to stick up for myslef and I didn't have a mean bone in my body.

Everyone else was old enough to go to school, except for me and that meant that I stayed at home with my mom or went to the barns with my dad. One day I sat in the center of the horse walker, like I did often, and sat on a bucket with a whip and kept the horses going round and round. My dad was so busy, mucking out stalls, working out horses, and doctoring them all day long. I remember being mesmerized by the gears and reached out my hand to do, I don't know what, and my glove got caught and grabbed my little fingers and shredded and cut one of them off. I screamed and screamed until my mom and dad came running. We were in the middle of nowhere out in the country and we had to drive a ways to get to the hospital. I fell asleep on my dad's lap. They stitched it back on and I got a lot of gifts from the people at church.
We lived in Rantoul, a farm house outside Osawatomie, Sedan, and El Dorado. I went to a different school each year and once lived in 2 houses in the same town and went to 2 different schools. In each one of those different houses came new house guests. My dad has NEVER passed by a hitchhiker or someone down on their luck without stopping to help. We had people living with us all the time. They would work for a wage to get to where they were going. One of them we helped get his citizenship. As if that wasn't crazy enough, my parents became a foster family. We had lots of kids live with us, and I remember every single one of them and their stories. My family is so far extended, it's crazy.

One more short for ya. My dad is such an entrepeneur, during the week he helped me make pom poms to sell at the races for for the horses hair. An old board and a few nails is all it took. You wrap yarn around them, tie it off, and cut, voila you have fuzzy little pom poms. We knew all the ranches and jockey's silks colors and we purposefully matched them. Dad went to the liquor store and grabbed an old wine bottle box with the deep dividers and we piled each color combo in a section. Who could resist a cute little girl walking from shed row to shed row selling her wares. I always came home with more money than I had pom poms to sell. They would braid them into their horses hair for race time. When each race was announced you could see Aimee's pom poms beautiful displayed. I had my own jockey's helmet and boots. I always wore a pair of googles on my hat, just like my dad and a kneckerchief around my neck. I sang the National Anthem, sold my pom poms, looked forward to my freshly grilled cheeseburger at the concession stand, and jumped up and down screaming for my daddy to win in the grand stands each Saturday & Sunday.