In The Beautiful "City of Trees"
Boise, Idaho
I have lived here my whole life until I graduated from Borah High School in the Spring of 1997 and went to college. My life has always been surrounded by music and family. I am the second of five kids, four girls and the youngest a boy. Our favorite thing to do is to go to the lake and go waterskiing and wakeboarding. Our favorite lake is Lucky Peak Reservoir, about 20 minutes outside of Boise.With assistance from my mom, I started playing piano and violin when I was five. Before going to junior high, I replaced violin with cello and have stayed with it and piano still today. I went to Ricks College , a small private junior college, in southeastern Idaho where I graduated with an Associates Degree in Music in July 1999, two weeks before I had my little boy, Riley Max. I met Riley’s dad there at Ricks College and we had been married for a year. Then the three of them moved to the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas area for school. Julie Ann was born there March 6, 2002 six weeks before the four of us moved back to Boise.
In the Spring of 2005, Lacey found herself a single mom. Riley was five and Julie was three. The first thing I did was I went back to school at Albertson College, a small, private liberal arts school in Caldwell , ID 25 miles west of Boise. I completed my third year there towards my Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education. It has been my dream forever to become a secondary orchestra and choir teacher. After being a stay at home mom for six years, it was a culture shock to go back. I loved being involved in music again and found myself really, really busy.
Two months before school was out I picked up my 3rd part-time job trying to make ends meet. It was a Service Deli Clerk position at the Albertsons
grocery store across the street from campus there in Caldwell . I call this my proud times of cutting meats and cheeses. After four months of frying chicken and cleaning up after the mess that it created, I transferred to the front-end to be a
cashier. At that time, school had gotten out and it was nearing the end of the summer. For some reason, going back to school just didn’t seem right. I stayed with Albertsons and moved back to Boise to be closer to family and transferred to the "Joe's First Store," the Albertsons on 16th and State Street. Working at Albertsons continued to only be a part-time job and now that I wasn’t going to school, finding a full-time job was a possibility.
One of the openings advertised in the local paper was a position in the Tax Accounting Department at the General Corporate Office of Albertsons on Parkcenter Blvd. in downtown Boise.I didn’t expect to even get a call back as I didn’t have any experience in Accounting, let alone tax accounting. That next week I completed a phone interview which turned into a person-to-person interview and low and behold, I was hired.
This picture was taken in August of 2006. Lacey, Riley (7), and Julie (4) love to keep busy. The weekday schedule is pretty packed with work and school so we take advantage of the weekends.
We started a tradition three years ago of having every Friday night be "Family Movie Night." The kids make sure we have this religiously every week when they are home. Depending on whether they want me to stay awake or not, they pick their own favorite movie or ask me, "Mom, what would you like to watch?"
This picture was taken of Riley (8) September 2007. He likes to ride bikes with his Fox Racing pants on, swim (he learned to dive this summer,) read books about trains and trucks, and is proud to now be in Cub Scouts as a Wolf.
This picture was taken of Julie (5) September 2007. She likes to do whatever "tom-girls" do. Her favorites are to skateboard, bike, swim, draw, read, and is proud to finally be in kindergarten. She had her backpack all ready for school before school even got out last year. She has amazing penmanship for a child her age.
Riley and Julie have been best buds before they were even born.
I have this picture on my desk at work and the first thing that everyone says is, "Wow, you must be busy! Are they all your's?" I respond with a grateful absolutely not. There are all the grandkids that my parents have. The three babies in front were born within a 6 week period, the two on the bench 5 days apart. The look like triplets, but they are all from three different sisters of mine. Way cute, eh? September 2007
Here are some various pictures taken at different times throughout the past year or so.
"Happy Mother's Day!" They woke me up that morning with breakfast made for me. It was a yogurt (as you can see it has a spoon in it already for me) and a bruised banana cut open and ready to eat. Julie is holding a card that they made. They love surprising me. May 2007
This is Riley and Julie at the zoo following the Annual Easter Egg Hunt. April 2007
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Here are the three of us at the JDRF, "Junior Diebetes Research Foundation - Walk For A Cure" - The challenge I had was trying to teach the kids that the walk along the greenbelt wasn't a race. They were determined to "WIN" which to them meant to get in front of the group there that day (1000s) by going on the grass beside everyone. Julie would get stuck as the grass was very wet and so guess who got to push her along the whole way. Yeah, my back hurt the next day! September 2007
