I have been working on this album on and off for three years. I decided to upload the layouts using Shabby Princess kits.

Journaling reads: I believe that education is so much more than what you glean from a classroom. Life and work experiences educate us in ways a classroom cannot. Although my parents fully expected me to go to college, I married Mike instead the summer after high school graduation. While he was in Vietnam, I took my first college classes beginning in 1967 and graduated from college 22 years later just 10 days before I turned 40. I’ve always told people, “I am a slow-learner.” I was a stay-at-home mom during many of those years as we moved from one military post to another. I don’t know how many times I started college and then stopped going, becoming frustrated juggling school, studying, keeping up with the social obligations of an officer’s wife, and raising four children while we moved from one military post to another. I have transcripts from at least five different colleges. But, finally, while working full time for the State of Texas, I discovered there were doors closed to me without a college degree. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the abilities for specific positions; it was that I didn’t have the piece of paper. So, while I worked full-time, I went back to school for the final stretch. I attended for 2 ½ years part-time to complete my bachelor’s degree in business administration with a 3.9 GPA, graduating with highest honors. I was thrilled to have it done, and I swore it was the end of formal education for me. My only regret was that my mother passed away before I started the final journey to my degree and my father passed away before I graduated. So, neither of them lived to see either of their children graduate from college.