Yearly Archive: 2009

The summer before my 7th grade year, we moved overseas to Belgium. I didn’t even know where Belgium was on a map beforehand. My dad was stationed at a tiny little Air Force base named Kleine Brogel (strangely, I can’t find a translation for Brogel online…any of my Dutch LJ friends able to help?). We didn’t live in base housing, instead my parents chose to rent a house on the outskirts of a little farm village called Overpelt which was a few miles away, but we spent nearly a month of the summer before we found the house living in...

I know the picture of Melissa Then is black-and-white which wasn’t the best choice for comparison, perhaps, but it was actually the best one I could find, and the one where you can really see the resemblance. She was 9 years old when she first starred in Little House on the Prairie and I was 9 years old in the picture below. She was born the same year as I was, only 3 months before me. We had the same color hair, freckles, brown eyes, and big front teeth: Melissa Then Lizardek Then

Aaah, the middle school years. These were the years where my memories started to stick and become smoother, with fewer gaps in between. There is a lot that is still a blur, however. I only remember the family across the street, for example, and none of the other kids in my classes or neighborhood. I tried long hair, and though you don’t see it in these pictures, I had glasses, though I hated them and took them off at every opportunity, and at one point had to wear a patch to help correct my amblyopia. My mom would draw eyes...

It’s taken me longer than I thought to start these posts. I’ve been waffling over whether to break them up or put them all together and I think that I shall break them up. Not because I want to draw out the suspense or drive you crazy but because there are things I want to say about the persons I once was at different stages and it’s a harder process than simply shooting out a couple of flippant descriptive paragraphs would be. Thanks to my mom and sister and brother-in-law for facilitating the madness! This is me in kindergarten. My...