Throughout my life, every thing I’ve gone through has got me to where I am today. All of the places that I have been to, the people I have met, along with every single conflict involved in my life has made me what I am today. To me, the places I’ve been are more important to me than anything. I will be able to come back when I’m older to these places and look back at everything that took place then.
I was born in Colorado back in ’89 and became the last of 4 kids. When I was a baby, my parents divorced and both remarried. I moved, along with my dad and all of my other siblings, to Yankton in the summer of 1995. Ever since then my life has been full of fun, and drama. Every year my family always meets up on most of the holidays and we celebrate together. The summer is my favorite because we go to my grandfather’s farm, just outside of Hudson, South Dakota.
In July my whole family meets up at Grandpa Bakkers farm. We all arrive there a few days before the Fourth of July, just to spend more time with each other because most of the family will leave on the fifth. I have so many memories shooting fireworks off there. My family has a tradition, well you can call it one if you want. Each year we shoot fireworks throughout the day, eat food, and catch up on things. Every night of the 4th, we make a big set up of fireworks for my whole family and nearby friends. The "firework show", if you want to call it, is usually set up by the older teenagers who are still in school and our parents hardly ever shoot them. I think that is one of the coolest things about going there.
Everything about the farm is so…amazing. It isn’t really easy to tell through these words how much that place meant to me. To get a picture, if you are looking at it head on, the land consists of a house in the middle, a field to the left of it and a landfill to the right. It also has a huge corn field that goes for acres in front of it, and at the edge of the yard, is a perimeter of "woods." I would always like to go on adventures in the "woods,", with my cousins. As I look back at all of my younger child memories, I realize it was those "woods," where you could really find yourself. It was a place to be alone, to think, and a place of fun games and adventures.
This farm meant a lot to me; however, I won’t ever take another trip back out there with my family again due to a family member passing away. It was a sad day, but one we all have to get over, the day my grandpa, Simon, passed away. I haven’t been back to the farm let alone Hudson since the day of the funeral. I won’t ever forget when I carried him to his last resting place. The old farm was such a great place of experiences, and I think someday I’ll visit it when I’m done with school. For now I’m just living life as it comes, and experiencing it in places that I never imagined. These places are huge reasons to what has made me what I am today.