These pictures are here to add visuals to the stories that are told in Tales of a Virtuous Woman Wannabe. We’ll call it the illustrated version of the book.
No images have been changed to protect the author.
My VWW tales begin in chapter one with the telling of my attempts to sew. This is the Easter suit I made for my oldest son right before I ran over my sewing machine with a dump truck.
In chapter 2, you can read about my addiction. I am drawn to a book by the fragrance of its pages. My hands shake as I open the cover and crack the spine. My name is Leigh Ann and my daughters and I are read-a-holics.
When I am tired and dripping sweat in my shoes, God meets here to watch the sunset. He brings a special kind of rest to that swing. (Chapter 3)
This is the lamb cake I made for my daughter’s first birthday. I fear this virtuous woman wannabe will never raise her whisk to the sky and reign as a culinary queen in the kingdom of her kitchen. The stories in chapter four tend to agree.
My husband is a man with seven years of higher education who aspires to be a pretend farmer. These are his sheep. In theory, they stay in the fields beside our house.
In fact, the sheep routinely roam our yard. They trample our grass, chew up my flower beds, throw slumber parties in our driveway, and stroll down the road to say howdy to our neighbors. (Chapter 5)
Meet the goat that ate the tree that was planted in my mother’s memory and his buddy, my middle son.
Two days after starting college, I met Greg Northcutt. He had a freckled complexion that didn’t tan, and a large red afro that lit up like a neon sign when the sun shone through it. He is the subject of chapter six.
Greg was God’s answer to my deepest desire in a husband and I married him in my mother’s wedding dress.
Train up a child in the way he should go . . .
I did my best. I loved, kissed, hugged, yelled, paddled, grounded, encouraged, instructed, and taught my five children not to pick their noses in public. At some point, I realized my attempts to make us appear normal were futile. So I learned to roll with the pandemonium and hide the chocolate that got me through the day. (Chapters 8 & 9)
The children of a virtuous woman rise up and call her blessed. I’m happy if mine just think to rise up and call me.
In my imagination, I am a cultured Southern belle who never leaves the house without makeup and has a closet dedicated to Kentucky Derby hats. In reality, I have a souped-up diesel truck that smells like a horse and makes enough noise to drown out KISS in concert. (Chapter 11)
As many as nine people in a mobile, miniature house, traveling across the country for weeks at a time. That is the way we vacationed for twenty years. Chapter thirteen tells those tales.
We slept on everything that would lie flat. Two slept in the bed in the back room. Two occupied the bed over the cab. Brothers slept together on the pulled-out couch. A daughter slept on the table. A son slept on the floor. The baby slept in a laundry basket by the garbage can.
Few people celebrate Christmas like Northcutts celebrate it. The whole lot of them are born with an excessive love for the holiday that spreads to family and friends. (Chapter 16)
My tales of a Virtuous Woman Wannabe end here. At the place God has led Greg and I. At the farmhouse on the hill. We sit on the porch swing and gratefully look out over the life God has given us. In the house behind us is the best of what we have been given.
Our family . . . then
And now