This is me

My name is Kerri Jo Parish Fernandez, but I answer to many different names: Mom, Sweetie, Mr. Joe’s Wife, Dennis and Karen’s Daughter, Aunt Kerri, Mrs. Fernandez, Mrs. Kerri, sometimes just Mrs. I have filled many different roles in my life which have all worked together to create the person I am today.

First, I am the daughter of a minister and his wife, Dennis and Karen Parish.  When I was in 4th grade my parents decided to pull my brother and me out of the public school system in order to home-school us. Over the next several years my mother began working with other families and we soon had small classes meeting in our home around our dining room table. Out of that, my parents formed what is now PCAL Christian School. Not long after I graduated - in 1979 - I began teaching at PCAL. I have been teaching there for 12 years. 

Next, I became Miss Parish when I registered for college. It was then that I began to fall in love with history. I had a history professor  who always gave us 2 assignments to choose from for our homework: we could answer a list of questions, or write something using the facts we had disused in class and in our text. We had things like: pretend you are a colonist settling in Plymouth and write a letter home telling your family about the events that have happened - using specific details from the text. At that moment, sitting down to complete a simple college assignment, history came alive for me. I began to realize that our past is so much more than dates and facts; it is filled with men, women, and children who lived real lives, doing real things, that forever changed my future. 

While in college I met Joseph Fernandez. Joe and I met, three months later we were dating, three months after that he proposed, and six months after that we were walking down the aisle. 

The next name I added to my list was Mom. Joe and I have two boys: Joseph Ryan and John Luke. These two boys are complete opposites of each other, and they keep me busy and entertained. Ryan is my quiet thinker who keeps me busy learning, and Luke keeps the whole family entertained with his jokes and quick wit. We found out a few weeks ago we will be adding one more to our family in October!

There are many other roles I fill using the same names: bookkeeper for my husband’s company he started a few years ago, coordinator for our church’s Wednesday night programming, and Sunday school teacher, to name a few. We have an amazing support group of friends and family that we fill as much time with as possible.

Somewhere in all of this I became Aunt Kerri for the first time. I now have five nieces and three nephews who call me Aunt Kerri.

This is me and this is my blog - we will see what comes next!