Billy Parsons:  

I have 2 daughters, Caitlyn and Grace. Caitlyn is 9 years old since March and Grace is 7 years old since late February. (Their birthdays are only 2 weeks apart.) Along with Heather (my lovely bride), they are the most important part of my life. Caitlyn is in fourth grade. She is extremely smart and reads all the time. We are very proud of her. She is the thinner one in the photos. Grace (Gracie) is our lovable ornery child. She has an amazing sense of humor for a seven year old and loves to make jokes all the time. She has a powerful but thin ego. We love them both. Heather had been a stay-at-home mom for seven years until the girls started school. We always agreed that we wanted to raise our children so when Heather finally got pregnant she quit her job and became a full-time mother. She has now put her accounting degree back to work while mostly telecommuting for a company that manages homeowners associations. She is also very involved with the kids. She is a room mother, a school volunteer and a member of the PTA. Heather is a terrific mother and I can honestly say that I love her to death after 15 years of marriage. Heather and I got married on July 23rd, 1994 after I got out of the Navy that May. We lived in Mesquite for 18 months until we found a small house further out (towards our hometown of Kaufman where we still attended church) on the outskirts of Crandall. It is a 3-bedroom house but it was new and we chose it so that we could still afford the mortgage payments on only one income. We knew that when we did have kids we wanted Heather to stay at home to raise them¿until they started school. We have been there 13 years since February. As for my work history, I had a job waiting for me before I got out of the Navy in 1994. I worked there for 3 ½ years driving a work van from place to place installing and troubleshooting radios. I use to find myself on top of 1,000-ft. radio towers, the top of downtown skyscrapers, the trunks of police cars or the underside of a garbage truck running cable. It was a good job but I did not find it very satisfying. I knew that I was not cut out for electronics. I knew I could do the job but I just did not have the interest. When my sister-in-law told me about a training position involving software I jumped at the chance. I had to come up with a 15-minute training presentation for Excel but I did not actually know anything about Excel at the time. I must have done well because I got the job on January 19th, 1998. Since I finally had a job I felt comfortable with I decided to get some professional certifications. From 1999 to 2000 I got certified as a MOUS Master Instructor from Microsoft and an IC3 Authorized Instructor. (MOUS = Microsoft Office User Specialist / IC3 = Internet & Computing Core Competencies) I taught 28 different technical classes from Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Access to basic programming-level courses and mainframe applications. We had more than 400 associates at this time at the Sears Holdings Accounting Center just outside of downtown Dallas on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of a typical office building. I work in a cubicle and the Technical Training Room where I actually spend about 75% of my time. Although quite happy at this position for three years I came to realize that I needed something to boost my career. I had a high school degree and a couple of certifications but due to the environment I was in I felt I needed more. Some fields allow someone without a degree or with an associates degree to do quite well but not so for mine. I noted how the wind was blowing in 2000 and 2001 when they demoted our hourly team leads and salaried supervisors and started promoting these kids that came right out of college. I started Trinity Valley Community College in the fall of 2001 going only at night as I was still the sole provider for the family; Heather was at home with our firstborn at that time. I graduated with an Associate of Liberal Arts in the summer of 2003 with a 4.0 GPA. I then immediately started the fall of 2003 at the University of Texas at Arlington; again, working full-time and going to school at night. Four years and another baby girl later, I received my Bachelor...Expand for more