About Childrens' Author Verla Kay * Personal Information *
Verla Kay is a native Californian who grew up in the sleepy little town of Watsonville. Located right next to the surfing town of Santa Cruz, it nestles between San Francisco and Monterey Bays and enjoys some of the most beautiful scenery and weather in the world.
With a crop duster father and a stay-at-home domestic mother, one older sister and one younger brother, Verla's early life seemed ideal - and in many ways it was. But Verla had a hard time making friends and spent most of her younger years as a very lonely child. She spent many hours reading books and daydreaming about friends and love and the happiness that she prayed would someday be hers.
That happiness came to her when she met her future husband, Terry. It was love at first sight for both of them and after a rocky courtship, they were married on Easter Sunday the spring following their graduation from high school.
For the first fifteen years, their marriage was anything but ideal, but through sheer stubborness and determination, they made a success of it and their marriage survived despite many loud arguments and frequent broken pottery. During this time, they had four children - three boys and one girl.
Verla worked off and on, to help make ends meet. But her primary goal was to stay at home and take care of her children, so most of the time the jobs she took were temporary ones and some of them were quite interesting.
She tried picking chives in the fields, but that job only lasted two weeks. The decision to stay at home and care for her children herself was made very quickly after she discovered that her first paycheck was less than what she owed to her babysitter!
One of the most fun and profitable jobs Verla ever had was when she worked for a party plan selling toys and gifts at home parties. This was a job that she could do while staying at home with her children and she earned hundreds of free toys and gifts for her family and seven free trips to exotic
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