About Me . . .

I was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a family of two loving, attentive parents. My mom and dad come from Swedish ancestry, as did all four of my grandparents. My dad and my grandparents were all born in Sweden. Along came my sister, two years after me, and we played together all the time. We played with paper dolls, with our Betsy Wetsy and Tiny Tears, and our Ginny and Ginette dolls. Outside we rode our bikes, and enjoyed sidewalk games like jump rope and Button Button and Statue Maker. In the winter the neighborhood dads helped us slide our sleds down the "hill" in front of our house. Later, when I was 12, another sister, was born. Mostly, I babysat for her after school, but she was funny and easy to take care of so I enjoyed it. I stay in touch with both of my sisters and their wonderful families.

I lived in Chicago through my elementary school years. My neighborhood friends were Joyce, Paulette, Linda, Jackie, Ricky, Nancy, and Linnea. Other kids my age I played with - that were children of friends of my parents through the years - were Denny, Bobby, Frankie S, Janice, and Donna. My school friends were Gay and Jeananne. I haven't seen many of them since I moved away and I miss them yet. However, I've recently joined Classmates.com and may find some of them eventually. That would be nice.

We moved to a suburb of Chicago when I started sixth grade. My best friends there were Sandy, Carole and Jeanne. We went to each other's houses, or to the recreational park to swim or to "play" tennis.
In high school, Sandy and I were still close friends along with Candy and Diane. We were together almost every weekend - bowling or going to the Patio drive in, or to movies, or to buy 45 records and LP's. Candy and I were madly in love with the Beatles and wrote stories about them and played Beatles songs on our guitars. We four gals would enjoy hanging out around the international part of O'Hare Airport. It was fun to watch the people arriving from their trips in foreign countries or Hawaii. We hoped someday that we would travel too, and I have - so I'm very blessed. Some places I've been to, starting at age five or six, are: a trip out west to Mt. Rushmore & Yellowstone Park and that area; Macinawau Island, MI; the Wisconsin Dells, Key West and many other places in FL; my high school class trip to Washington D.C. and Virginia; a family trip to Las Vegas & Hoover Dam; the Bahamas; a college art trip to Europe (England, France, Italy, with a short stop in each Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Ireland); a college theater trip to New York city; Canada (from Winnipeg across to Banf - on our honeymoon); and with our own kids - Wisconsin Dells; Amana Colonies, IA; San Diego, CA; Tiajuana, Mexico (just for an afternoon to bargain for souvenirs); lots of places in Florida and many other states. We visited our sons at various places while they were in the army, including Ft. Carson, Colorado; Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas; Ft. Benjamin Harrison, Indiana; and Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. Also, we got to Sweden to visit my relatives - finally!

After high school, I chose to go to college in northeast Iowa. My friends/roommates over those years were Judy, Sandi, Vicky, Karen, Jane, Mary and Bea. There were many, many others. I've pretty much kept in touch with most of them. I dated a few guys in high school and in college, of course, but won't mention their names. I was on the newspaper staff (mostly making the cartoons), and I was publicity chairman of my sorority, Sigma Alpha Phi. I majored in Art Education.

I finished college in 3 1/2 years and started working in Des Plaines, Illinois. Florence and I worked together and also became good friends. I worked there for 8 months, pasting up huge music notes onto mylar film to be printed into large scrolls of music for students taking organ lessons. It was a fun, non-stress job, and my work pals were interesting people who also liked art.
That August, I took a teaching job back in Iowa. I had learned that an old friend from my college days would be teaching there too, so Shirley and I got an apartment together. I taught Kindergarten through 12th grade art, and special ed. art. Off and on, I taught some adult ed. night school: an art class and a guitar class. There were quite a few of us single teachers, I won't name them here, but I began dating the high school vocal music teacher by my second year of teaching.

He and I were married that next spring, and I taught one more semester. We had three children. The first two were boys and, later on, a girl. For several years, I was a stay-at-home mom, involved in Woman's Club, teaching Sunday and Bible School and participating in other church work and other volunteer activities. I also sewed many of our family clothes, did crafts, canned and froze foods from our garden, baked breads and pastries, prepared our meals from scratch, and made lefse, fruit soup, Pepperkakkor, and other Swedish and Norwegian foods at Christmas time. And I earned a little pocket money with my calligraphy jobs and by giving guitar lessons. At one point, I had over 20 guitar students. My most difficult calligraphy project was a cloth baptismal certificate.

Among the items I sewed was a crazy fake fur, leopard snow suit for my son (he was 10 months old), and I sewed several matching shirts and pajamas for my sons, and I made many knitted hats and scarves for them, and many dresses and other clothes for myself. Later, I sewed for my daughter too. I also remembering making a quilt or two out of queen-size sheets and fabric, and I made a few crocheted Afghans. My mother-in-law also sewed and knitted many clothes, quilts and Afghans for us. I did other crafts like Decoupage, needlepoint, rug hooking and macramé - making lots of interesting items. Because of macramé, I know how to tie over 20 kinds of knots. I did a bit of substitute teaching now and then at our school and in neighboring towns. I also kept busy painting and decorating the rooms of our home, and once I put up a brick facade around our kitchen island, and another time I painted a Norwegian Rosemaling a border in our bedroom free-hand. The worst thing I did was to texture paint the kitchen ceiling. No more ceilings! No more texture paint! Ever!

My husband always had a big garden of vegetables, tomatoes, onions and potatoes. He also put in lots of flowers, shrubs, and trees for us with birdbaths and nice landscaping. For a while he had 13 rosebushes of various varieties. My husband also gave each of our kids a garden of their own, which they were quite proud of. I dabbled in my little herb garden pots too. Because I kept begging my husband for more Spruce trees, we started calling our place Sprucemore.

Through correspondence work, I earned my teaching minor in English. After about 10 years at home, I eventually went back to work - at our area education agency. I was the graphic artist in the media division, and it was varied and enjoyable work for over three years. Just when I got laid off (computers were taking over more and more of what I did there by hand), I got a part-time teaching job in another neighboring town. I taught there for eleven years. My classes ranged from Kindergarten through 12th grade art. In the later years, because our school joined with the schools in the town I lived in, I taught 6 through 12th grades, and then just middle school art (my favorite grades). I enjoyed all my teaching years, and often miss both the art part and being with students too. It was always exciting to introduce a new project, and there are so many more I never got to do with the students yet. On the other hand, we did lots of great projects too. I had as much fun as the students did. I especially enjoyed our art appreciation book reading time. My homework for the kids every night was to notice the sunset or the sunrise and all the wonderful nature around them, available absolutely free of charge. Also, the architecture in the older part of our school was unique, from the 30's, I believe. We would take a "tour" of the older part of the school building and enjoy the beautiful old architecture.

After my being at home for about 10 years and having worked before and after the "home years" for a total of 14 years, we came to the conclusion that we had to help out my parents in Florida, so we "retired" from teaching, and packed up and moved to Florida, in less than four months! We had our home (with it's large basement stuffed with boxes of saved stuff from over the years), our classrooms, and our offices to go through. We kept some, sold some, gave some away, and threw out a lot! Finally, on our wedding anniversary that June, we arrived in Florida. We've been here eight years now, and we absolutely love it. It's beautiful, fun and like a constant vacation! However, we soon decided we needed to find jobs. My husband is teaching vocal music in high school again and giving piano lessons, and I ended up becoming a secretary for our county school system. We both love our jobs. They are interesting and rewarding, and we have great bosses and co-workers. Can't beat that! It's just that I don't seem to have the time to cook, sew and do crafts much anymore. My parents have both since passed away and are dearly missed every day by all of us.

Our kids are grown up, or nearly. Our daughter is in grad school - she enjoying every minute. We have four grandchildren now too, all little boys. They are the cutest, smartest babies I've ever seen! Honestly! Well, my husband will work another year, (I recently retired early), and then have some free time when we retire for real. Hopefully, we will get lots of traveling in (we like cruises), read all the novels we've always wanted to read, and maybe learn to golf. I've got a great big, unused crochet pattern book, so I'd better pick up the crochet hooks again then. Who knows? Maybe I'll pick up the paint brushes too and even a guitar pick to strum a bit! That will be relaxing and enjoyable.

All in all, mine has been a really good life, happy and rewarding, and there's lots more to go! Yes, I realize how lucky I am. I hope I've shared some of myself and some of that happiness with others, helping when and where I can, trying to be a fairly good daughter, wife, mom or a friend to those I love so much. Loving and serving Jesus always.

Thanks for reading this!

S.O.