Joan Snodgrass meme'd me.  I thought I had got by without anyone doing it, but she finally caught up with me. 

Many of you know from my posts that I was born in New Zealand, so that makes me a Kiwi.  My family moved to the US when I was 12 and I am now a naturalized American citizen.  We try to go back for visits frequently. 

I married young, leaving college after a year, and have two kids, a son and a daughter.  My daughter Meredith works with me and I introduced her in a post a little while ago.  My son lives in Kansas.  My kids each have two of their own, making me a grandmother before I turned 40.  I raised my family in the Kansas City area, and worked for a department store chain that has since been absorbed by Dillards. 

I trained as a hairstylist and that is what I did for quite some time.  I became a manager, then area manager of the salons the department store owned, and in 1986 they gave me a promotion to district manager, based out of Denver, Colorado.  Bless their hearts, they paid to transfer me there, then 7 years later offered me a buyout with a year of paid salary as they had a restructuring of the management in the stores.  I didn't have to take it and could have kept my job.  After 24 years with them it was like getting a divorce.   When the Dillards takeover occured a couple of years later, people were let go with no notice and little severance pay, so I was really lucky to have had the opportunity to go voluntarily. 

But I was 45 with no college degree and no kids at home any more, and still needed to work.  While living in Denver we had fallen in love with the mountains and had decided that we would like to take an early retirement and move there.  However, this was about 10 years early.   I knew that a being a "beautician" even in a management postion would give me little clout when looking for another job.  With no degree, the only thing I could see was working for myself.  I accepted the buyout with my last day being May 30th,, signed up for real estate school, listed our house for sale in June, sold it in July, moved to the mountains and I was licensed by September. 

That was just over 14 years ago and I have never looked back except to wave goodbye.  My year of salary really helped me get started as it took the pressure of making an income off me for a while and gave me money to advertise and get my website (such as it was 15 years ago) started.  it is much harder for a new agent to start today than it was then.   Today I have a great team that I work with...(I am the old one!) I worked for Century 21 for the first two years, then switched to Coldwell Banker and have been there ever since. 

I have three cats but am allergic to dogs.  As most of you know, I ski, but didn't take it up until moving to Denver at almost 40 years old.  My husband is recently retired from being a contractor so that he can spend more time with his elderly  parents, and my 85 year old Dad is getting a divorce!  My sister is an artist, and I have also taken up oil painting in the last couple of years.  I have a brother who gets to attend car races as he takes care of the wireless communication for the drivers and pitcrews. 

I have been active with my Board, recently having been involved with helping our Association buy a building for our offices.  Today I am the Rocky Mountain Resort Alliance representative from our Board, and I am writing this from Telluride as I am attending a meeting there.  Nice job perk!  I get to ski half a day tomorrow and we have another meeting in the afternoon.  I started the Vacation and Second Home group here on AR and am glad our readership is building.  I think it is important to know what is going on in other resort areas.  I will post a report on this meeting in a day or two. 

My next designation will be Eco Broker as I already have GRI, CRS, MRE (A Colorado designation) RSPS, e-Pro, ABR and ASR.  I believe in education and think I need to know more about environmental issues. 

Thanks for the meme Joan.  I hope you all weren't bored to death!