Kathleeen Lordbock ~ Getting Around To My Meme!

     A while back Jeff Belonger meme'd Allison and I and then Melissa Wagner hit me with one - so here it is.

I am a home stager from the beautiful lakes area of Brainerd/Baxter Minnesota. My family consists of my hubby, Arthur and two daughters Ashley and Allison. As far as we can tell we are the only LORDBOCK's in the world.  My husband was a BOCK and I was a LORD  When we married, we decided to combine our names - making us the Lordbock family.  It caused quite a stir at the time all those years back as people hyphenated their names, but not combined them and men , of course, kept their own.  We still think it is pretty funny.

My oldest daughter, Ashley, is now married to Aaron Bast and along with helping in the staging business has a full time job designing cabinets. She is an award winning artist for her drawings and painting - some of which I have put on Active Rain.

My younger daughter is Allison and my partner in the staging business. But my partner is again in Florida for the school year attending Fort Myers Master's Commission for her second year with a year of Community College in between. Her goal is to become a Youth Pastor. She is an organizing wiz and loves that part of staging the most. 

She has traveled to many foreign countries singing and doing school programs.. She and two other young women put on the "One Night That Could Change Forever" conferences .

All three of us ride Dressage which is a training method which was an art developed centuries ago by the old riding masters. If you have ever seen the Lippizzaner Stallions or watched the Olympics - that is Dressage.  We have bred Warmblood horses specifically suited for this style of riding.  At the present time, we have twelve horses, three dogs and two cats. Some of them are rescues.

                                                                                                       photo by Allison Lordbock
 

We had a horse stable on our 80 acres, but that was destroyed in a 2001 tornado along with heavily damaging our homes and spirits. It is still a mess, as we had about 120,000 trees down and metal and glass everywhere.  We also lost horses in this Federally declared disaster . The statistics were: 20 farms destroyed, 10 farms with major damages, nearly 50 dead animals, 20 homes destroyed and 25 homes with major damage. I do not think at this point that we will have a public stable again, but we are slowly rebuilding for our own needs.  You can never afford to have enough insurance to cover you if you lose everything. We were very fortunate to not have any human fatalities.

My husband Arthur and I are partners in Quality Roof Systems - also on Active Rain The bulk of our work is rubber membrane and architectural metal roofing. It is hard to compete in the residential work as most people doing that in our area pay their workers cash and carry no insurance. As with staging - there is much education in the roofing business so that people are comparing apples to apples and not making fruit salad. Yes, I do actually roof and have no problem climbing 30 feet up in the air.  Just don't ask me to jump!

 Many years ago I was crowned Miss Brainerd , which is a pageant in the Miss American program.  Then in 2005 Allison was crowned.  That was a very exciting night for family and friends. A large contingent went to the nursing home about midnight to wake up my Mother and let her see Allison with her crown.  Allison was in the top 8 for Miss Minnesota and as a 19 year old rookie, that was amazing.

I was a model, a teacher & coach, a Public Health Educator , a horse trainer -   a long with varying jobs along the way that were strictly to make money to get through college.

 I have decorated homes and prepared property for sale  for the past  20 years - when the term staging was not known. It always just made good common sense to me  and I proved it over and over selling our own homes and helping others. I dislike the term Home Staging, but it is better that House Fluffing - that just seems like something that should be done outside in privacy, if possible.

 Now you know all these delicious facts about my life  and I nominate: Karen Anne Stone, Kathleen Garvey, Jackie Peraza to spill the beans about their lives.