About
The short story
I am a wife, mother, web designer, and childbirth educator.
The Long Story
I was born in the only hospital wing left standing after the 1972 Earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua. We lived in Costa Rica, Peru, and Panama. In 1980 I had my first experience with snow while living in Madison, Wisconsin for a brief time. That was fun and all, but in 1982 we moved to Panama and I decided that the tropics are truly the only climate that anyone should live in.
I spent long enough living in Panama to know that in my heart I am a Panamanian before moving back to the States to go to college. My husband, Al, and I met and married in Minneapolis, MN and then moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where we lived for 8 years before moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Despite the complete lack of moisture we have found our new home to be just the place for us. There is nothing like New Mexico.
Work
My degree is in Theology and Philosophy from the University of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The original plan was to be a missionary like my parents, instead I married the best guy in the world, and fell in love with childbirth. I taught the Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth for about 5 years and founded a non-profit Birth Network in South Dakota.
When we moved to New Mexico we made a complete shift into web design, using WordPress to create websites for people. Business was great! So much so, that my husband quit his job and we are in business full time together.
Now we split our time between our business, homeschooling our kids, and being active in the local WordPress community.
Old School Computers
I don’t remember a time when my dad didn’t have a computer in our house. So when I went to college I took along some old piece of junk, which of course everyone thought was very cool, so I could write my papers. Then my parents moved to Kazakhstan and the only way we could communicate was via email and very expensive phone calls so I got my first email account. I am almost certain it was an AOL account, but don’t quote me on that.
Blogger
At some point everyone was using Blogger to create weblogs and we had 10 whole hours to surf the internet with (remember those days when you had to buy blocks of time for getting online though AOL or some ISP?) so I got hooked up with that. I had a bit of HTML basics under my belt and not being one to be happy with the themes that are available I tried to figure out how to mess with the CSS. I am certain I had no idea what it was called, but somehow I managed to mess thing up a lot and to actually get some things accomplished.
I used HTML and then Blogger to create a website for the Birth Network I started in South Dakota before we had a professional web designer develop a site. After a few years on that I switched it to a WordPress site.
WordPress?
My brother from San Francisco started to tell me about this thing called WordPress and how I should use it. I tried once or twice and threw my hands up in frustration. It intrigued and bothered me that I couldn’t figure it out so I kept looking at it. Until finally, I got it. Not being a historian, or having a very good memory I would have to say I finally started using WordPress to build sites in 2005 or 6. Probably more 2006.
WordPress!
I got a job with a print shop in Albuquerque that needed someone to do updates on their client websites and I had just enough skills to take that on, in addition to experience with Joomla (I managed to figure out Joomla before WordPress somehow). I managed to convince the owner to start using WordPress, but this was back when you didn’t say “We build sites with WordPress” because people would say, “Um, that is odd, isn’t that blogging software?” Within a year that changed and I did contract work for two other Albuquerque companies that were open to WordPress and happy to let me use it on their sites.
I am WordPress enthusiast. I enjoy it and it makes my designing life easy. I love to teach people how to use it and see the look of relief on their face when they see how easy it is to manage their websites. I love that I can teach group of kids to use it and their parents re also hanging on every word. It is a fun place to be!
