Following graduation, I attended Ole Miss in the fall of  '79 majoring in Economics.

I graduated in '83 with a Bachelors of Business Administration.  I met my husband, David, my sophomore year and we were married two weeks after my graduation.  We immediately moved to Maryland.  I began working in telemarketing for a bedding manufacturer in the Baltimore/ Washington DC corridor.  Within a couple of years, I was selling exports to Scandinavia and Europe.

In 1985, we moved to England where we spent our time traveling in the United Kingdom and Europe.  We learned to snow ski in the hills of Scotland and the Alps of Austria and Italy. We still take at least one week every year for the annual ski holiday. I worked in an American elementary/middle school for the U.S. military as a purchasing agent, computer literacy instructor and media center coordinator for K-9th grades.  I started the MBA overseas program with Boston University, but decided we were missing out on too many travel opportunities we might never have again, so that was shelved.  

We moved back in 1989 to the Washington, D.C. area where I entered business once again with Baxter International as a Quality Assurance Program Coordinator for chemistry and coagulation controls for over 300 hospitals in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

This position sparked my interest in health care and confirmed my dislike for the dog eat dog business world. 

I finished science prerequisites at Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland before entering nursing school in 1993.  I graduated from John Hopkins University with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing in 1995.  During school, I worked three different jobs to gain some experience in health care;  labor and delivery, a GI/GU surgical floor, and urgent care at a local HMO.  I cannot say I liked ANY of them, but gained some valuable experience and great stories.  I began my nursing career ( # 3 or 4 if you've lost count) in the ICU fellowship at Johns Hopkins.  I eventually landed in the cardiac ICU working with my hair on fire most days. 

After 13 years of marriage, we had our first child, Adam.  What an adjustment for us!  He has been a delightful little boy until the terrible two's kidnapped him 6 months ago.  We wait anxiously for his deliverance.  In May, Adam will celebrate his 3rd birthday and David and I will celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary.  Isn't it amazing how time flies?

We moved to Belgium almost 2 years ago for more travel opportunities.  I have taken a couple of French classes and have learned enough to get by at the markets and traveling around.  I wish I had listened more to Ms. Shadburn in 9th grade French class.  I work part-time as a nurse at a NATO international clinic in urgent care.  Thank goodness the official language spoken is English, or close to it.  The rest of the time I work as a mom and housewife. I also bowl in a ladies league once a week for an anaerobic workout and I think about that aerobic stuff at least once a week.  I feel I have the endurance training just keeping up with our little one.  We still enjoy skiing and plan to visit Bavaria this season.