Lisa Simenstad-Shonrock

It's so hard to believe that twenty years have past since I've seen most of you. It's even harder to believe that it's almost been twenty years since I saw 18 (yikes!). Well my life hasn't been as exciting as Adam's, I don't believe I will ever jump out of a airplane since I'm not even comfortable going off the high dive. My husband is a private pilot and we own a Mooney four-seater but I personally like to stay in it. I also have not lived all over the country or like a few of you around the world but here is the short version of my life since high school.

After graduation I headed up to Alaska intending to enroll at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. I did get excepted but decided I just couldn't live in my aunt's basement for four years without us driving each other crazy. She is a wonderful woman but was quite set in her ways and what can I say I was 18 and wanted freedom. I did spend my summers in Alaska though throughout college. I worked in a fish cannery grading and weighing frozen fish. It was kind of a weird job but it paid for most of college and almost everyone there was also in college so it was pretty much always a party after work (I might have missed the parties at the pumice mines but made up for it there).

Since I was no longer going to college in Alaska I went with my backup plan and attended San Jose Christian College where I had a scholarship. I know it doesn't quite go with my partying in the summer but I was young and that should be explanation enough. It ended up that SJCC was a good match for me. It is a very small college with only around 300-400 in the student body so it was easy to get to know just about everyone. Since it was so small I was able to do just about everything extracurricular that I was too self-conscious to do in high school. I was on the girls' volleyball team, the basketball team and as scary as it may seem, a cheerleader. Yes I sucked at most of it but I had lots of fun and I still love to play volleyball. I was also involved in student government (sophomore rep.), yearbook and whatever else I thought might be interesting. Well that lasted for three years until I started having to work with junior-highers, my major was secondary education. At that point I figured out that being a junior high teacher really wasn't what I wanted to be for the rest of my life. Plus I had gotten pretty serious with my boyfriend and thought everything was going great that is until he asked me to get married. At first I was excited then I got really scared knowing that emotionally I was not ready. So I ran back to my parents (and Debby Gaskills' since my mother married her father) in Los Alamos.

Now that I was back where I had started and I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I ended up working as a waitress and making the donuts. I did find plenty of time to have fun like volleyball league and learning how to dance country western. I met a few guys and made lots of friends with the dancing but the volleyball really worked out since that was were I met my husband, Clint. We were married June 19, 1992 up there in the Fuller Lodge rose garden. As soon as we got back from the honeymoon we moved to Albuquerque.

Clint still works up at the Lab but commutes by flying so he doesn't really mind. In November of 1995 our daughter Marta was born, she was absolutely amazing (not that I'm biased or anything) and I'm happy to say she has red hair. In Albuquerque I worked several odd jobs from receptionist to events coordinator. I then stumbled into a job where I taught cake decorating. It was fun and I got to develop my creative side. I found that I really liked teaching as long as it wasn't for a room full of junior-highers, so I began teaching other classes as well (tole' painting, scrap-booking, rubber-stamping, etc.). During that time I also began my own small business out of my home selling cakes (wedding, birthday, etc.) and egg art. I sold my decorated eggs at crafts fairs and I even had some in a few stores around the Santa Fe plaza and here in Albuquerque. A big thrill was when I was accepted to Weems Galleries.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun as a crafts-teacher and selling my own crafts work until June of 1999 when my son Carl was born. At that point what I really wanted to do was stay home and be a mom. I was lucky enough to have a husband that understood so that is what I am still lucky enough to be doing today. Now there is no longer any dirty diapers and late night feedings, but instead it's being team mom for every sports team our kids are on and I'm still teaching, since we home school both of them. That's pretty much what has happened since high school. Nothing too dramatic, but it's a good life!

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone at the reunion!

Until then,

Lisa