Welcome to Shady Grove, Arkansas. Shady Grove is a very small rural community near Mena, Arkansas. Shady Grove has only a rural fire department. No store, no gas station, but Mena is only a few miles away. It is in this home on 8 acres that my wife and I finished raising the three boys, and now we go on to the third stage of our lives.
Sue and I have been married since 1972. Married just out of high school we both pursued careers in health care and lived and worked in the Southern California region with me working as a respiratory therapist and Sue as a nurses aid. These were good days, as we enjoyed reasonably good wages, bought our first home and enjoyed many forms of recreation on our free time. Busying ourselves with racquetball, skateboarding, hang gliding, camping, raising our poodles, building paper airplanes and playing pinball made for good days.
We had been married 7 years when we moved to Houston, TX. These were tough days as we did not enjoy this very different city. We were met with grave financial difficulties and made great sacrifices to get out of this city, and thus would begin our 2nd stage of our life together. It was during this time, that we chose to start our family. We moved to Mena, Arkansas with Sue pregnant with our first child. The transition to the country life and extending the family was very challenging, but we are both very happy that we had made this decision.
I continued my work with the local community hospital in Mena, while we had 3 baby boys over the next few years. When all the boys were in public school, Sue pursued her LPN license, while I pursued trying to grow our house in the country to keep up with the growing family. We kept hoping for a baby girl, but alas, after three boys we gave up.
Now the boys are all grown and have moved away to Fayetteville, Arkansas thus we are in the third stage of our lives. I no longer work as a respiratory therapist, but enjoy working at home as a web designer, while Sue continues to apply her nursing skills as a home heath care nurse. We both love our jobs, and with our free time we enjoy riding our mountain bikes and of course, I returned to hang gliding after all the boys were off on their own.
We hope to retire someday, but like many… as we look at the struggling economy we know that we do not have any way to know what the future will hold.
Well…. I did it! I condensed our lives into a few paragraphs. This indeed was a bit of a challenge as like anyone else, the most interesting stories are those that hide between the lines. I will pursue providing some interesting stories about our life experience. Some are funny, some are sad, but all are about living and learning about what life is on this little blue/green orb.
Topics you can look forward to are stories about some of my hang gliding and other flight pursuits, mountain bike racing and bicycle design, our choice to have our children birthed at home, building our own home in the country, some interesting stories about our life long work in the health care industry. Now my mother has joined us here in Arkansas and she always taught me to not discuss politics, religion or football. I may occasionally break this rule. I may dabble a bit in politics, and religion..... but football I will not discuss... Just too controversial!
Fair winds to you!
Here are some applicable links to this story.
www.mena-ark.com City of Mena
www.ouachitahanggliding.com Hang Gliding in the Ouachita Mountains
www.ouachitaadventures.com Mountain Biking in the Ouachita Mountains
www.ambcs.com Mountain Bike Racing in Arkansas
www.fayetteville-ark.com City of Fayetteville
Mike
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