Chris Ciccone:  

Where in the world does one start, when so many years have passed? When I left high school I attended Augsburg College for one year, a year that I worked very hard at but did very poorly at. I did not return. My mom brought my baby brother Nick into the world and I stayed home to help. Then I worked for this amazing doctor, an internal specialist, heart specialist on Riverside. So I was still doing the old Augsburg bus transfer! It was there one day,when I was filing, that I fell flat on my face in a grand mal seizure. The dear nurse that I worked with, Helen Penny, literally saved my life that day. I felt bad for the patients after that,'tho, because they would come in for their appointment and go into shock seeing the receptionist with two black eyes!!! Sun glasses did not cut it! So I entered the world of medicines and side effects and tiredness ..... A very different Chris Johnson. At the age of 21 I became a single mom of a beautiful little girl and entered once again a different world. I had been brought up with my mom always at home with me so I knew with every fiber in me that that is what I needed to do also, no matter what the sacrifice. I became a single mom on welfare. The struggle was great, but now that beautiful, beautiful baby girl is now saving lives in the ER in a hospital as a RN and is married (going thru a divorce) with two children. I have been married 25 yrs, we have 5 children, another in heaven, (preborn) and 6 grandchildren. My Catholic faith is extremely important to me. We attend the Cathedral in St. Paul. We live in Blaine, so yes it is a drive, but the holy tradition they keep there is so wonderful and important to us that the drive is as nothing. My older children went to Catholic schools, but when my 3rd child was in sixth grade I started homeschooling. Now m...Expand for more