Renee Olson:  

Well now that you're in your early forties, don't you feel a little smarter, secure and overall in control? Maybe you feel like you know where your going or think you've already arrived. On most days I feel like that. However, I think time will still be the greatest educator and another twenty years from now I might look back to today, 8/16/08 and say "wow, that was a pretty dumb story I wrote on classmates.com." Alright, enough of the philosophical writing. The truth is - I have a great life. I lived in Florida and Georgia for many years after high school. It was a rough road. Trying to tame my ego while remaining independent. I lost touch with just about everyone except Tina (Laterza) Edging. Tina was my only source of information regarding friends from high school. Tina is the one that usually keeps me informed about class reunions. This time I haven't heard from her, but there's still time. I moved back to Illinois in my late twenties. It was just time to come home. I played hard, met a bunch of people. I slowly learned what I liked and didn't like about life. Today my inner circle is small, while my acquaintance circle is very large. I am very devoted to my inner circle. Sometimes so much that there's no room for anyone or anything else.Please don't interpret my words as being cocky. I just think it's important to put forth my energy into the people I really love and have connected with. I am very fortunate to have the friends and family I have. In 1996, I married, Jeff Olson from Oak Lawn. We had our first child, Brian, in 1998. The same year Jeff established his own business. I guess you could say that I retired in 1998 from the mortgage business. In 2000, we had our second child, Nicholas. My step son Michael who is 18, lived in Arizona at the time. In 2000, we joined the many moving to Plainfield. Yes, do the math. My boys are only 8 and almost 10. While your kids are probably all grown up I'm still in the trenches of child rearing. Since I left the mortgage business, I've been involved with some start-ups. I have played around a little bit with web design and now I want to start an e-commerce site. I work for Jeff throughout the year, but my responsibilities are very basic (and he doesn't need me often). Jeff goes through his busy season starting the first monday after the fourth. Which has actually worked out well for me because I used to take my kids on extended vacations. My Mom traveled with me too. What more could I ask for? Our vacations were not really planned. We would make plans to do one or two specific things, like tubing the Chatahotchee river or a special event in Hermosa, Fl. and then we would wing it from there. We stopped when we wanted, slept and ate when we needed. We traveled hoping to stumble into something exciting. As fun as that was, poor Jeff didn't see us for many weeks. One year, I was on the road for 5 w...Expand for more