Introducing myself

Wow!
I've got so much that I want to share with everyone. I guess I need to figure out where to start. Maybe I should start with myself. Many of you know me from teaching at Cedaredge Middle School, but many of you may not. So...

• I am the youngest of 7 kids; my parents are from families of 9 and 10 kids = we are Catholic :)

• Both sides of my family have been dairy farmers in Wisconsin for many generations with my mom's family farm originating in 1848.

• My parents had one of us boys in the state tournament for a decade.

• We had a wrestling mat in the basement and a library of wrestling videos including many from Iowa and Russia.

• I graduated valedictorian of my high school and with a 4.0 in college...no big whoop...

• My older brother Dominic and I both wrestled for Lakeland College.

• I lived in 4 states this past year.

So, this past year has been crazy. I'll try to sum it up as briefly as possible. My wife and I left Cedaredge to chase the dream of being professional dogmushers. We got hooked up with a dogfood maker in Michigan and drove 3000 miles with 54 of his dogs to live in a tent on a glacier in Alaska and give dogsled rides to tourists. I rode in a helicopter every week for four months. Then we moved back to Michigan with the 54 dogs and trained to be dog jockeys. We worked with 120 dogs including training 20 at a time pulling a four-wheeler for up to 8 hours straight on trails in the U.P. We were planning on racing all around North America all winter. Then my mom was diagnosed with cancer. My wife and I decided to quit the dogsledding thing and move in with my mom and dad. I got a job teaching science at a Catholic middle school in one of the richest suburbs of Milwaukee. My mom passed away on Valentine's Day which also happens to be my wife's birthday. Then things came together with moving back to Colorado, and that brings us up to the present.