I was born in Renton, Washington in 1968. In July of 1977 my parents seized an opportunity to move back to my father's hometown of Beulah, North Dakota. It was during high school that I found the path to my lifelong musical journey.
In August 1986 I stepped into the Foss Music Building on the campus of Valley City State University in Valley City, North Dakota. Crazily enough, I was an accounting major, but halfway through my freshman year I again found that musical path. I graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelors Degree in Music Education in 1990. I also completed the requirements to receive a K-12 Teaching Certificate as well.
My first foray into teaching began at Wishek Public School, Wishek North Dakota. I taught kindergarten through the twelfth grade. I spent four years there, and learned more from the students there than they did from me! In 1994 I chose to begin a junior/senior high choral and 4-6 general music position in Grafton, North Dakota. That's where I was introduced to not only the sport of curling, but also my future husband. I enjoyed performing with the Valley City, Wishek, and Grafton community theatres, and was the musical director for GHS Far Off Broadway's production of "Fiddler On The Roof."
I opened ValiMor Studio For Piano And Voice in Devils Lake, North Dakota in 1997. My first students were young people I had met while performing in "Grease" at Fort Totten Little Theatre. The studio grew quickly to 42 piano and voice students.
Our decision to move back to my husband's home town came from the tiresome 70 mile round trip Owen had to make daily to the farm. We moved in April of 2001 (ask me sometime about the story of moving my great-grandfather's piano into our downstairs). I reopened the studio, and was slowly rebuilding my student base. In August 2002 I received a call from the principal at St. Alphonsus School in Langdon, about 30 miles north of our home. I ended up teaching there seven years, and treasure many memories from there. One of my particular favorites was singing French opera up the staircase while linked with a poor, unfortunate junior high soul who had interrupted class time a little bit too much!
I made the very difficult decision to leave St. As in 2009. My aim was to go back to strictly private teaching. Fate had other ideas. Edmore School contacted me in late July to see if I would consider filling a yearlong medical leave. Only a year? Sure, I can manage that. I "retired" four years later in 2013, not planning to return to public school teaching, but did limited work there for the 2016-17 academic year. I also spent a very enjoyable year as choir director at Munich Public Schools for the 2015-16 school year. I am now fully retired from public school teaching.
Finally! ValiMor Music Studio is up and running again, with a more streamlined name. In the fall of 2013, an amazing opportunity opened up not only for my studio, but also the dance studio where my daughter took classes. They needed a new place to live, and there was a room in the back for me. We now have an energetic new mini fine arts center in Devils Lake. My room is a little small, a little noisy at times, but we are steadily growing, trying new things, adding technology. Many of my students are dancers, and the combination of dance instruction and musical performance is priceless for them. Miki Noltimier (owner/artistic director of Miki's Of Dance) and I co-directed Lake Region School Of Performing Arts For approximately 25 years (neither of us can remember when we started), and went out with a bang with our last production of Lion King Jr in 2021. We also collaborated together in several Fort Totten Little Theatre productions. I worked with FTLT as propmaster from 1997-2017, and music director 2016-2018. I decided to reclaim my summers and retired from FTLT in 2018.
I reside in Edmore with my husband Farmer Owen; Dancer Daughter Lauren, math and music major at NDSU; and son Ethan, The Curler, also at NDSU learning how to be a better farmer. For years we have spent most of our winter weekends at dance competitions and bonspiels. Our furbaby Howie, Shi Tzu/Maltese/dash-of-idiot dog, is famous for his meme of him proudly showing off his application of hot pink lipstick with the phrase "No, I did NOT see your lipstick!" In 2019 we added foster fail to our list of accomplishments, with Dmitri Katalevsky, Siberian Forest Cat, aka KGB (Kitty Gone Bad) joining the family. Puck showed up at our farm the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 2020 as a very friendly kitten, and is now the biggest in our fur family. If you”d like to keep up with their antics, you can follow them on Facebook at ’Oh Howie, Really?’ and Instagram as ‘Furry Beast And Comrade’. Thank you for reading my story!