Hi everyone, my name is Betty and I was born and raised (mostly) in Elgin, Ill., which is about 35 miles NW of Chicago. There were a few years in there where we were kind of like Gypsies and moved to quite a few different places, including Oregon, Calif. and Kansas. I now live in the beautiful Ozark mountains. We moved here in 1991 and enjoy the quiet life where we live smack dab in the middle of 85 acres of forest, and there are lakes all around us.

My husband and I celebrated our Golden anniversary several years ago and we have three children. Our oldest daughter (Leanne) will be 51 next week, and she belongs to the same Red Hat Society group that I belong to, and also the same AKC dog club. Our second daughter (Missy) is 49 and counting. She is very involved in dog training, and she and her friend have just opened a dog training facility and are giving classes. All of the women in the family are "dog people", including me. My son (Robby) is 45 and works on the ferry that takes people and cars across one of our lakes.

I have one grandson and one grandaughter (Missy's children) and one Great grandson whose name is Charlie Brown. Really!!

My oldest daughter gave me my LBB box for Christmas of 1999, and frankly I was dissappointed that it wasn't a pretty sweater. Little did I know how important it would become to me. She still lived up north and she thought we could email each other and save on phone bills, which is about all I did on it for about a year.

Then I discovered Pagebuilder, and thought I'd try it and who'd a thunk it, I made a webpage, (such as it was) about dogs of course. Right now I'm in the middle of redoing it, and will post the pages as I get them done. Recently I made a page about being an identical twin and right in the middle of it my twin was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I just kind of stopped writing, but she had surgery and treatment and is now cancer free, (thank God) so it was sort of a labor of love, and I finished it.

I had been lurking in some of the groups for quite a while, mostly the help groups, and I found HPO. I was very nervous about showing my page as I had never posted in a group before and didn't know what to expect, but I finally got up the courage to do it and I'm really glad I did. Everyone has been so helpful and made me feel at home. It feels like an on-line family and I hope to be here for a long time.

Thank you HPO, Betty

(Thank you Betty for your many contributions to the HPO newsgroup.)