As you may remember, things were never too quiet when I was around. Guess what?! That has not changed at all! Here is a bit about what my family and I have been up to for the past (way too many) years.

My husband John Stevens and I moved to Palo Alto, California right after we graduated from the U of U where John attended medical school at Stanford and I worked in architecture in the Bay Area. Several years later I started my own company and designed commercial projects from San Jose to San Francisco. After John's 14 years of post college pediatric cardiac surgery training at Stanford we fell in love with Palo Alto and decided we would never leave. Three of our biological children were born at Stanford and another was born in London during our hiatus there.

After a quick stint in London for John's job at the 'Peter Pan Hospital', we came back to Palo Alto and he switched jobs and joined the world of medical devices and technology (never-ending 120 hour weeks aren't for everyone). I sold my company and had an itch to do something else. John and I traveled to Ghana, Africa and felt a huge pull to help the countless vulnerable children we met. (One of which had an instant hold on our hearts.) We started a non-profit to help orphaned and trafficked children and named it Kaeme (which means no child left behind in native Ghanaian). I spend much of my free time working with the Ghanian social welfare department trying to reunite children who have been placed in orphanages back to their homes of origin. Sadly, 80% of the children in orphanages are not orphans. They are there for all kinds of nefarious reasons that have nothing to do with the child's welfare. One of the best parts of our work in Ghana is our amazing daughter Perpetua Korkor (PK), who we adopted when she was 7 10 years ago.

After 35 years in Palo Alto, John, Perpetua and I moved back to Salt Lake City last August. I never would have anticipated this move buts it's amazing how compelling and motivating one grandbaby and high California taxes can be to encourage change.