FOUR FUN THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT LAUREL
Laurel and her best friend, Shelly, taught themselves to ride unicycles as children and could go forward and backward. They also loved jumping on pogo sticks, skating up and down the street, playing fast tetherball games, balancing on tall stilts that Laurel’s father made, and slowing down by doing paint-by-numbers. They could play outdoors all day until their parents called them home for dinner.
Karen is the name of Laurel’s older sister. They loved to play school and library together. One summer, they opened up a library with all their books. They set them all on their ping-pong table in the garage. They made index cards with envelopes and attached them inside the books so the neighbor kids could check them out. They checked out all their books and had great fun stamping the index cards when they should be returned, but they forgot to set up a system to record who checked out their books. They lost almost all their books that summer but didn’t mind because they had so much fun.
Laurel played team sports from junior high through high school. She played on the school’s basketball, volleyball, and soccer teams. Today, she loves to ride her bike along the Rio Grande River in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
When Laurel’s two sons grew up, the family had tandem kayaks and a river raft. They took many summer trips to the Rio Chama, Rio Grande, and San Juan rivers with other family and friends. Laurel and her husband still play on the river with their boats, and they love that it gives them a different perspective of the world as they float along.