Kenneth S. Olson

Personal

Welcome to the personal part of my website!

Family

I'm married to Jessica Olson, the most beautiful woman in the world! Our wedding was on February 3, 2007.

On December 9, 2007, our daughter Anastasia was born. I personally think she is absolutely adorable! Mother and daughter are doing very well.

Check out our family website at awuka.com.

Name

• Kenneth (Ken). My first name comes from Ken Milhous, the son of my mother's best friend back in high school. My family visited the Milhous family, and my brothers enjoyed hanging out with Ken so much that when I came along they said, "Let's call him 'Ken'!"
• S. stands for "Scott". There's no special reason for this name. Mom and Dad just liked the sound of it.
• Olson. My last name comes from my great-great grandfather, Ole Petersen. He was a fisherman in Norway, who unfortunately drowned in a fishing accident in the North Sea. His only son was Peter Olsen ("Olsen" = 'son of Ole'). Peter moved to the U.S. when he was 16 years old, and the spelling of his last name was changed to "Olson" at that time. He spent the rest of his life working for the Great Northern Railroad in northern Minnesota.
• Floyd. My mother’s maiden name is Floyd, an anglicized version of the Welsh name Lloyd, which means ‘holy’ or ‘grey’ (Evans and Thomas 1968:315). It is also a nickname for someone with grey hair or who wears grey (Hanks et al. 2002). The Welsh spelling is "llwyd". The "ll" in Welsh is an alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ], so the original Welsh pronunciation is [ɬuid]. The English spelling "fl" is likely due to the fact that the lateral fricative sounds something like [fl] to English ears.

Hobbies

I enjoy music as a hobby. I sing, play guitar, and write songs. I recently completed a music CD entitled S.D.G. The most popular song is turning out to be Caramel Latte, followed closely by Ezali Malamu. You can listen to and purchase the CD (or MP3s) at CDBaby.com. MP3s of the songs are also available at iTunes and Amazon.com.

I own two folk guitars, a classical guitar, an electric guitar, and a bass guitar. I'm also borrowing my dad's mandolin, which I need to get back to him sometime.

Jessica and I enjoy working out at the gym, swimming, dancing, running, camping, singing together (she has a beautiful voice!), and reading together. We're presently working through the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, just for the fun of it.

Church

Jessica and I are members of Redeemer Covenant Church, in Carrollton, Texas. Redeemer is part of the Evangelical Covenant Church denomination. We sing regularly on the praise team, and we occasionally do special music. I also occasionally teach Sunday School.

References

• Evans, H. Meurig & W. O. Thomas. 1968 [1958]. Y Geiriadur Mawr: The complete Welsh-English English-Welsh Dictionary. Latest Edition. Christopher Davies, A Gwasg Gomer (this printing: 1989)
• Hanks, Patrick, Flavia Hodges, A. D. Mills & Adrian Room. 2002. The Oxford names companion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.