25 Random THings About Me

I was tagged by some Face Book friends to fill out a '25 random things about me' list. Thought I'd share it here too! I need to learn how to tag bloggy friends!

1) I was 20 years old when I married my high school sweetheart . Going on 14 years in June!

2) I met him in high school marching band. He played snare drum, I played clarinet. I still have my clarinet, it's sitting in the hall closet. I can play it if I have to but nowhere near as good as I used to! We just got the boys a drum set for Christmas...heaven help us....

3) Since the age of 16, I have worked in a bookstore, a day care, as a nanny and as a preschool teacher

4) None of those compare to the work I do...over and over and over...as a mom! Or were they as rewarding.

5) My favorite relative that lives out of state is my Aunt Kathy. She is hilarious and my kids love her too.

6) We live in a rural area and love the open space we are surrounded by. My kids can run around and ride their bikes on our road and aren't bothered by cars.

7) We have 8 chickens in a coop in our backyard. When it's prime laying season, we get 7-8 eggs a day! Did you know that they'll eat just about anything? They'll even eat chicken and eggs....that's just wrong!

8) My favorite pair of shoes are a pair of dark brown cowboy boots!

9) People who drive under the speed limit drive me CRAZY. The 2 lane road that leads into and out of the area we live has a speed limit of 30- and at least a few times a week I get behind someone who insists on driving 25. Doesn't sound like much, but when 30 is slow, 25 is enough to make me want to honk the car horn like a madwoman.

10) I keep all the Christmas cards/photos we get during the season. I LOVE Christmas letters too. I read them again before I put them in a big ziploc and put the year on the bag. I think I started that in 1997....it'll be some good reads years from now!

11) I keep a lot of other stuff too...a lot of my kids toys from the early years, the ones that don't require batteries. Little people, Fisher Price, cars, books...I figure with 5 kids, the chances of a few grandchildren should be in the cards and who knows what they might need. My parents kept some of my things and my boys have enjoyed all my childhood books, legos, speak n spell and speak n math (remember those?) Laurel will get some of my barbies and accessories too.

12) My favorite Broadway musical is Wicked. Bill and I got to go to NYC a year ago while my parents watched the kids. It was so much fun..freezing, but fun!! I've listened to the soundtrack from Wicked so much that my older 3 request certain songs now.

13) I've been to Ireland, but that's the only place out of the country. G and J were 18 months old and my parents watched them (bless them) while Bill had to go there for work. It is so beautiful in Ireland and we hope we get to go again.

14) My mom and dad live next door

15) I pray all my kids don't end up living in different states when they grow up..that'll be really sad :-(

16) I would take a cloudy day over a sunny one anytime...weird, I know.

17) I can remember a lot of middle school and high school..and that scares me since G and J will be in mid school in less than 2 years....yikes....

18) My house is really dusty..probably since we live on a dirt road. And I HATE dusting.

19) A few of my favorite foods: Le Chantilly Bakery's Almond and cheese strudel, Fudrucker's burgers, mashed potatoes and my Grandma's gravy, Cheesecake brownies (a recipe I make from Penezey's) that I can sadly nearly finish off all by myself. Obviously I'm not a health nut....

20) I have 26 albums filled with photos and about 6 photo boxes filled that still need to be in albums. Most of the decorating in our house is done with photos.

21) I play games on my kids Webkinz accounts....my speed of games cuz' my hand eye coordination sucks.

22) I love to shop at Ikea and Children's Place

23) I am pretty neurotic about laundry. Not in doing it in a timely fashion necessarily, but rather HOW I do it. I do an average of 3 loads a day and I don't let many clothing items dry for more than a few minutes...just to get the wrinkles out. I hang everything on hangers. Thankfully I have a decent sized laundry room. It takes extra time to do it that way, but the clothes keep their shape and color and I can sell the majority of my kids clothes at our local twins club clothing and equipment sale, often times for nearly what I paid for them!

24) I have a family blog (obviously, but this was written for FaceBook remember!) that I started last April. It's really interesting to see how it changes the way we see things, the things we can capture with words or photos to remember years from now. Some of it is silly, some of it is serious. There are some online publishing companies that will print out the blog and bind it like a book and I hope to do that so the memories will be there for our kids to read about. If you want to stop in, the web address is listed in my profile.

25) Our family drives to all our vacation destinations...for obvious reasons! We haul an enclosed trailer with us and we have driven to and thru all these states: California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Illinois, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida!! I left off NM, but that's a no brainer....

So, if you feel so inclined...do one of these on your own blog if you have one! I didn't think I had 25 interesting things to even say about myself, so this was a fun exercise.