25 Random and Not So Random Things About Me

I have been tagged 4 times about 25 random and things about me and so I am finally taking the plunge and going to attempt it. I warn you that they really aren’t random because I was just lucky to come with 25 things! I will be impressed if you read through the entire list or should I say book without falling asleep.

1. My husband is my best friend and he can always make me laugh. We don’t get enough quality time together but when we get away for our anniversary weekend every year and for a date every now and then it is heaven! He is very supportive and patient with me and I don’t know what I would do without him.
2. Talia and Tucker mean everything to me. I can’t imagine life without them and would do anything for them. They are amazing and make my life amazing. For some unknown reason I haven’t been able to have any more children and that makes them even more special.
3. My family is awesome! I come from a large family (5 younger sisters and 1 younger brother). Everyone gets together at least once year and it so much fun to see everyone. There is nothing like family and family is everything. I also married into a good-sized family (Trent has 3 sisters) and I love getting together with my in-laws. They are so much fun and I really enjoy them. I live 4 hours from my parents, in-laws and a few siblings so we are able to see them a several times a year.
4. I love boating and water-skiing. I come from a family that owned a boat with a dad that made all of his kids learn to water-ski and slalom whether they liked it or not. Back when I was learning I didn’t like it very much but my dad was persistent and it paid off. I learned to love it and will now do the same thing to my children. I’m married to a man who is obsessed with boating, water-skiing, and wakeboarding. We spend many of our summer evenings on the Willamette River in Newberg. All our summer vacations are planned around boating. Talia is quite the wake boarder and water-skis and Tucker kneeboards and will be trying wakeboarding this summer.
5. I love playing the piano and would like to improve my skills by taking more piano lessons when life isn’t so crazy (I don’t when that will actually happen). I also teach beginner piano lessons to 5 students (2 of them are my children) and I really enjoy that. It is fun to see them progress and the world needs more piano players. I am the Relief Society pianist for my church and do not enjoy that. I love to play piano but I don’t love to play in front of people. I get so nervous I can’t enjoy it and wish I could figure out a way to stop being nervous. Anyone have any ideas?
6. I wake up at 5:15 in the morning to exercise with 2 of my dear friends. We run/walk 4 miles 4-5 times a week. The exercise is great and so is the company. It is such a stress reliever. I wish that it would help me lose some weight but it doesn’t seem to help. At least it is good for my health.
7. I am a night owl. I love to stay up late after everyone goes to bed and have a quiet house to myself. This isn’t very cohesive with getting up at 5:15 in the morning so I am very sleep deprived!
8. I really enjoy reading but am a sporadic reader. I read with my kids and read my scriptures daily but I go in spurts when it comes to reading a good book. When I start reading a book I cannot put it down until I am done. I love the Twilight series and usually finish those books in less than a day or two. Luckily the last one came out on the weekend so that Trent could take care of the kids so that I could read all day. I also love Fablehaven books and am looking forward to new book coming in March. I seem to love teenage and children’s books.
9. I also love children’s movies. When there is a new movie out for the kids I am almost as excited as they are to see it. I prefer the non-animated ones like Spiderwick, Chronicles of Narnia, Matilda, Mary Poppins, 5 Children and It, Skyhigh, Enchanted and lots more.
10. I love to bake and cook. There are times that I do get tired of it but for the most part I really do enjoy creating something delicious to eat. I do enjoy eating the food also!
11. I am also always collecting new recipes and have so many recipes that I can’t even keep track of all them. I have tired to organize them but am always collecting more and so I can never keep up. I need to create a better organization system.
12. I love to make lists and have to make a weekly list of everything I need to do. I rarely get everything done on the list but if it isn’t on my list I will forget about it and it will not get done.
13. I am not very good at telling people no when it comes to volunteering at school or for my children’s activities. At school I get roped into doing things that I never intended on doing. I need to get more of backbone and practice saying no.
14. I am addicted to the Internet, my email and looking at people’s blogs. Sometimes I will go and look at my friends and family’s blogs and then I end reading their friends blogs and so forth. My husband thinks that I am weird for wanting to read about people that I have never met but I think that it is fun! My computer was broken for a couple of days last week and it was good for me to realize how much time I am on the computer and realize that I need try to manage my time better. So here I am wasting my time on a list of 25 random things about me for facebook and my blog.

I can’t believe I still have 10 to go. This is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. Oh well this is more fun than cleaning my house.

15. I love to laugh and make my children laugh. I don’t like my laugh and feel like it is too loud. It is kind of hard to change your laugh though. I was playing Don’t eat Pete with my kids awhile ago and we were laughing so hard that we were crying. It was so much fun. Talia is always laughing and has the best sense of humor. Once you get her laughing she can’t stop. I went to the beach 2 weekends ago with some friends and we laughed all night and it was so refreshing and rejuvenating. I downloaded the I Love to Laugh from Mary Poppins and it is one of our theme songs!
16. I enjoy thrift shopping and with both of my kids in school I am able to go to one of my favorite thrift stores most Tuesdays on their $.99 day. I almost always find some great deals. I love the challenge of digging to find high quality things for cheap!
17. I enjoy grocery shopping. I know that lots of people really dislike that errand but for some odd reason I enjoy it. Maybe it is because I like food so much. I do really try to plan my menu and make a list before I go.
18. I went to my first Broadway musical last September (Phantom of the Opera) and fell in love! Wicked is coming to Portland in March and I bought Talia and I tickets for our early birthday presents. We are so excited and will counting down the days soon. Musicals are about the last thing Trent would like to watch so I am going to help Talia fall in love them also.
19. My husband and I only buy fixer upper houses for some reason. Trent is very handy and can do most of the work himself, and I paint, shop and clean. We have owned a 4-plex and 2 houses and everyone one of them have been mostly redone. Trent says that we will not buy a fixer upper next time but I know my husband better than that. We will just have to wait and see.

This is harder than I thought it would be. I don’t know I am going to be able come up with 25 things!

20. We recently tore up our yard and put in a new one with new landscaping and it reminded me of how much I dislike yard work. I hear about those people that love gardening and I really wish I did because then my yard and garden would probably do look better. I will continue to garden and maybe someday I will learn to like it.
21. I really need to work on being more outgoing and friendly. We recently moved into a bigger house less than a mile away. It resulted in a new school and in a new church ward and stake. My children have been quite resilient and have made many new friends. I on the other hand have struggled to make friends. It is a much slower process for me and it made me realize how much I need to work on being more outgoing. I would like to be more outgoing I just haven’t figured out to motivate myself to actually do it.
22. I love to scrap book and make cards. I have lots of supplies and am trying to start a paper-crafting group that would meet once a month. I just need to meet more people so that I can start it.
23. I love having a clean kitchen and it is my dream to have all of my kitchen counters cleared off. I am constantly putting things away and clearing off the counters but they magically fill up again before I know it.
24. I am not a fan of high places and went bungee jumping while I was going to school at BYU. It was all because of peer pressure and of course I bought the 1-hour package because it was a better deal. The people that worked there told me they had never heard anyone scream louder. I was quite proud and wasn’t surprised because the terror that I felt was expressed in those screams. I actually jumped more than 1 time because my so-called friends talked me into it. My friends told me it wouldn’t be as bad the 2nd time and I was a sucker. I guess at least I can say that I went bungee jumping.
25. Last one - Yippeeeeee! I love photography. Trent and I got a nice camera for Christmas and I love it. We are hoping to take a photography class soon so that we can learn to take better pictures.