Tagged...

Cami, Julie, & Shayla, your tags were great! here's mine....

5 things you may not know about me....

1. I love taking road trips, yet I'm a "home-body."
Wayne and I started our marriage with a road trip honeymoon up the CA coast (craziest fun honeymoon memory was hiking Half Dome at Yosemite together). I love discovering new places w/ Wayne. He's my GPS (see #3). Since then we've made many fun family memories this way...discovering the good 'ol USofA together, visiting church and US history sites, museums, temples, and playing with extended family & friends. Oh, the good times!
THAT SAID...I am a home-body, and love to be home with my family. I've thought a lot about this and I'm pretty sure it has to do with losing my mom at the tender age of 49, and having a close call when Grace was born w/ a heart defect. Although I often feel like I live in a zoo, I love time with my family and fully realize that our time together is a blessing to be treasured. Sometimes while I'm doing the "ordinary things" (help w/ homework, breaking up squabbles, dinner, carpool, grooming kids, etc.) I can hear my mom's voice telling me, "Cherish this!"...so I do.

2. I am anxious to fully recover from my c-section because I love to exercise. For me, exercise is the catalyst that effects how I eat and feel. My goal is to best my time in a sprint triathlon next fall. We have a super fun triathlon here for people of all shapes, sizes, and abilities...my kind of race. It's on Cape Cod, one of our fav. places in MA.

3. Having said I love road trips, this next fact is worrisome:) ...I am directionally challenged. Right now our church building has a circular hall with all of the classrooms on the outside of the circle and the chapel & cultural hall in the middle. I honestly wonder if I'll ever figure it out! Wayne and I kid that on the day they passed out the inner GPS gene, I was absent. I'm pretty confident a GPS is all I'm getting for Christmas this year.

4. My favorite parties are Christiansen parties. Because we live far apart, C. parties don't take place nearly frequent enough and maybe that's why they are so full of energy and the volume is so high; talk about a ruckus! The most recent C. party I attended was a bridal shower for my sister-in-law. She sat there taking it in ("who are these people?"), and dished out a few times too. Oh my, we knew Ange was a great family fit when she still spoke with us after that:):):)...her mom was there too! We fully admit we're nuts and we simply have a ball together. Come to think of it, C. parties are really essentially parties including my cousin Sharlene and my sis, Sherry....hmmmm! LOL!

5. Sometimes I wonder if my sisters and I are twins separated by years. After not seeing each other for months and months, we'll show up to a family gathering with coordinated outfits, (without pre-coordinating). The first year Wayne and I were married I decorated our tree with red little bows all around and heirloom ornaments. We stopped in Vegas to visit my sister on our way to CA for Christmas and sure enough her tree looked identical to mine! The latest thing that made me lol, was a picture I sent of our sons' room. It's blue with horizontal sage and navy stripes 3/4 of the way down the wall. My sis sent a picture of her sons' room which I'd never seen and it was the SAME only her stripes were vertical. We've been through SO much, my sisters and I....we've got enough differences to keep things interesting and enough seasoned love to keep us close. I'm thankful for sis-in-laws I love like sisters too.

That's all I got...Now I tag Melanie, Ellen, Rolana, E. Beutler, and all of my sisters & sis-in-laws.