I'm it!

Courtesy of Marianne, I've been tagged into sharing a few random facts from my life. :-) (Check below to see if you've been tagged, too.)

What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was a senior in high school, eagerly awaiting my graduation and the promised contact lenses that came along with it. Perhaps I was in the woods behind my house, practicing my graduation speech (over and over and over...). Or I might have been telling my mom that I refused to have cake at my open house like everyone did. Instead I wanted chocolate-covered strawberries and goodies my grandma baked. I was excited to leave South Dakota behind and move with my parents back to my hometown—at least until the fall, when I moved away to college.

Five things on your to-do list:
1. Prepare a Sunday school lesson for a second- and third-grade class
2. Proofread a magazine (because it's my job, not because I am an obsessive grammarian, though perhaps I am; see bad habits)
3. Clean up my office/craft room (it's a bit crazy in there; again, see bad habits)
4. Clean the bathroom
5. Clean out a bathroom drawer that has gotten out of hand

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. Avocados
2. Cheese sticks
3. Craisins
4. Hard-boiled eggs
5. Sonic's strawberry limeade (maybe not technically a snack, but I love it!)
6. There are so many more...but I have to stop.

Five things you would do if you became a billionaire:
1. Open a home for needy/abused children and offer them a brighter future
2. Visit every continent (I've never been outside of North America), visiting my Compassion child at some point
3. Invest in my husband's business and elsewhere
4. Quit my job and volunteer instead (see number 1)
5. Pay off the house and redecorate

Five bad habits:
1. I edit everything. I jab my husband in church when there's a misspelling or grammar error on the PowerPoint slide (and sadly, there are many). I can't read a book or a magazine without a terribly critical eye, and then I shout triumphantly when I find an error. A little dorky, yes. A bad habit for sure.

2. I check my personal e-mail at least every hour during the day. This has been described as obsessive. It's also not great when I'm supposed to be focused on work. One benefit: At least you know that if you e-mail me I will get your note almost immediately.

3. I am not, shall we say, the neatest person who ever lived. (See to-do list above.) It takes some effort for me to maintain order; I wish I were better about having habits that fostered, instead of fought against, neatnicity (not a word, I realize). For example, piles of papers don't do anything for a tidy room. I'm working on this one.

4. I tend to be late more often than early. Fortunately, with the positive influence of my husband, whose firm belief is that if you're not early, you're late, I have been more timely recently. At least a bit. Yipee for my husband!

5. I steal covers. This only affects my husband, and in my defense, I do this while I am completely unconscious, and I have no malicious intent whatsoever.

Five places you've lived:
1. Richmond, British Columbia
2. Miller, South Dakota
3. Siloam Springs, Arkansas
4. Goldendale, Washington
5. Colorado Springs, Colorado

Five jobs you've had:
1. Painter of high school lockers, doors, and dorm rooms (it was a boarding school)
2. Deli girl (made sandwiches, scooped ice cream, ran the cash, etc.)
3. Newspaper intern (three times over)
4. Small-town reporter (three whole months of that was plenty)
5. Freelance writer

Tag, you're it! Becky Zwicker, Jessica Barnes, Jessica Mertz

Gotta get a goal

This past weekend, I went to a one-day scrapbooking extravaganza. As I walked in, the 1,500 people in attendance—all busily cutting card stock and taping down photos at paper-covered tables—gave me the feeling that I was going to a convention for some kind of cult. (One of my friends likened it to a Star Trek Convention.) People were rolling in bags and bags of supplies; one lady I saw had a whole luggage set packed, I'm sure, with punches, pages, and embellishments of every shape and size. (It made my two medium-size bags look rather like tiny purses.)

I got 10 pages done; some of the five friends I went with got 25 or more pages completed. I'm not the speediest, I'll admit. But I still have fun—especially when scrapbooking with delightful friends.

While fun is fabulous, the reality is that I am only now wrapping up the pages featuring August 2006 photos. (This is in part because my first attempt at scrapbooking was to preserve memories of my August 2006 wedding; I made three albums containing dating and wedding photos, which took me almost a year.) So I've decided to set a goal: 12 pages or three month's worth of photos each month, whichever comes first. At this rate, I will at least be up to date by the time Christmas comes to town (in all its dozens-of-photos-from-many-parties glory).

I'll post about my progress and share one of the pages I like best each month. This, I hope, will keep me motivated and get all my photos neatly into albums.

Here's one to start; it's the first—and only—page I've made since the event. It's the final page in my wedding album; I've been procrastinating it for a while.

A brand-new miracle

One of the most beautiful things in life is a precious baby, fresh from God.

In an earlier post, I mentioned a friend of mine was expecting a little boy. She had him Friday; he was perfect, with an adorable little tuft of black hair. It was such an honor and delight to meet him and hold him and watch his dark, tiny eyes open just a little.

Somehow, all seems right with the world when a gift of such precious proportions is in my arms.