8 Random Facts

Katherine (www.meaningandauthenticity.blogspot.com) tagged me for this "8 Random Facts" list, but I don't know anyone else who blogs! So this is probably stopping at this point with me, and luckily Katherine tagged someone else besides me.

1. I'm an only child, the daughter of an only child, and I'm the mother of four children.
(Children: oldest son DC, oldest daughter AE, middle son BJ, youngest daughter MJ)

2. I've had six cocker spaniels in my life. The current one is a sweet blonde cocker named Baillie. When AE was an angry 14 year old adolescent, who would lock herself in her bedroom, she unexpectedly gave me a blond cocker spaniel puppy. She invited me into her room, and there was this darling, little puppy AE had bought for me on her bed.

3. I have a very low voice and am told by my husband that I cannot keep a tune. (He periodically tells me this while we're singing at church.) I remember being in 5th grade and singing on the phone with my best girl friend singing on the other end.

4. I like to write letters and send cards to people. I also think it is important to write thank you notes. While the children were at home, every Christmas I would make a check-off list for all the notes to be written, including their dad and me. The list stayed up on the refrigerator until all the notes were written.

5. I have been an elementary school teacher in Washington State, Oregon, Virginia, and Texas. I liked teaching 2nd grade best, although teaching 2 year olds was a lot of fun in the 1990's. When C. was in grad school at Oregon State University, I taught at Eddyville, which was a spot on the road to the coast and only had a school, a church, and a post office in a trailer. There were 250 kids in K-12.

6. I was a La Leche League leader for 12 years.

7. I hang clothes on the clothesline and have done so ever since we moved to Texas in 1978. I hang everything except permanent press items outside. (Though since C. retired in 2002, there are few such types of clothes to wash anymore.) I love to hang clothes out on the line!

8. I own my parents' house in Bellingham, Washington, which we have rented since my father died in 1993. After MJ finishes high school next year (2008), we have to decide if we want to move back there. So many friends live in TX, plus in the next few years DC and his wife may have children. . . . In an ideal world, we'd summer there and winter here, but that's pretty expensive, and we'd have to sell one of the houses. . . . So I own a house in Bellingham.

Let me know if someone wants to be tagged to do this!