10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me

I really enjoy reading bloggers’ posts that share fun little get-to-know-you details! At the end of the day, I really don’t want this blog to be all about me, but we’ll let today’s post serve as a little reintroduction. 🙂

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me:

1 // I’ve got a bit of the South in my background. Which I think is awesome because my husband and I love it so much! 😉 I was born in North Carolina and lived in Austin, Texas, from kindergarten through 2nd grade.

2 // I played the saxophone for 9 years. Most people guess I played flute(??) which cracks me up. I was alto sax all the way, with a bit of tenor and soprano sax throughout the years. Jazz band was my life from 6th grade on up through high school (and I miss it SO much now). I also lived and breathed pep band, marching band, wind ensemble, and pit orchestra. 🙂

 

3 // I am TERRIBLE at drinking water. I think I’ve lived most of my life dehydrated but I must’ve learned to function normally that way… My husband says I sip water like a bird. 🙂 I like water when it’s ice cold, but I always gravitate toward things like herbal tea or juice. At work, the staff is doing a water drinking challenge for the month of May, counting our fluid ounces of water compared to the hospital in town… The school is technically winning right now but I am not really helping our count at all. I really need to improve in my hydration habits…

4 // I took German in middle and high school. I actually bought a “Learn to Speak German” book before we could start language classes at school, and I also used my dad’s old “Learn German” cassette tapes to practice. And I stuck the free German word labels from that book all over items in our house. Bless my parents’ hearts. I love the language, though I’m really rusty at this point. My sister did even more German in school than me, and she got to go to Germany for 3 weeks! So cool. Our family is almost 100% German so there’s something special about learning your heritage language.

5 // I started ballet really late. I fell in love with it the summer before 9th grade, I think. I contacted a local studio and began to take private lessons and then joined classes that fall. I had taken hip-hop with a couple of my friends but really started to delve into ballet before long! I was able to mostly catch up to my grade level (through a lot of hard work) and take a technique class with girls my age. Ballet is something I really regret not starting at a young age. It was a challenge I really wanted to try even though I was older, and I’m glad I did because the time I was able to dance was so rewarding!

6 // I have horrible vision. If you know the prescription “language”… my left eye is -7.00 and my right eye is -6.50!! That’s bad. Luckily, I went to the eye doctor recently and he said that my vision has not worsened and with me being 25, that’s a great thing! I’m glad it has stabilized. I have soft contacts currently. My sister and I did have something called Paragon CRT contacts for a couple years when we were in middle school, and Paragon CRT is totally fascinating. (It’s hard contacts that you only wear at night and they reshape the cornea of your eye so you can walk around during the day without anything on your eyes!) But we moved back to soft contacts, which are a lot more low maintenance. 🙂

7 // I (ahem, accidentally) brought a live bullet to South Korea. That’s all I’ll say here. You can read the full story if you want to learn more. 😉

8 // I’m 5’6″ and the shortest in my family. Isn’t it funny how you can’t really get a good grasp of how tall or short people are from their blog? Unless they’re constantly standing next to others in their photos. Bloggers don’t usually share their heights in their About Me sections. 🙂 My whole family is tall and thin and even though I’m the oldest child, I’m the shortest. One thing, though, that does frustrate me are rude comments I’ve gotten from strangers and even friends over the years about my weight/build (I’ve been called “gross” and “bony” and much worse). I think that Chandler wrote about this so well in her post on being “too skinny.” It’s worth a read. We ought to be thoughtful and respectful to people who are on all areas of the weight/build spectrum! All right. Moving on from my soapbox to more positive things…

9 // We currently live in the house that Vice President Walter Mondale grew up in. Walter Mondale was the Vice President under President Jimmy Carter. In our tiny town, it’s known as The Mondale House, and it’s the place Bjorn and I are currently renting to start out the first few years of our life together! It was built before 1900.

I did get to meet Walter Mondale when he came back to his hometown for its 150 year celebration. We stood around in the dining room here and ate cookies and drank lemonade with him! 🙂 Sometimes, when I’m sitting in the living room, I still see people slow their cars down to snap a photo of the house – and sometimes, they get out and pose for a photo on the lawn. It is really neat imagining what it may have been like to grow up here!

10 // My husband Bjorn and I had the same favorite future baby name in mind…even before we met each other! We discovered this when we began dating. (When Bjorn and I started dating, we knew it was the real deal. We knew this was it! More on our love story (from both perspectives) here.) How fun is it that we agreed on the same baby name before ever discussing it? 🙂

It’s been fun coming up with these random things you didn’t know about me! Now, I want to get to know you! What is something most people don’t often realize or know about you?? I can’t wait to hear!