25 Things about me-Dam Facebook

Since my friend strong armed me into doing this for Facebook, I thought I would share here as well.

1. I had three babies in three years. The only thing that could have been harder would have been triplets. On second thought, I could have had twins with my third baby. Considering my prayers were answered, we have three beautiful individual children and I owe God a really big favor now.
2. I struggle daily with the balance of my family, work and myself. Oh yeah and time with my husband (Sorry Sweetie). I’m almost absolutely sure I wouldn’t change it for the world.
3. I love my husband more than the day I married him because children change everything. And because he will kick my butt when no one else will. Motivation comes from mysterious outlets.
4. After I had my three wonderful babies, I had a life time goal of completing a triathlon before I was thirty. I didn’t actually make the before part, but I completed my first triathlon one month after I turned thirty. Now it has become an annual event for me.
5. Which leads me into my love hate relationship with working out, I use to love to run and now I hate it. Running 8 miles was not something I had to even think about, now I’m struggling to enjoy completing 4 miles. But I love the results of how I feel afterwards so I will continue my love hate relationship.
6. I love the circle of friends I have. They are extremely understanding to all my faults. They are the best.
7. I think sometimes I was born without the filter that keeps you from sticking your foot in your mouth. Social diarrhea seems to be a constant in my social life. Sorry Ang about the pecans comment last Monday.
8. Vacations would fall right behind my first favorite past time, which entails weekends with my kids and my husband. If I had my choice of future vacation, I would love to visit Europe. Italy, Ireland, France, England, Spain in that order.
9. For past Vacations, my all time favorite would have to be our honeymoon to Hawaii. We visited Maui, The Big Island and Kaui. We saw a lot of humpback whales up close and, of course, enjoyed a lot of Daiquiris. Each island holds something special to me, but my favorite was Maui.
10. I climbed Mount St. Helens when I was twenty with my dad. After we reached the top, looking down into the crater was extremely exhilarating. Our ease of climbing to the top made us feel a little adventurous so we veered off the trail path and decided to follow an old lava chute down. Needless to say it took us twice as long to get down the mountain as it did to get up the mountain. Lesson learned. Stick to the trail.
11. I would love to climb Mt. Rainer someday.
12. I’ve held many obsessive hobbies over the years including making beaded jewelry, knitting blankets and now currently reading books. I should probably join a book club.
13. A friend talked me into reading the Twilight series and I read the whole series in two weeks. Now you can see where the obsessive behavior falls.
14. I love reading about conspiracy theories. Secretly sometimes I believe them.
15. Ironically between my brothers and me, I was probably the most likely to move out of the State of Wisconsin first, but I’m still here and my older brother lives right outside of Washington DC and my younger brother lives in St. Paul, MN. Well at least they don’t live in any warmer climate than what Wisconsin has to offer. Heehee.
16. My ultimate dream car would be a ’73 Barracuda convertible. I wouldn’t mind a ’69 Mustang convertible either. Along with a 2008 Dodge Charger. Okay so I am a little materialistic, but it only exists in my fantasy world. The three vehicles we own now are a far cry from my dream ones.
17. If I had unlimited amount of funds, I would have a house in San Francisco (love this city). This obviously goes along with that fantasy world thing.
18. I would love to move back to the west coast when my youngest turns eighteen or sooner if possible.
19. As a freshman in high school, I went to nationals to compete in the 500 yd swim. Even though I was at the bottom of the food chain, I still enjoyed the experience.
20. I still feel 24 even if the mirror reminds me I’m 31.
21. I wish I had more patience.
22. I love the Blackberry Martini at the restaurant Coast. Maybe a little too much.
23. Dreams change as your life experience changes. Erin, this one is for your Philosophy class.
24. I am a firm believer in everything happens for a reason. Good or bad.
25. The only thing I regret is not taking off after high school and backpacking through Europe. Other than that, I have no regrets.

Mutiny

Ugh! I thought the terrible twos were over. Or maybe it just has to do with three children of the same gender becoming sneaky, naughty and defiant together. I'm not sure what is going on in my house hold, but a mutiny has begun. The parents against the children and of course, we are now out number. The day ended with the normal evening routine, preparing the kids for bed. Book, teeth and individual talk time with me. I just finished putting them to bed when James came home. He quickly went into their room to say goodnight to all of them before they fell asleep. Good thing too. All three are being very quiet, which is unusual because they tend to spend about thirty minutes talking to each other before they actually fall asleep. James goes to kiss our youngest, Child #3, goodnight and he finds her chewing on something. He's trying not to laugh because she is trying so hard to say nothing without opening her mouth. He asks her again "What's in your mouth?" She finally shows him. This is where I have to explain that my parents had stopped over earlier in the day and dropped off a bucket of salt-water taffy that they had brought back from GA. So anyway, Child #3 had salt-water taffy in her mouth. We made her get up and brush her teeth again and obviously never to do that again. Child #2 and Child #1 are pretending to be falling asleep during this whole episode, which I find unsual because the fact that Child #3 got to eat one piece of candy and they didn't. Normally they would be complaining that wasn't fair. It occurs to me. Child #3probably has more somewhere in her bed. So James and I both ask Child #3 if she has more taffy. With no remorse, Child #3 simply says "Yes." I ask "Where." She responds "under my pillow." I proceed to ask the other two if they have taffy under their pillows. They both say in unison "NO." I lift up their pillows and they have a boat load of candy under there too. James and I were trying to keep straight faces while scolding them for lying and harboring candy. We quickly get in the hallway to let out our chuckles. I say "we are in so much trouble. They are already ganging up on us." Then my oldest yells at us that it was mommy's fault because she left the bucket of candy on the counter. They all agreed that Child #3 was the instigator in the situation. James and I couldn't stop laughing. The Hansen household has been turned upside down.

What is up with revolving doors?

What is the point of revolving doors anyway? They are heavy and clumsy and just freakin ridiculous. Yes I am talking literally about revolving doors. And what would possess a restaurant ever to install revolving doors in the main entranceway? Don't they want people to come into their restaurant? Isn't there a rule that only hotels have revolving doors? Well anyway. We were heading out to a new restaurant with friends and guess what? They had revolving doors. I always feel that tiny bit of hesitancy before pushing through a revolving door kind of like when you were a kid playing jump rope, trying to find the right timing to jump into the rope. So my husband went in front of me to push the door first. I had two options. One to jump in right behind me or two to wait and push the door myself. Of course, my last minute split decision was to jump in right behind him that way I wouldn't have to actually control the door. I'm not sure if it was my slight distracted focus on my husband nicely shaped rear or just a lapse in judgement, but the door stopped moving. We were stuck. My husband is trying to push forward and I can't figure out what keeps pulling my arm back. My eyes follow my arm down to my hand to find that the gift bag that I was carrying to give to my friend for her birthday was holding the door in place. I finally tug the bag free and we toppled into the restaurant and I let out a full out barrel laugh. All eyes on us due to my loud laugh. I think I might have scared a few people. According to my husband, these things can only happen to me. At least these things make for a good story. I hadn't even had a drink yet.

Excuses

So Child #1, my five year old, asked me a few weeks ago if she could have her nails painted like her friends at school. Now that I have had a few weeks to mull this over I have warmed up to the idea of letting her explore this area of being a girl. Off we go to the store to pick out her own bottle of polish while her sisters are at school. I was fully aware that her sisters would be jealous of Child #1's freshly painted pink nails when I picked them up from school, but I would deal with the complaining for the evening. I told them that it was too late tonight and that we would paint them tomorrow. Of course, my answer wasn't good enough for Child #2 so she kept wining and crying about how it wasn't fair that Child #1 had her nails painted. I repeated very calming, five more times, that we would paint hers tomrorow. I continued to clean up after dinner and ran down stairs to throw another load of laundry into the washer. It seemed Child #2 had accepted my final rebuttal, the complaining had ceased for the moment. When I walk into the living room to tell the kids to get ready for bed, I discover Child #2 had a full set up pink nails. In my moment of shock that my kids would defy my authority so easily, I yell that she was grounded and we would NOT be going to Discovery World tomorrow. Child #2 was speechless, but she almost looked like she was secretly happy it was worth to get in trouble for. Child #1 jumps in to help with excuses, hoping she could save Discovery World, with "She told me to paint her nails because she wanted her nails painted." Obviously at this critical moment, Child #1 had said the wrong thing to me. I go off with the typical parent sayings. "If your friends told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?" and "When you know it is wrong, you shouldn't listen to your friends." I should have left it alone at this point, but I continued on with one last fleeting attempt to get through their heads that they should be their own persons. "You shouldn't listen to anyone when they tell you to do something naughty." My little, too smart for her own good, daughter says to me. "So if you tell us to jump off the bridge, we should jump off the bridge?" I really have to get a start on researching boot camps. We are definitely going to be in trouble in a few more years.

Middle Child-What was I thinking?

This morning, it was way too cold to go to church or breakfast for that matter. The kids drag me out of bed to make breakfast because they were hungry. Imagine that hungry when you wake up, who would've thought? I decided I would make breakfast burritos so I start the sausage, scrambled eggs and shredding the cheese. Trying not to burn the sausage and eggs, I pulled my attention away from shredding the cheese. I was in my little own world, let's face it the morning isn't my best time of day. I vaguely remember the girls laughing and running around behind me. I think I just passed it off as them doing their dress up thing and dancing around. The sausage and eggs were done so I turned around to grab the cheese. The cheese disappeared and Child #2 is running the other direction laughing with a trail of shredded cheese falling in her wake. The shit never reached the fan because I was chasing her down like a lion after a water buffalo. Needless to say, I am looking into boot camps now. 13 is going to hell on earth in the Hansen household.