Getting to Know You -- Getting to Know All About You!

Susan, although she thinks she doesn't remember well, tagged me so herewith are my answers to the latest tagging.

By the way, not because I'm lazy -- I am -- but because I don't want to leave anyone out who might want to play, consider this as being tagged! Let me know you've played in the comments so I can go read about you on your blog.

Simply answer the questions and then tag others as you desire.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
In 1998 we were living in my parents’ home while they traveled around the country visiting all the places they had dreamed of when considering retirement years. We were homeschooling our two oldest daughters (our youngest wasn’t born yet) and trying to get connected in this town we grew up in. We had layers and layers of friends and acquaintances here, but not in our newer role as a family who homeschooled. The fact that we continued to homeschool after moving back from Arizona was a curiosity to many friends and family, thus the need to find those other connections. We also were becoming reacquainted with the political landscape and began volunteering at the Republican office at the insistence of our oldest daughter, who, at the time was 9. That same daughter also persuaded us to volunteer for a governor’s campaign. We traveled around Colorado extensively as we studied the history of it.


2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (in no particular order)?
a. Finish up on my transcripts/record-keeping workshop for the seminars coming up later this month
b. Begin and hopefully finish my portfolios/resumes workshop for the last seminar of the month
c. Lay-out an action plan for the Homeschool Fair the first weekend in August and begin to make those contacts
d. Read aloud another few chapters of _Swiss Family Robinson_ with my youngest
e. Finish organizing the various mountains and foothills of paper that are laying around the living room after being collected from around the house the last weekend

3. Snacks I enjoy:
sunflower seeds
fruit smoothies

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire (in no particular order):
This is a dangerous idea because I enjoy considering how to spend money!
*Buy a house for my family
*Buy a new car or two or three
*Travel with my family near and far
*Make it possible for my older sister to retire in comfort
*Get my in-laws a maid and a cook, and help them live more comfortably
*Help our friend fund his seminary tuition
*Help fund the upgrading of our church to include a bathroom upstairs for all the elderly we have in our congregation who cannot go down the stairs
*Help fund things like Pirate Christian radio stations, Higher Things
*Help fund the widows’ fund with CHEC
I could go on-- a billion dollars is a lot to spend!

5. Places I have lived:
Japan – Fukuoka Prefector on the island of Kyushu (this is on the northwest part of the island, as a reference, Nagasaki, known for its production of fine china and the second atomic bomb site in WWII, is on the southwest part of the island)
Montana – Great Falls
Colorado – Colorado Springs, Fort Collins
Arizona – Phoenix and Black Canyon City

6. Jobs I have had:
*In jr. hi and hi sch. I babysat A LOT!
*In hi sch. and college I helped process cadets into the AFA by giving shots from a “gun” (gave them 4 or 5 shots at one time) and helped to make certain that all their paperwork was in order. I also filled in for those fellows who didn’t have a girlfriend to take the manners class in their senior year.
*In college I was a census taker. This was hard because the college town I lived in had a huge migrant population that spoke Spanish, and I did not. It was frustrating and there wasn’t any way to make it better because the supervisor just plain old didn’t care.
*I worked (and lived) on top of Pikes Peak one summer and was the manager in the hand-made jewelry department.
*I was a “party” waitress at the AFA Officers Club, which meant I was part of the wait staff that served special functions like swearing-ins, retirement parties, promotion parties, wedding receptions, birthday parties, anniversary parties, etc. This was a very fun job! I like it a lot! Got paid well too!
*I was a phlebotomist for a while in a blood bank after I dropped out of college. I did not like this job.
*Then I became a legal secretary and was working towards being a paralegal. I enjoyed this job, but sometimes the cases were hard to let go of and the outcomes were upsetting.
*Then I became a medical secretary and worked in the front office of a chief of staff at a local hospital.
*Now, I work as an editor of a homeschool publication, and as a leader liaison where we (my husband and I do this together) mentor and teach leaders about leadership issues, and I teach seminars on homeschooling your children through high school.
*And yea, I’m still teaching two kids at home.
*Recently I've added Medical Receptionist to my jobs as I work part-time in the same physicians office I worked in before.

7. People I would like to know more about (in no particular order):

I would love to go to a Higher Things conference and get to know the Loopers there better. Even when the conference was in Colorado Springs in ’07 we couldn’t afford to go… (whine!)