My 10 Things

I know I usually do lists of six and I could have done that here, too, but I decided to follow my sister's lead and challenge to list ten things I've done that most other people might not have (well, some of these my husband has done, too, but I still count them).  So here we go:  I...

1.  Married my high school sweetheart and twenty years later, we're still married -- happily!  I recently read in S's latest book that only 22% of people surveyed said they married their high school sweethearts and only 5% of those surveyed were still married to that person.  So we're anomalies.

2.  Adopted five children.

3.  Have taken nine children, by myself, to the beach, the zoo, the park, the movies and many other places.

4.  Have taken my first ever airline flight by myself, at age 11 -- with a layover!  (I went from Sacramento, CA to LAX to Palm Springs, CA to visit my great-aunt for a week.)

5.  Acted as lead in my high school drama production of "Our Miss Brooks" and won a Best Leading Actress plaque for it (I also got to kiss the "Coach" for real onstage on closing night - woowoo! ... we'd faked it on previous nights).

6.  Love eating sardines and rice -- or lately, sardines and broccoli! -- for breakfast as often as I can.

7.  Can sing and sign the alphabet backwards and have worked diligently on trying to be able to sign it backwards with my left hand while signing it forwards with my right hand at the same time.  What?  It's something to do when insomnia strikes and I don't want to get too thinky about more stressful things.

It's starting to get harder to think of more ... come on, R, you can do it!

8.  Co-wrote a Christmas play with my husband and saw it acted out magnificently by actors of all ages in our church shortly thereafter -- we still set one of the main props from the play out with our other Christmas decorations every December.

9.  Was my high school's JV mascot-cheerleader sophomore year ... while wearing a knee brace!  My mom made my uniforms (costumes?) and it was probably the most fun year I recall from my high school "career."  Our school's basketball team went to the State Championships and so our squad got to cheer in Arco Arena (now Powerbalance Pavilion) where the Sacramento Kings played!  It was awesome!

10. (S helped me come up with this last one.)  Drove from California to Massachusetts in a minivan towing a very heavy (too heavy for the minivan) U-Haul trailer with my high school sweetheart of a husband, camping along the way, with just like $60 cash, no job waiting for us at the other end, while we were in our 20s.  We were essentially "homeless," for like a month until we got jobs to secure a place to live.  Best adventure of my life up to that point.  God was so totally right there with us the whole time!  Even got an entire dinner and dessert for free at Outback Steakhouse in New York (state) along the way.