I am Sharla, aka The Mom.
100 Things About Me. Just for fun:
1. I am mom to 7 lovely children.
2. I have been married to The Husband for almost 17 years.
3. I am passionate about adoption. 5 of our kids are adopted.
4. I am an aunt to 25 nieces and nephews and a great-aunt to 8 so far.
5. Most days I wear jeans and a long-sleeve shirt – even on the hottest days of summer.
6. I homeschool most of my kids and most days I’m really glad that I do.
7. I love watching The Biggest Loser…while eating a big bowl of popcorn!
8. I love to scrapbook but am hopelessly behind in my albums, always!
9. I love our house. It has character.
10. I love living on an acreage even though it surprises me every day because I didn’t think I was an “acreage-type”.
11. I don’t know what I think an acreage type is exactly, just not me!
12. I am scared of mice, so much so that I didn’t sleep the whole first night that Fred’s hamster escaped because it is grey and small and looks like a mouse and I kept picturing it climbing up the stairs, squishing itself under my door, climbing onto my bed and running all over me. I can scream loudly and shrilly when I see a mouse in the house. We have very few mice at this house (so far).
13. I am not good at keeping the house tidy. I don’t understand how people can organize their houses and keep them that way. People like that amaze me. I am honestly mystified by this. I have tried everything from FlyLady to a cleaning lady and nothing seems to work.
14. I am good at cooking and baking and I really love making all kinds of food. I also like eating it!
15. I love looking through recipe books but my favorites are by Sandi Richard.
16. I don’t like the weather to be too cold or too hot. For me, 20* C is about right. Once it’s over 25*, I get grouchy. I’d rather be too cold than too hot. The only exception is that I don’t mind dry heat like in Las Vegas.
17. I have one brother but have six brothers-in-law and six sisters-in-law.
18. I have really fantastic sisters-in-law.
19. I get a kick out of my kids, which is probably why I am still sane!
20. Last year I published my first book and a separate e-book.
21. I am working on writing 2 more adoption-related e-books.
22. Appetizers and salads are my favorite things to eat.
23. I am a night owl.
24. I like to read and I read at least 25 books a year. It’s almost the only New Year’s Resolution that I am able to accomplish every year.
25. I have some great friends.
26. I like playing board games, especially word games like Scattergories and Boggle. I am the undefeated family champion in Ticket to Ride (the train game).
27. I can be a t.v.-aholic. I like some reality shows, Law & Order and Criminal Mind type shows, and some cooking shows which inspire me to try to make new dishes.
28. I watched the entire first six seasons of ER. I am embarrassed to admit that it took me only about a month to watch like a zillion hours of medical procedures but on a brighter note, I feel fairly confident that if I was ever caught in a situation where I had to perform an emergency tracheotomy and had only an exacto knife, a juice box, some tape runner, and alcohol, I would be up to the task!
29. I like home parties. I’d rather shop by home party catalog (Pampered Chef, Discovery Toys, Home Interiors, Tupperware, Partylite, Epicure, etc.) then drag screaming children to the mall with me any day.
30. I am a perfectionist when it comes to loading the dishwasher and cringe whenever the kids do it. I am trying to get better at delegating, but it is a weak point for me.
31. I love taking the kids to parades, especially the small town ones where they throw candy and let the kids hug the mascots.
32. Life goes by so fast so I try really hard to let my kids be kids and enjoy their growing up years.
33. I have PMDD and it is one of the hardest things about my life.
34. I LOVE the first week of Spring when the snow is melting and you can smell things wanting to grow and you can drive with your windows rolled down and sing loudly to your music without caring who stares at you because you feel so happy that it is finally Spring.
35. I love the colours in the Fall.
36. My Love Languages are Quality Time and Gifts.
37. I am usually running late.
38. The clock in my van is set 9 minutes early and that is about the only way that I am ever on time.
39. I love Christmas.
40. I am a planner at heart but with having a non-planner husband and 7 kids, some with Special Needs, I have become very spontaneous.
41. Nachos are my comfort food of choice. I load up organic blue corn chips with grated tex mex or jalapeno jack cheese, tomatoes, onions, red peppers, and fresh jalapenos and eat a whole tray in front of the tv. It’s my perfect downtime activity!
42. I have made a lot of mistakes in my life but thankfully, as I get older, the severity of the mistakes seems to be going down. Like now, my mistakes are things like putting my finger in my eye after I just cut up a jalapeno or habenero pepper or getting in the van and realizing that I’m not wearing any shoes!
43. I love spicy food and have a pretty high spice tolerance.
44. I am getting grey hair. I think it matches the wrinkles next to my eyes rather well!
45. I used to be an excellent speller. Now my brain only seems to function at half its prior ability.
46. I sometimes have a really, really bad memory.
47. I drink a Pepsi mixed with Cream Soda Slurpee almost daily.
48. I will drive to five Convenience Stores in search of one that has both Pepsi (or Coke) and Cream Soda in their Slurpee machine if I am having a particularly stressful day. If none of the five do, I will pour a glass of Pepsi and put it in my freezer to make a homemade Slurpee.
49. I don’t like camping.
50. I do like hotels.
51. Bernard Callebaut Chocolate is my drug of choice.
52. I am a stay-at-home mom at heart, but the term work-at-home mom is probably more accurate.
53. I sometimes train new foster and adoptive parents. I really enjoy it.
54. I run an online adoption resource.
55. I enjoy baths.
56. I almost never take them.
57. I want to make a difference in the world.
58. I know that this is not a good example for my kids but…
59. I don’t like to share my candy, my chocolates, or my Slurpees.
60. I want a new camera. I probably won’t be able to figure out how to take good pictures with that one either though, so I am not going to give in to the temptation.
61. My brother is an award winning photographer and I wish I had gotten that talent as well.
62. I wish I could sing beautifully.
63. I can’t.
64. I am an excellent starter, but have a hard time finishing. I always think up new projects to start in the meantime.
65. I love learning.
66. I have an I-pod and love it.
67. Some of the songs that are on my I-pod I would be embarrassed for people to know about because they are so geeky.
68. I am wordy.
69. The Husband and I play Boggle and Scrabble on his Iphone in our bed. I used to always win because of #68, but he is catching up and sometimes even wins.
70. My favorite grocery store is Save-On Foods because I like their cheese. I also like their 15% off day the first Tuesday of every month.
71. My least-favorite activity is taking all the kids to the grocery store. Keep in mind that one of my kids has ADHD and three have sensory processing disorders, one of which gives her a compulsion to touch EVERYTHING she sees. Combine that with Einstein who has Asperger’s and also has sensory processing disorder and occasionally still tantrums in public at 10 and The Ferrari and Fred who don’t want to run errands with me because they are bored and I won’t buy them sugar cereals and I would rather be at the dentist having a root canal without freezing.
72. I love Jesus.
73. My faith as a Christian is important to me but I sometimes forget to rely on God and try to control things myself (and forget that control is just an illusion).
74. Even 11 years after having daughters, I still love dressing them and doing their hair.
75. I used to be that geeky mom that dresses her kids in matching outfits and sometimes I even bought myself matching clothes. Really awful, I know! The kids seem to have outgrown letting me do this.
76. I enjoy blogging.
77. I started off blogging for family on a private blog 8 years ago when most people hadn’t even heard of blogging and when it was still referred to as a “weblog”.
78. I’m not a good swimmer which is one of the reasons that all of our kids take lessons and are very strong swimmers.
79. I love, love, love Disneyland. I believe it IS the happiest place on earth!
80. My kids have three sets of grandparents which makes them the luckiest kids ever.
81. I enjoy doing sit-ups.
82. I dance in my kitchen.
83. Often.
84. I play Scramble on Facebook to de-compress.
85. I wish we didn’t live in such a broken world.
86. I love being a mom.
87. I want to spend a summer in Prince Edward Island.
88. Mostly because I love Anne of Green Gables and friendly people.
89. I sometimes miss living in Victoria.
90. I’m glad we live here near family and friends though.
91. Most days, I have lots of patience.
92. The days I don’t are very hard days (see #33).
93. I am trying to lose 5 pounds.
94. It’s not going well. (see #14, 27, 41, 47, 51, and 58)
95. I am not very outdoorsy.
96. If I wasn’t a mom, I would have been a Forensic Psychiatrist (Criminal Profiler). Thus, my fascination with shows like Criminal Minds!
97. I can watch the same movies over and over.
98. I am fluent in French. I want to learn to speak another language.
99. I want to be frugal, a cheerful and supportive wife, a joyful and successful housekeeper, a perfectly patient and compassionate mother, and a woman who is always seeking to answer God’s call in her life, but I struggle every day to live up to these expectations that I have put on myself.
100. I fail every day.