Courtesy of Leah Steelman: I've been asked what I was doing:
*10 years ago:
Let's see...I'm not quite sure...That would put me at 16 years old and just getting ready to date for the first time courtesy of LDS church-which in retrospect is a good idea...keep in mind when your girls are "of that age!!" Anyway, okay back onto me...well if Leah was busy memorizing her lines for My Fair Lady, then I would have been doing the same with a whole lot less lines to remember...but I still remember my one or two lines as Mrs. Hopkins..."and what things do she want..her birdcage and her Chinese fan, but she didn't anything about clothes..." oh what fun times!! Let's see, about that time as well I know I was in the band and we were maybe doing a baseball show for our field show competitions I think and it never won us any awards-we were too podunk compared to the huge 4A schools and their rich, spoiled bands-anyway but that year our band director had wanted his section leaders (of which I was the 1st chair clarinet-brings a tear to my eye :) ) to get some "training" on how to be better "leaders"and so he sent us to a band camp of sorts to socialize and learn more about following in well...our band director's footsteps which I don't think anybody really wanted to but anywho...so we're there with lots of other bands from all around the great state of NC to learn how to do so. So, knowing my "friendly" personality-meaning I'll talk to a 2 x 4 pole as my husband tells me now...I found friends from all over and one was a really weird looking (not trying to be overly mean but he just was not a pretty individual) Mexican dude and he had a best friend that came as well from their school in Fayetteville (about 2 hours away from the great Carteret county that I'm from) and despite the former description of his friend, this dude's best friend was a definite "hottie" as we might say....and so I asked his more outgoing and homely friend to introduce me and stuff which just never materialized, but I did ask him for his friend's phone number and address. So I go home to my lovely home of Beaufort, NC and after a few weeks I still couldn't get this guy's face out of my mind and so I decide to write him a letter-how cheesy and high school huh!! But hey, I'm in high school so it's okay-and because my mom thinks that a girl calling a guy was the end of the world and that a gentleman should always make the "first move"...well since this particular gentleman had no idea who I was I thought I would have to do the introducing....well after I wrote the letter I decided how cheesy it really was and how uninterested this rather "delicious" guy would be in me, so I ripped up the letter and never sent it to be forgotten forever. Well two years later, as I graduate and make the decision to become a Purple and Gold Pirate in Greenville, NC I joined the band again-such a dork I know-anyway I'm walking the gabillion miles to the band practice field and this rather nasty "hooptie" pulls up beside me (you know, the 80 somethings Toyota vans that Chris says always looks like a beer keg on wheels!!) anyway, and I see the rather homely Mexican guy lean out the window and ask me if I wanted a ride, so fearing for my life but remembering a friend I hop on in and lo and behold his rather yummy friend is driving and so Gabe ( instead of calling him the homely Mexican dude now 'cause that's just mean) remembers my name and I remember him and we reminisce about times past and what's been going on since we last met...the whole time I'm wishing his friend would talk to me and then he finally did and he ALMOST remembered my name-he's like: "Yeah you're the girl Gabe's told me about...your name is Rachel right?" How very much I wanted to say that it was just so that I could've told myself that he secretly had known who I was at the band camp and had been thinking about me and done some of the same cheesy things I'd done...but I confessed and said, "Uh no it's Ruth but close." Well right then and there that mistaken name conversation started a beautiful friendship and 10 years later well here we are, 3 kids and a life together!! Whoa..sorry I got longwinded there..just reminiscing about the meeting of the two Strommer parental units gets me talking or in this case typing too much I guess!!
-The now stake president of my teenage ward was my Seminary teacher or maybe it was my mom that year..I don't remember!!
* 5 things on my To-Do List
Unpack from our week long vacation to Saipan
Start using our VERY expensive amusement park passes to Everland
Make the bed before we go use those VERY expensive..well you get where I'm going
Get a new bed for Dalin-his toddler bed just isn't cutting it anymore since he's almost as big as
his 7 (well 6 1/2) year old sister
Buy a $10 LeSportsac knockoff purse that I liked from Dongdaemun Market
*Things I would do if I were suddenly a billionaire
-Start traveling to even more fun places than where we've been so far (those vacations are expensive, but with a couple million things would be a lot easier)
-Buy an island or something as equally as exotic just so Chris and I knew we'd have a pretty
place to retire
-Put it away so that even if our house never sells we could just pay off the bank!!
- Copying Leah's idea..I'd build a state of the art birthing center on Osan Air Base so ladies would know they could have children here and not be so afraid of the unknown and all the questions that an expecting woman would have about having to have their baby in a Korean hospital if even the smallest thing goes wrong as the closest military hospital won't treat you!!
*3 bad habits
-Yelling too much at my kids for no real reason
-Talking too much
-Keeping our car looking like a rolling second home-(we all contribute to this bad habit)
*Places I have lived
-Born in Desplains, Illinois (but don't remember that one too much)
-Edmonton, Kentucky
-Gloucester, NC (3 different houses)
-Greenville, NC (3 different houses)
-Holly Springs, NC
-Monterey, CA
-Clayton, NC
-Osan, S. Korea (3 different houses SO FAR!!)
*Things most people don't know about me
-There's not much since I tell everything I know, right dear!!
-I love cucumbers
-I love country music
-I love to cook with my Crock-Pot (sometimes the only way I can motivate myself to cook!!)
-When I was expecting Dalin I LOVED to sweep, not necessarily any other kind of cleaning, sorry Chris, but sweeping would just give me the high that you get when you have a long-awaited piece of chocolate or when you get a surprise that you weren't expecting!! I would ask friends to let me sweep their houses and they were MORE than happy to oblige. On a side note Chris even bought me a push broom-it was the best present I got that Christmas!!
-Really deep water scares me
-Another steal from Leah's blog-I wear my watch on my right wrist with the face on the bottom side of my wrist-any other way just drives me up the wall!!
*Jobs I've had in my life
(Not very many here)
-Oh yeah, a lifeguard
-A Sanitary hostess (Sanitary being the name of the restaurant not the other meaning of that word 'cause that just sounds nasty somehow)
-Yeah that's it minus the full time job as being a SAHM!!
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