I may be a person who likes to talk, but the one thing I wouldn’t say I like talking about is myself. For those of you who have known me for a long time you might disagree. Some have even called me self-centred. However, if someone asks me to introduce myself or talk about my hobbies and interests, I am genuinely at a loss for what to say. I wasn’t great at talking about myself pre-pregnancy, but it’s definitely worse now! Now that I’m blogging and spending lots of time on Instagram, I feel like I should tell you a little bit more about myself so bear with the awkwardness, I did say I wasn’t good at this!
A quick fun fact about me! I’m a dog person through and through. I have a Lab, Border Collie, Husky mix- her name is Aurora. She’s 3 now and was the reason that I started running (a hobby I had to give up when I got pregnant with Thalia). I wanted to lose weight and being part husky she had SO much energy that I basically had to run to keep up with her when I took her for walks so I figured two birds one stone. I hope one day I’ll be able to start again because I would really like to say that I ran a 5K, but I was quite far from that when I stopped so I know it’s not something I’ll be accomplishing anytime soon.
I like watching crime shows and movies, but not true crime shows - I don’t like that they don’t get wrapped up in a nice tiny bow at the end of the episode. I’ve seen every episode of CSI Las Vegas, Criminal Minds and several other crime shows. I binged a lot of TV in university and binging is my preference. I hate having to watch an episode and then wait another week to see the next one. I want to be able to watch them all at once!
Expressions Cheer Elite
I was born and raised in St. Thomas, ON and am the oldest child with my brother Branden being 2.5 years younger than me. Growing up, we spent our summers camping (or ‘glamping’) at a park up near Grand Bend and we loved every minute of it! In school, I was always a very dedicated student. My parents love to remind me of the time they wanted to take me to Disney, and I said I couldn’t go because I was the lead on a school project. I was in grade 4, okay… I clearly didn’t understand the importance of Disney, but I sure do now! My mom was primarily a stay-at-home mom when we were younger which allowed us a lot of opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities and get help with our homework. During the school year, I took part in various school activities - my favourite was dance. I’d never admit I was good at it, because I wasn’t, but I really enjoyed it! Primarily, I was hooked on cheerleading. Could I tumble and do the cool flips? Not at all, but I loved the team environment of cheer. Oh, and anyone that says dance isn’t a sport is not good in my books! I cheered competitively and my brother played competitive basketball, so as we got older, most of our weekends were spent driving all over Ontario for dance or basketball competitions. My parents were pretty good about trying to make the travel fun and we would often tour the cities we visited while we were there, so I’ve seen quite a bit of Ontario!
One of the trips I remember most was to Ottawa, the city itself was very pretty so driving around was very entertaining but the memorable part was stopping to tour the parliament buildings. This wouldn’t be an exciting trip for most kids since it didn’t include an amusement park or ice cream but I love visiting museums and touring old buildings. I find the architecture stunning to look at and the history behind how and why the buildings were created is fascinating. Which is kind of ironic since I hated history class in school. I am pretty confident I studied the Holocaust and the 1920s every year from Grade 6 to Grade 12, I’m sure at this point I’m practically an expert.
Happy Birthday to Me - 2008 ~ Took a a few friends camping for the weekend to celebrate my birthday. It was one of the only times I slept in the tent and not our trailer
Speaking of school subjects, I also disliked English class, proper spelling and grammar still elude me but I was a huge reader as a child. My mom would tease me that I would have read our family out of the house if it wasn’t for libraries. There was one summer in my early high school years when I read 100 books. Yes, I kept track. I participated in a teen reading challenge hosted by the Lambton County Library (I was at the trailer all summer and our trailer is in Lambton County). They chose 12 books as the top picks for the summer and there was a prize for teens who read all the books. I don’t remember what the prize was and I didn’t win but I had fun exploring new genres. I read books like Looking for Alaska by John Green, The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon, which I never would have picked out on my own. My favourite book from the challenge was The Lightning Thief by Rick Rioran (this was before the movie came out but usually my preference is mystery novels. A good fantasy or romance is good to mix in for diversity as well.
Occasionally, I like reading educational content about personal/professional development, but that genre is not as fun and it’s one I’ve only recently started reading. I started to move away from reading when I went to University since I spent most of my time with my nose in my textbooks. After I graduated, I couldn’t keep my brain from reading between the lines of the books and looking for meaning (that would be my English minor sticking around) and it ruined my reading experience for a few years. I was starting to get more into reading again just before becoming pregnant with Thalia and now that I think about it, I haven’t read a book since before she was born. The ones I did read were parenting books...that counts right? I’ve had Sherlock Holmes sitting in my nightstand drawer for over 2 years so I really hope I get around to reading it soon!
Frosh Week at Laurier - Go Green Titans Go!
I graduated from high school and headed to Waterloo to complete my BBA at Wilfrid Laurier University. I was there for 4 years and could probably write several articles about the various shenanigans that occurred while I was there. If I had to choose one funny story to share with you, it would be Halloween in my second year. It was a school night and not actually Halloween but the girls I was living with on the same dorm floor wanted to celebrate. Since several of us had night classes on Halloween, we decided to celebrate early. We all dressed up and had a dance party in the living room while enjoying a few festive drinks. None of us were big drinkers and we rarely went out. I can count on one hand the number of times we went to a bar or nightclub in the whole 4 years I was there, but we had a blast at home! We danced and sang very off-key while making finger foods, baking cupcakes, and taking 101 cheesy photos to remember the night. I mean what else would you do while having a dance party in the living room with your friends?
We were having so much fun, and we couldn’t help but think about how one of our roommates was missing. She was stuck working night shifts at the A&W around the corner. I also worked the midnight shift there too, but I happened to be off that day. We didn’t want her to miss out on the party we were having so after we finished our cupcakes we decided to go and visit her. Since we’d all had a few drinks, we couldn’t drive and decided to make the 10-minute walk, which we thought was no big deal since we’d all done it many times to walk to the bus stop. Well, we were feeling good and set out in our Halloween costumes. It was a bit chilly, but we shook it off chatting all the way over and getting A LOT of strange looks from people driving by. I mentioned that it wasn’t actually Halloween, right? Our 10-minute walk turned into 15 or 20 minutes since we were slightly more intoxicated than we had originally realized, but that was just helping with the cold. We finally made it to the restaurant and walked through the drive-thru. Me being an employee of A&W should have known that you have to be in a car to trigger the buzzer that alerts the employees inside that someone is there. The restaurant lobby closes at night so the drive-thru is the only thing that’s open and the night crew gets stuck with all the cleaning and prep work. So, if the buzzer doesn’t go off, we don’t know to take people’s orders because we spend all of our time at the back of the restaurant. Well, there we were, the 4 of us outside, wandering around the restaurant hoping to catch our roommate’s attention while she was moving around cleaning. It probably looked like we were casing the place for a future burglary in our costumes. After 10 or 15 minutes of walking around the building and peering in the windows (we also tried knocking to get her attention), we decided we needed a new approach.
At the time, I didn’t know if the drive-thru sensor was triggered by weight or if it was a metal detector, so we decided that we should borrow a couple of the shopping carts that were left out in the grocery store parking lot and try bringing those through the drive-thru to see if it would trigger it. Well, I’m sure that made us look even more ridiculous (it’s a good thing there aren’t very many security cameras outside the restaurant to document this lovely experience). Even with 4 adults and 4 shopping carts in a car-like formation, it still didn’t trigger the sensor. Thankfully, a car happened to be coming for food at this time and the young guys in the car were happy to tell our roommate we were there to see her after they ordered. I’m pretty sure they laughed at us the entire time they were there… 4 grown girls dressed up in Halloween costumes out in the cold in the middle of the night. At this point, we were slightly more sober and much colder than when we left, but at least we finally got to see our roommate! We chatted with her at the drive-thru window after she finished her order and delivered our cupcakes before heading back to the house. We walked quickly this time because we were freezing! I’m pretty sure we all passed out in the living room shortly after we made it back home, but it was a fun night and one that I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
Aside from roommate shenanigans, I worked full time, went to school full time, babysat and volunteered for 3 of the 4 years I was away at school. I don’t remember sleeping and yet I don’t really remember being overly tired either. Okay, yes, there was one class I pretty much slept through but at least it was only one! It was a strange time and a very busy 4 years, and I wouldn’t change it for the world despite how stressful it was!
Halloween - 1st Year ~ Joint Halloween costume 'When Life Gives you Lemons Make Lemonade', I was Lemonade.
Click here to read About Me - Part II
