Trivia you probably don't care about

My friend Ann, over at Crazy for Kids, has passed on an award to me.  Thank you!  Thank you for giving me a topic to write about.  (Do you know how hard it is to come up with something to write sometimes?  I am so happy for prompts!)  Ann is a fellow adoptive mom of a large family... and a real life friend.  It is inconvenient that we live so far away from each other.  So what is our solution?  To adopt from the same country at the same time so we can visit each other half-way across the world.  Our plan is working out quite well so far.  She had her paperwork picked-up at the same time, so we are both eagerly waiting for our travel approvals.

Here is my new, shiny award.  Pretty isn't it?

The rules of the award are:  1) Thank the person who gave you this award (see above),  2) List 7 things people may not know about you,  3) Pass it along to a few other bloggers.

Hmmm.... 7 things you might not know about me.  If you don't already know it, I wonder if you are really interested, but here goes.

1. I have always wanted to live in a large family.  I have one brother, but as a child, I created 10 more children for my parents giving them a total of 12.  I had complete outlines on each child written out.... description, age, birth date, likes and dislikes.  I even created high school schedules for the oldest ones.  I am the oldest, but where did I put myself?  Right in the middle.  I always wanted older brothers and sisters growing up.
2. I was also horse crazy.  That is probably an understatement.  I did learn to ride and even had free access to a horse.  He was a big 16 hand palomino who was fairly nasty and had a tendency to try to knock me off his back by ramming me into whatever was handy.  (Did you know that, Mom?)  It made me into a fairly good rider, though.  I was eventually on my university's equestrian team.  Sadly, I haven't ridden since M. was a baby and my legs ache just thinking about how much it would hurt at first to start again.  I would do it in a heartbeat, though.
3. I grew up in Arizona, where I was born and where my parents were both born.  In a land of transplants, it is a bit of an anomaly to have native born parents.  I don't really miss the desert, though... except in the months of January, February, and March.  There is some part of me that is always surprised when spring doesn't start at the end of January.  And the orange blossoms!  How I miss the smell of orange blossoms.  Sometimes when my parents come to visit in the spring, my mom will pack some orange blossoms for me.
4. We don't have TV access and I don't really miss it.  We do watch movies and such, though.  But I do admit to a current Downton Abbey obsession.  My mother gave us the first season on DVD and I have been slowly working through it.  Oh, how I love the dresses!  Don't spoil the current season for me because it will be awhile before I can watch it.
5. I used to be painfully shy.  Shy to the degree that I would rather take a lower grade than speak in class.  (And I was a grade hound, so that is saying something.)  I still think of myself as shy, but I will now speak in front of groups.  I'm pretty sure the years of directing a children's choir helped with that.
6. I spent a summer in Paris taking classes through Parson's School of Design.  I loved it and had some fantastic experiences.  I was convinced I wanted to be an interior designer.  Obviously, this is no longer my dream, especially if you are in my house and see my decorated-with-inherited/hand-me-down-items style.
7. I don't like water and I don't like to swim.  If I had to give up swimming for the rest of my life, I wouldn't miss it.  

There you have it.  Seven things about me that you didn't care about.  Now I have to pass this award on to several other bloggers.  Amy at Loving Leah, Tommy, and Nicolas a real-life friend whom I knew outside of her blog; Law Mommy at Adventures of Law Mommy who is now a real-life friend whom I met through her blog and Sandwich at Blessings, Sandwich who is not a real-life friend yet, but we are working on it.