7 Things

I've been tagged by Suzanne!
Here's how to play:
1. Link your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I'm usually pretty reserved and usually don't share much personal information. I prefer being mysterious, so this puts me in an uncomfortable situation---but I'll try to get over it. ;)

1. I have a few obsessive/compulsive tendencies. I'll only mention the ones that I seem to be over. ;) When I was little and couldn't tie my own shoes, my older siblings would fight over who had to tie them for me. If the loops didn't match, I would untie them, cry and demand them to be retied until they matched (sorry!). When I was eight or nine, I was a "lip licker" and licked so much that there was a red chapped ring around my lips. Sooo funny, now.

2. I LOVE making and decorating cakes and want to be better at it than I am. I was always my sister Holly's assistant when she made wedding cakes. Several years ago, I volunteered to make a friend's wedding cake having never done one by myself. It turned out pretty good, and I have now branched out into other themes. I'm so excited to have someone (McKay) to make fun cakes for...Nathan always chooses pumpkin pie over cake for his birthday.

3. I only have one adrenal gland and am a cancer survivor! I had a malignant fist-sized tumor on my right adrenal gland. The tumor was discovered when I was six and was surgically removed along with the adrenal gland when I was seven (I have a 12 inch scar across my midsection).

4. Due to the cancer and adrenal gland removal, my growth was abnormal and my bone age was five years ahead of my actual age. Throughout grade school I was much taller than all the other kids in my grade. On picture day, I was always called "Daddy Longlegs" by the photographer (he had cuter names for the other girls like "Angel Eyes" and "Princess"). I haven't grown any taller since the sixth grade, and I'm now the shortest in my family at 5 feet 5 inches.

5. I (like my cousin Melanie) have a strong aversion to needles. I still remember the first time I had to have my blood drawn---I was four and going to have my tonsils out. I didn't pass out, but had to lay with my head in my mom's lap in the waiting room for quite a while after. Since then, I have felt like passing out many times and have actually passed out three times. On one of those occasions, I just had my blood drawn at Primary Children's for a checkup. I was walking out of the lab when I felt that fainting feeling come on. I fainted, and in the process of falling to the floor, I hit my head on the steel door frame. My sister-in-law, who is a nurse, ran back into the lab for help and in the meantime, happened to notice the lab had mislabeled my blood. They had mixed up my blood with someone else's who was having a brain tumor removed later that week. Yikes! In that case, my fainting was a good thing...I think. Because of my cancer ordeal and having to get poked so much, I truly believe I have developed a sixth sense and can discern whether or not the person doing the poking is good at it or not before they even try. (Those are stories for another post.) Okay, I'll share the last one. When I was getting my IV during my labor with McKay, I knew the nurse wasn't experienced and would have a tough time. It was in the middle of the night and they were short on nurses so I didn't ask for someone else. After the third try, I did ask for someone else. They got someone from the lab and I knew right when she walked in that she could do it. I was right, and it only took her one try. (I really do have many more similar stories!)

6. My fourth toe is taller than the third toe on each foot. Nobody else in my immediate family has the same issue. However, when a distant cousin was visiting from Sweden, we noticed our toes matched...EXACTLY!

7. Four pages of my music disappeared while I was accompanying the Institute choir in front of President Hinckley and a packed arena of college students. The song was an arrangement of "Praise to the Man" and there were a total of eleven pages. We had rehearsed right before the meeting started and I left my copy of the music sitting on the piano. During the performance, when I got to the third page, I saw that the middle portion of the music (four pages) was missing. I had a girl turning my pages and I told her of my dilemma. She started looking around the piano and got up and ran over to our seats to check for the music but couldn't find it. I could remember enough of the music to help the choir through a key change, but I actually stopped and left the choir to sing a cappella. I even got up from the piano to check for the music...all while the choir was singing. The choir was high up on the stage and I could see the choir director looking in my direction with a surprised/worried/anxious expression. I couldn't find the missing music and went back to the piano to pick up where the music started again. It happened to be right where the key changed again and I had a little solo. It turns out that no one really noticed except for the choir and President Hinckley's bodyguards. I never found the missing pages of my music. The choir director still tells this story when he speaks at firesides and has the choir sing it the same way it was sung that day for President Hinckley.

Whew...that was hard! I'm tagging everyone who reads this and hasn't been tagged yet. If you choose not to participate, I understand.