So, a cou­ple days ago, I wrote about being 30 and NOT hav­ing a cri­sis about it.  In one of the com­ments, Rachel said she’d like to see 29 accom­plish­ments that I have had in my first 29 years.  Ask and you shall receive.  Although I write my blog for me, I’m always open to ideas for posts, espe­cially dur­ing NaBloPoMo.

1. I stayed with a host fam­ily in Japan for 6 weeks when I was 17.
2. I climbed part of Mt. Fuji.  I rode the sub­way and train by myself in Tokyo.
3. I ate things I didn’t even know were meant to be eaten!
4. I com­pleted a dou­ble major (ele­men­tary and mid­dle level edu­ca­tion) with 2 areas of con­cen­tra­tion (math and social sci­ences) in 4.5 years.
5. I earned a 4.0 in grad school.
6. I fin­ished grad school in 14 months while teach­ing full time.
7. I mar­ried a fine man at the age of 22.
8. I have two beau­ti­ful children.
9. I (at one point) spoke Span­ish well enough to earn 8 col­lege cred­its on the place­ment test.
10. I have had two nat­ural (drug-free) labors.
11. I have been breast­feed­ing for 4 years, 1 week, and 3 days.
12. I have vis­ited 26 states.
13. I only let in one goal in my one (and only)appearance as start­ing goalie for a col­lege broom ball team.
14. I took piano lessons and played reg­u­larly for 9 years.
15. I played the flute for 7 years.
16. I read To Kill a Mock­ing­bird in high school and thought it was bor­ing.  I reread it when I was 24 and really enjoyed it.
17. I joined a book club.
18. I became a La Leche League Leader (although none of my posts on this site should be con­strued as advice or asso­ci­ated with La Leche League’s stance on an issue unless I state otherwise).
19. I attended BlogHer ’09 and trav­eled by myself for the very first time at the age of 29.
20. I ran (and walked) my first 5K in 2009.
21. I gave up meat and most meat based prod­ucts. (in process)
22. I worked at a camp in the Bound­ary Waters Canoe Area in north­ern Min­nesota for two sum­mers where I learned to hike and canoe.  For other rea­sons, those were two of the hard­est times of my life.
23. I learned to drive a man­ual trans­mis­sion car and pre­fer it over auto­matic in most situations.
24. I went from cook­ing only spaghetti with meat sauce (from a jar) and tacos to cook­ing a dif­fer­ent (and usu­ally yummy) meal every night of the week.
25. I took over the shov­el­ing duties in our fam­ily and shov­eled 95% of the time last win­ter (the snowiest Decem­ber EVER).
26. In one year, I attended the fol­low­ing con­certs:  Trans-Siberian Orches­tra, Green Day, Brit­tney Spears.  I hope to attend Toby­Mac before that year is up.
27. I spon­sor a child through Com­pas­sion Inter­na­tional.
28. I started a blog (this one) for fam­ily and friends and real­ized most of the peo­ple who read it don’t know me or my family.
29. I came up with a great idea for the Inno­va­teND com­pe­ti­tion.  We’ll see where it goes in the next cou­ple years.