Random Things Come in Threes

Veronica of Toddled Dredge tagged me for a post that lists three random things about me. (And how honored am I to be tagged by one of my favorite bloggers?) Without further ado, here's the list:

1) In my junior year of college, I thought I wanted to go on to get my Ph.D. in literature and become an English professor. In my junior year of college, I met Aaron. As we prepared for marriage, we decided that graduate school wasn't the best option because we wanted to be young parents. Yeah, that's gone really well. Ironically, I could have completed a doctoral program by now. However, I don't regret the choice I made (especially since we're now this close to paying off all of our school loans).

2) This is only indirectly about me, but I've had the opportunity to re-tell this story in the past few weeks, so it's fresh on my mind. My family comes from the Netherlands, and my grandparents still lived there at the time of WWII. (My mom was born at the end of the war, and the family moved away shortly afterwards.) My grandparents lived on a farm, and my grandfather (not the one that recently passed away, but the one still kicking in Texas) was the village carpenter. The family used their farm to hide some people from the Nazi army (mostly young men in danger of being conscripted by the enemy, but also a rabbi). As the German invasion approached, the townsfolk came to my grandfather and asked him to use his carpentry skills to hide all of their valuables (paintings, jewelry, etc.). At the end of the war, everyone returned to my grandpa to find out where their belongings were. He said, "You've been sitting on them every Sunday." He had built false bottoms to all the pews in church and stored all the valuables there. It wasn't until the 1990's that my grandparents shared these stories with any of their children or grandchildren.

3) Veronica mentioned in her list of three random things that she enjoys meat with sweet sauces. I actually dislike sweet-flavored meat dishes. The combination of tastes seems wrong to me somehow, as if they stay too distinct rather than blending together. I much prefer savory meat recipes, with garlic or onions and a decent dash of salt.

I'll tag some new blog friends: Mya, Jill, and Brenna (who is not a new friend but has a new blog).