Wow--now, THIS is exciting!

This is a great Monday morning suprise!!!  Drazil nominated me for Beautiful Blogger award!  Thanks, girl! Here's the rules:

• Thank the person who nominated you for this award
• Copy the award and post it in your blog
• Link to the blog of the person who nominated you
• Tell seven interesting things about yourself
• Nominate seven bloggers
• Post links to the blogs of your nominees

Ok, here goes...seven things about me:

1. I have a high-red belt in Shotokan karate. That was WAAAAAAAAAAY back in the day. If I could kick above my waist now I would write blogs about it!
2. My favorite pass-times are reading self-improvment books (LOVE THAT), highlighting somebody's hair, landscaping, or working on some kind of DIY project.
3. My daughter is bi-racial...when I married her dad I was the small-town scandal of the century. I'm still colorblind and proud of it, though. My daughter (age7) has just realized in the last year or so that mommy isn't really 'brown'. Up until now, she has always drawn pictures of our family with me and her brown and everyone else pink. HAHA...I love it!
4. I was a single mom for three years after she was born. During that time, I discovered something that I love to do--flipping houses (obviously this was before the market crash). It allowed me to buy, live in, fix up and sell nice houses instead of renting apartments. Someday after the market recovers I want to do that again, full time. Forget accounting!
5. Four years ago, I met my now husband on a Christian dating website. We lived 1,000 miles apart and were both sick of e-dating. We both said on our profiles that we specifically did NOT want long-distance relationships---so were mutually excluded as possibilities for each other, but we had a great time talking about all the bomb dates and disasters we had had with other people. Then we fell in love and the rest is history.
6. My worst feature is that I spaz and stress about everything, and rush thru life as if everything will fall apart if I'm late or don't get it all done. (This has been pointed out by both husbands--my litmus test...so it has to be true. I'm working on this!!)
7. My best feature is that, by the grace of God, I'm extremely resilient, not bitter and deep-down happy. I've been married three times (cringe, cringe-- I HATE saying that!!!!!!!! PB! PB!) The first time was abusive and very short (longest 18 months of my life). The second one was long and great---if you could be cool with being cheated on the whole time. (I feel you, Elin!!! Wish I had that $300MIL though! Actually, no---my daughter is a better deal than that)  :o) But, I didn't give up and now have a wonderful man who I am proud to show my daughter that THIS is what love looks like...look for someone like THIS! (I love you, baby!) In the end, those experiences have made me who I am today and I would never have appreciated the light unless I had been in the darkness. No regrets...even a happy dance!

Ok...my nominees are:

Band Groupie at The Sweet Spot!!!  She is like the patron saint of lap-banding! I love to read what she writes and seeing what her experience with all this has been! Such a positive force and so encouraging! Beautiful inside and out even though she won't let us see her full before picture! Thanks, BG!! Yuda Yuda best!

The nameless, faceless Drazil!! I'm hooked on this blog! Anyone that has an inner lizard totally taps into my self-help obsession mode!!  It always makes me laugh! Be gone with Shaniqua!

My dear friend Nicole--I'm telling you, girl, you WILL be in that Lily Pulizer dress someday!! I believe in you!

Gen She has done some amazing stuff with this band!! And makes it look really good! WOW!!

Jack---ok, he's not "beautiful", but I love reading his blog. Totally different, funny and gets you off your duff.