Birthday Girls

One of the best things about my birthday is sharing it with my mom. I was born on her birthday 32 years ago today. Can you believe it, 32 years old - you too will get lovely little fine lines when you hit 30-ish. Oh how time flies when your having a life. Anyway, I've been tagged a few times to share interesting pointless facts about myself... so here goes. Curl up in your favorite sweats with your bowl of homemade popcarn, because this might take awhile.

My mom was 24 years old back in November of 1975 - having her 4th child (brave woman)... Here is a little known fact about her. Molly (my beautiful momma) only wanted 4 children so I was in the clear (thank goodness), how she ended up with ten was pure divine intervention and a very "healthy" relationship (oh the stories I could tell, but this is neither the time nor the place - I will save it for another time). Anyway, it was the day before Thanksgiving, a Wednesday to be exact. (Side note: I never understood the day of the week child poem - How did I end up being the child that is "full of woe" and what the hell does that mean anyway?)

Okay so back to the story because I love, love, love the story of how it all happened. So picture my older sister Kelly at just a couple weeks past her 1 year old birthday.

She was in my parents room (we lived in a trailer - supposedly Jason's mom & brother Chris lived a few trailers over a couple years before this all took place - let's hear it for the "WT" aka white trash roots) So Kelly was in my parents room and was messing with my dad's alarm clock. My dad was a construction worker and had 3 active toddlers. Allison 3 years, Jared 2 years, and Kelly 1 year old. Just thinking about it tires me out...Needless to say my dad was a really heavy sleeper. When he fell asleep that was it. The house could fall in and he would probably snore right through it (that's where I get my Olympic snoring abilities from). So my mom starts going into labor. It is the middle of the night and she can't get my dad to rouse from his Rip Van Winkle Slumber. She starts to get herself up and ready (I think she probably would have driven herself to the hospital, if it came to that) - but just then my dad's alarm clock went off and my dad jumps up from a dead sleep and realizes what is happening. Needless to say I was born a few hours later at 3:05am in the Provo Regional Medical Center, and SURPRISE! I was a girl - despite the fact my doctor told my parents he was sure I was a boy and they had picked out the "loverly" name - Marvin Terrell Byrnes. Thus, I was christened "the baby" for the next 4 days until they could come up with something suitable to call me. (My namesake Maren Annette Christensen - is another good old timer story I'll save for the next useless-facts-from-Maren's-life-day). Anyway, thanks to my "twinner" Kelly, I always felt that fate stepped in and helped a toddler play with an unusual toy, that brought her a BFF for life. So Happy Birthday to my momma & me. There is your story for the day and I hope you enjoyed it (and if you didn't - I don't really care, go stalk someone else's blog).


Maren (age 1 year) and Kelly (2 years) - we looked like we could be twins and were often mistaken for them growing up, and the fact that my mom dressed up exactly the same helped a lot. This picture was taken in Spokane, WA at the Chinese Gardens. I always thought it was cool my parents took us neat places when we were kids, but now that I think of it - they must have been taking really good drugs in the 70's or completely loco - that is a minimum 12 hour drive with 4 kids under under the age of 4 - and no portable DVD player. Good times. We can barely go 2 miles without Paige & James pulling hair or swatting at each other.




I had short hair a lot as a kid. I think maybe my parents secretly hoped I was a boy to balance out all the estrogen? Kelly is to my right and Sunny & Joey are behind us on Santa's lap.

So here is the last one of Kelly & me. I think we are both approaching 20 years old here. This was actually taken at Sunny's graduation (1995), before Girbaud jeans went out of fashion (Megan!) You can tell Kelly got the looks and charming personality. I just turned into a smart ass with a potty mouth. I guess that is just the luck of the draw. I think I got in the wrong line when they were handing out "nice" or "well behaved" in heaven - it's not like my parents didn't try... but then again they did have 10 of us to chase around.