Tribute to Gertrude

A few posts ago I kicked off a little contest. This was mostly to see if people were actually reading the blog. A few of you took the bait, and I was impressed with the responses, particularly Aubri's "uhhhh..." So, I tip my fedora to Becca, Alida, and Julianna for at least playing along and especially Becca for coming up with "dweeb". But the prize of a tribute post goes to Krista. (I just noticed that all the responders have names that end in the letter "a"... don't know if that's interesting or not.)I'm going to write about her even though the kids helped out so much. It's much easier to write about my sister-in-law than a group of nieces and nephews. Hopefully they will enjoy reading about their mommy though. By the time the rest of you read this, you're likely going to be pleased that you didn't win:

You see Krista is someone everyone should know. She was born Gertrude Caseopia Lahti, so you can see why they called her Krista. Life couldn't have been easy, what with having to live in an igloo in Anchorage eating mooseburgers and speaking eskimo. (English is her second language as you'll learn when you talk with her) At age 5 she was a successful kindergardner with pig tails, and one thing led to another and today she's a terrific mother of 5. Krista isn't like some mothers you know, she knows everything about her kids, including their names and birthdays, but this isn't the only thing that makes her a great mother. She's been known to spend hours playing games with them, but letting the little people win is out of the question. She compassionately teaches the kids to be good losers. Here are a few other great "facts" which may or may not be true about Krista:

- She is perhaps the most competitive non-male I know. (and I know "competitive" having played years of church basketball)
- Krista has lived in exotic places such as Guam, Idaho and of course, her current island paradise of St. Louis.
- She's always up to date on current events, but she doesn't have cable so the source of all of her knowledges comes from the always-accurate internet.
- She's an excellent blog author, but I can't link to her blog because she keeps it super-secret (invite-only) . . . yeah, it's that good!
- At this moment she's hosting my wife and our 4 kids at her house, so if you're doing the math, there are like 14 kids there now. She handles it amazingly well. (It's Uncle Mike you should feel for . . . I've been in those shoes . . .)

So I pay homage to my sister-in-law for all that she manages and is. Because not only does she do all that stuff I told you about, she takes time everyday to humor me by reading HTF.

Thanks for all that, Gertrude.