I’m constantly getting reader questions asking me things about myself, so today I figured I would do a fun type of post and share 52 fun facts about myself.
1. Growing up, I was the youngest in my family.
2. I have two older sisters, one is 13 months older than me and the other is 5 years.
3. I was born in Pennsylvania and my parents moved to Maryland when I was 4.
4. We grew up poor but we were always together, family was (&still is) very important to us.
5. After 9/11 my family of 5 was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. My mom, rebaptized, and my father baptized. My life tremendously changed from here on.
6. My first job was working as a feeder in a nursing home. I fed elderly people who could not feed themselves.
7. My second job was working as a housekeeper in a small hometown hotel.
8. I had zero real friends in high school.
9. I got my GED soon after and applied for college when I was just 17 and working a full time job.
10. My third job was data entry, which I loved and even got to make my own hours. I would wake up at 4am and be done work by 1pm. Yes, I am a morning person 😊
11. During my 2nd semester of college I decided to work 2 full time jobs and soon stopped pursuing my degree.
12. I was offered a manager position soon at the 2nd job soon after, but because I refused to work on Saturday, I was passed over. But later I was offered night shift manager, but because it was 11pm – 7am and working by myself in a truck stop, I turned it down.
13. Coincidentally, I met my husband working as a cashier at my second job as a cashier at Pilot Travel Center. He would come in every day on his way to work and finally he gave me his number. I was super shy and was not going to call him. Thankfully, he came in the next day and got my number.
14. On our first date we went to the movies and watched Indiana Jones – it was horrible and we still laugh about it ’til this day.
15. On our second date he drove me 3 hours (one way!) to show me New River Gorge in West Virginia. Clearly, I was the youngest child because I don’t remember my parents ever objecting me going with some guy I had literally just met 3-hours away. 😂 And, my dad was super strict and this was way before Facebook was popular.
16. He popped the question after dating for just 3 months, of course, I said yes!
17. I lost a lot of so-called friends over our engagement. I even had a manager who I thought was a friend, begin to treat me differently after the engagement. The harassment got so bad that I eventually had to bring it up to the store’s general manager and stopped working with him.
18. Michael and I got our first dog together while we were dating, an English Bull Mastiff.
19. Michael and I got married after only 9 months of dating on March 14th.
20. We both wanted a small wedding, but with just family we had over 150 people in attendance. If we were to do it over, we would have just eloped and spent our money on the honeymoon. Although I will forever be grateful for the photos of loved ones who are no longer here. And, yes, my 2 drunk uncles showed up and gave my husband the ‘speech’. Though it would have been easy to wonder why they came, I will forever be grateful they did because now all they are are memories. 😢
21. The day after getting married, we left, during a snowstorm for the south! We both left in shorts and had no destination in mind, we just wanted to go where the road lead us.
22. The first night of our honeymoon we stayed in a cabin in Boone, NC. We arrived at night time and left early the next morning so we don’t remember a lot about Boone, but we’ve swore we would go back one day. It’s now been 13 years 😂 .
23. Our honeymoon didn’t go quite as planned. We ended up in Florence, Alabama and from there on there wasn’t much to see. We did spend some time in Nashville, TN though and bought the obliatory cowboy hats.
24. After the honeymoon ended, we ended up renting a small 1-bedroom house that used to be a garage until someone transformed it. And, it had tons of huge spiders.
25. We lived in that house for less than a month until the water failed. The landlord refused to fix it and tried to make us get water from a hose outside. After no luck getting her to fix our problem, she sent her daughter to my work, who pretended to be a lawyer, to threaten us to leave her mom alone. Seeing that she wasn’t going to fix our problem or let us out of the lease, I soon found out she was renting us a house without proper license. We got out of the lease and got our money back. And, that house has now been turned into a huge house.
26. During all of this, I had been trying to get pregnant. And, after one morning at work a new manager asked me if I was pregnant. I wasn’t sure, so on lunch I ran to Dollar General and took a pregnancy test. I ran out of time to read it, so I threw it in my purse and somehow forgot about it until later that evening when I was with Michael. We were driving around town and I pulled it out of my purse and saw the 2 lines. We bought another test soon after, just to be sure, but we were finally expecting! I quite my job soon after.
27. We had to move back in with my parents after our bad experience with our first house.
28. A few months before giving birth to our son, we found a beautiful duplex and moved into it.
29. During this time, I spent many weeks helping my father with the church food pantry, although I had stopped going to church by now. One week, after helping my father with the food pantry, Michael and I went to my parents for dinner and soon after, my father passed out on the bathroom floor. Coincidentally, it was snowing again and we had to call state highway to help with our driveway so the ambulance could get him. It was one of the scariest experiences of my life, but my dad finally woke up a few hours later.
30. The night I was scheduled to have my induction to give birth to my son, we arrived at the hospital and as soon as I got out of the car, my water broke. I was so embarrassed to walk into the hospital because I was leaking water. 😆
31. After spending the night in labor, Michael clogged the toilet and went to ask the nurses for a plunger. Needless to say, the nurses didn’t give him a plunger but did run back to my room to check on me. It was because of this, I found out it was time to push. 2-hours later with Michael and my mom in the room, I gave birth to my first son. I immediately fell in love and would have had a 2nd child right after, if Michael would have agreed.
32. During this time in our life, Michael and I were NOT financially stable, so while he was on leave at work, I went to work the next week. It didn’t last long though because they kept putting me on to work Saturdays, though I specifically told them I wouldn’t work Saturdays. We eventually asked our landlord to let us out of our expensive lease and she agreed. We moved back in with my parents soon after.
33. I decided to get my GNA license. After obtaining them, I found out I was pregnant again. But, this time I decided to continue school and went and got my certificate for Phlebotomy. There after, I worked as a GNA in a nursing home until the doctor put me on bedrest 2-months before having our second son.
34. During this time, we moved to WV and rented off Michael’s family. The house was far from perfect. Our fireplace seriously almost killed us and then the sewer backed up. After giving birth to our 2nd son, we soon ended up having too many problems with the house, that we had to move back in with my parents again.
35. After moving from WV and back to Maryland we decided to finally put some roots down. We found a home in Pennsylvania, put an offer in and it was accepted! We moved into it in September of 2013 and, soon after I found out we were expecting, again! It was during this time in my life, that I started my first blog, Hugs n’ Tugs Mom Reviews.
36. While giving birth to my daughter, I had a very traumatic birth experience – I ended up giving birth paralyzed – and I dealt with some very unlucky health problems afterwards.
37. After years of wanting a nice truck, we were finally in that place to purchase a new 2014 Ram 2500 Cummins. It was our dream truck and Michael was even fortunate to get it sponsored! Due to the insane price, we eventually sold our truck.
38. Our oldest son also started school around this time and things did not start off so well. We ended up pulling our son from public school and begin homeschooling him. We soon decided that we wanted our son to go to a good school, so we decided to sell our house and moved back in with my parents. From then on my children went to the same elementary school I went to as a child.
39. Soon after selling our house, Michael was involved in a traumatic work accident and our lives changed completely. We spent the next couple years reeling with so much stress and we lost everything! It was also during this time my mother had her first open heart surgery 😔
40. During this time, I started this blog, crystalcarder.com.
41. With Michael’s work injury, I went and got my ParaPro teaching certificate and begin subbing for the public school system. While it was nice choosing my hours, being a substitute teacher was not my favorite job.
42. Also during this stressful time, Michael and I were offered Bible studies and we both got baptized, me rebaptized, as members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
43. A few weeks before baptism, Michael and I both felt this desire to share the gospel with others. I was adamant God was telling him to be a pastor, but we both felt that someone with no education and was just baptized could never go straight to a pastor. BUT, we seriously couldn’t get over the feeling that Michael was being called to more.
44. A few weeks after our baptism, we were signing papers for a minivan and Michael’s phone rang, he was being offered a Bible working position. Only downfall was, it was 4.5 hours away in Bethlehem, Pa. We weren’t about to refuse God’s call, so Michael accepted the job and we decided to take a small trip to see where we were going to move.
It was apparent after going to Bethlehem that this wasn’t where God was leading us and some things happened that we decided to turn the job down. For a while after, we felt like we had made a huge mistake BUT God wasn’t done with us yet.
45. After being sick for years, I found out my gallbladder was functioning at about 11% – it was dead! So, a fews later I underwent the knife and they removed my gallbladder.
46. A little while later, Michael was talking to some folks in Nebraska about a potential Bible working position and we were seriously considering it until – my mom ended up with more health issues and then – a few weeks later, Michael got seriously sick. For the next year we spent time in and out of hospitals, doctors offices, and test. I had seriously wondered if I was going to lose my mom, dad and husband during this time. It was an intense time in our live. Thankfully, it turned out to be Michael’s gallbladder, too and other complications from his diabetes.
47. Michael and I have always been huge Amazing Facts ministry followers so when they launched their online programs, Michael signed up and soon completed every online program they had. BUT he still wanted to go to AFCOE and it was finally starting back up. So, he applied and was accepted. It was supposed to start in May, so we decided to begin homeschooling the kids. We had no idea that COVID was just a few weeks away from changing everything.
48. During this time we had also begun having some issues with our hometown church. We felt like we were dunked and forgotten about, so we decided to change our membership to another semi-local SDA church and, for a while things were going great. With AFCOE still on the table, the week before COVID begin Michael accepted a Bible working position in Washington, Pennsylvania. He literally accepted it and an hour later the job offer was off the table, thanks COVID.
During this time we had begin to wonder if God even wanted us to work for Him. We had gone from having the option of going to AFCOE or Bible working for God to nothing in just a few short days.We couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe we weren’t good enough?
50. During the COVID lockdowns, I begin selling clothes on Poshmark. Things took off and I found myself another side-hustle.
51. About a year after COVID, once things finally started opening back up, Michael and I decided to get a job together. We joined forces and begun cleaning vacation houses together. It was an extremely exhausting job that we do NOT miss.
Last Updated on 4 years ago by Crystal Carder