Almost seven months ago, my husband and I found out we were expecting our first child. We are so excited and getting ready for parenthood has been a great adventure for us. I’m not sure if it is part of the nesting instinct or just an extension of the desire to pass something along to my daughter, but this fall I suddenly had the urge to start a blog and share our family story online. So here we are.

Hello world and welcome to Forced Family Fun Blog.

A Little About Me

I am 31 years old, a full-time student, and a soon-to-be-first-time-mom. I am currently pursing two degrees: a bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering and a MBA. I have about a year left in school before I will graduate with both degrees. I have about 6 weeks left before my daughter is born. It will be a busy year for us. 

I have a BFA in Theatre from NYU. Yes, you read that correctly. I used to work in the Arts and at 28 decided that I wanted to change careers and become an engineer. (I’ll save the details on how and why this happened in case I want to write a post about it later). The bottom line to all of this is that I am a huge nerd. I get excited about the work of Stephen Sondheim and the work of Stephen Hawking. For one of my first projects in engineering school, I framed my problem as building a set for some carbon nanotubes. I actually find a surprising amount of overlap between theatre and engineering.

I’m married to an electrical engineer who was an English major before he decided to become an engineer and who used to be in a rock band. So he has the Arts and Science thing going on too. We met in middle school, but didn’t date until about 7 years ago and tied the knot last New Year’s Eve. I’m madly in love with my husband. He’s just a pretty wonderful guy. In his spare time, he coaches Crossfit and is training to try out for American Ninja Warrior.

We have two dogs. Tesla is our five-year-old Bernese Mountain Dog. She weighs about 80 lbs. and is nothing but love. Volta is our one-year-old rescue dog. She is smaller and feistier, but also adorable. If you stick around here for very long, I’m sure you will hear about and see a lot of these two.

A Little About This Blog

As I mentioned, my desire to start a blog happened sort of suddenly this fall. Originally, I wanted to keep sort of an online baby book for my daughter that would be just for my family, but – as tends to happen with my ideas – it somehow kept growing. So I’m sure there will be some posts about my little girl and my thoughts on being a new parent; but there will also be some food posts and some dog posts and general random things that I think might be interesting for you to read. Since I’m new to all of this, I will definitely need feedback – so please feel free to connect with me in the comments and let me know what you like and want to hear more about.

Where did the name come from? Well, I like the idea of a family blog. I tend to be a bit of a workaholic, so I am excited about the idea of focusing on my family life instead of my work or school in my blog. I thought Forced Family Fun was sort of catchy. I mean, who doesn’t love alliteration? And, it fits in with my overall positive outlook on life. As my grandmother says, “If you aren’t having fun, fake it until you are.” (Ok, maybe she doesn’t say that exactly, but something along those lines. If you’re reading this, Baboom, feel free to set the record straight in the comments.) And while, as a tai chi practioner, I really don’t believe that anything should be forced, Family Fun Blog is just too Vanilla. And the other F-words I thought of just didn’t fit the bill.

So there you have it. Don’t forget to use the Follow button if you want be notified when I have a new post. And please drop me a line in the comments if you want to connect. Thanks for dropping by. I look forward to sharing with you.