About Andi

Let’s see. What might someone want to know about me? Probably not nearly as much as I am going to tell you. First, my old web playground was andihays.net. I started this new space for a place to learn more and for a bit of a change. You can read more at my welcome post.

I am married to Chuck who is an amazing guy and the best husband and dad out there. We started dating in 2001 years ago and got married on my birthday in 2004. We live on a lake in Minnesota and have three amazing kids!

We are busy people. I am a tad bit lazy by nature, but thankfully Chuck doesn’t sit still very well and keeps us active. We do projects around the house (he’s VERY handy), take trips, go camping, go boating, go tubing, wake surfing, water skiing (we love being on the lake!), go fishing, bike ride, swim, go on walks, downhill ski, play hockey, coaching sports and more. Life’s too short to sit around.

Along with being very active, we are advocates for STEM and STEAM. We are teaching our kids all about coding, math, science, technology and art, have robots all over the house and a dedicated room for crafts, building and being creative. We ran the First LEGO League Jr. robotics program at our local middle school for two seasons. It was been such an amazing experience to help these kids get excited about programming and seeing their ideas come to life.

I used to work full time as a legal assistant at an Intellectual Property law firm (they specialize in patents and trademarks). I decided to stay home with our oldest after a traumatizing delivery. In September 2013, some of the attorneys I used to work with started their own firm and I started working for them remotely. I did transcription, document preparation, drawing preparation and billing for them from home. I loved being able to work at home to be available for the kids. I decided to retire from my job after almost 11 years. I know there is more out there for me and I wasn’t going to push myself to find that when I had this job as a fallback.

I went back to school before my oldest was born for a couple semesters to try my hand at Computer Science. I didn’t pursue it then and wish I had stuck with it. I am currently working on learning more JavaScript because I am fascinated by web development. I love working on websites and playing around on them. So I am working on learning more front-end and back-end stuff and I’ll see where it takes me. I am learning some Jekyll as well to make more websites from scratch. I would really like to find a job doing something in tech. I know this is something I love and just need to find the right fit for me in the world of tech.

Here are a couple websites I have created, helped with, or maintained:

• Angie Bromeland

  This is a site for a dear friend of mine which shows her freelance creative writing, copy editing, editorial writing and marketing work. Contact her for any of your needs!

• Kelly, Holt & Christenson, PLLC

  This is an intellectual property (patents and trademarks) law firm that I work for. They are a small firm providing big results with a powerhouse team of employees.

• Operation HighGround

  This is a non-profit company my dad organized to help soldiers reintegrate into the community after serving our country.

• Ganser’s Goodies

  A friend and former neighbor started a baking business to sell her delicious goodies. She asked me to help her put together a storefront for her to sell her baked goods.

• andihays.net

  My previous blog and web playground where I learned to use Wordpress and developed skills pertaining to developing, editing and maintianing my own site.

I also LOVE to read. I listen to audio books ALL the time (while doing dishes, chores, running, in the car, any spare minute I can find) and read on my Kindle the rest of the time. I usually have a couple books going at one time in various forms (physical book, audio book and ebook). I also have managed a book club since early 2012 and not only are we book lovers, we also love puzzles. My kids are also big readers and I adore catching them reading, reading with them or hearing about books they are reading.

I keep a blog because I want to journal things. I am glad to have readers, but I do this for me. If you don’t like the content…wait until tomorrow. You might like it then. 🙂 And if not, well, maybe I’m just not for you. I tend to be quite random about what I post here. But I suppose that is because I am a very random person! I am really working on embracing doing things for me and not for everyone else. Which is a hard thing to do as a pleaser.

I get incredibly nervous to try new things, but I am working to get over that fear. It’s quite debilitating at times and frankly no fun. I am mostly afraid to fail. I am learning that failing is ok. You learn from it and grow. So it isn’t all bad!

My husband currently works for Google. He works with some of the most interesting and smartest people I know. And he is the smartest of them all (not that I am biased!). This guy never ceases to amaze me with everything he knows and all he can do! He is always building something and working on various projects. He is so amazing!

When my hubby got a job at Google, we uprooted ourselves from Minnesota and moved to Seattle. We were there for a year and decided it wasn’t a place we wanted to stay and moved back home. Chuck continued to work for Google (remotely) and we moved back into our house in Minnesota which was both weird and convenient.

We sold that house that we had for 11 years and built our dream home on Lake Minnetonka and moved in October 2020. We thought long and hard about getting a cabin, but with the sports our kids play, weekends away just wouldn’t really work for our family. So, we started to pursue the idea of living on the lake full time. We found a perfect place to build the house we wanted and enjoyed (and went a little crazy at times) the building process – which was made more challenging by trying to build during COVID.

Let me know if there is anything else you might want to know about me. I’m an open book. I’m quite chatty (as you can probably tell) and if you made it this far, thank you! I am grateful you are here.