Mike Pence's perfect weekend? Horse riding, pizza, the Bible and a nonalcoholic beer

WASHINGTON —  How would Vice President Mike Pence spend an ideal weekend?

According to the description Karen Pence gave of her husband Thursday, Pence would wash back a thin crust pizza with a nonalcoholic beer, ride a horse and curl up with a good book — if not THE good book.

Introducing the vice president at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Karen Pence said she wanted to pull back the curtain and show the crowd "a different side of Mike Pence that you might not know."

If there's one group that's already very familiar with Pence's political background, it's the activists who attend the conference where Pence has been a regular speaker since his tenure in Congress.

"He has a stellar conservative record," said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said before the second lady took the stage.

Karen Pence said she wanted to go beyond Pence's public record and share who he is as a person — the husband who attended her back-to-school nights when she taught, helped her sell her watercolors at art fairs, and supported her when she was a stay-at-home mom.

So she revealed the following "Five Facts You Need to Know About Mike Pence." 

1. He really likes pizza.

"If it’s Friday night, we’d  better be having pizza for dinner. Supreme, thin crust with an O’Doul’s," Pence said. "Every. Friday. Night."

(That fact drew different responses on Twitter.)

2. The feedback he respects most comes from his three grown children. 

"We raised them to be independent thinkers, to climb their own mountains, to not be afraid to speak up and disagree with us," Pence said. "He values their opinions above all — even above mine. Because my job, as we all know, is to keep him humble. So I don’t always give him all this positive feedback."

3. The vice president is a cartoon artist.

It's a fact Karen Pence thought would be surprising to the audience. "Gotcha, didn’t I?" she asked the crowd.

During law school, Pence drew a weekly cartoon for the school paper called "Law School Daze." He fashioned the main character, Daze, after himself.

Pence has kept up his cartooning skills with caricatures. When, as a teacher of second graders, Karen Pence would invite students to their house, her husband would draw caricatures of each of them.

4. If Pence could buy anything he wanted, it would be a horse.

"He has always wanted a horse," Karen Pence said. "I think riding horses is really the only place he truly relaxes."

5. He loves a good book.

That's especially true of "the good book," Karen Pence said.

But he's also a voracious reader of historical novels, biographies, mysteries, Christian books and political commentaries.