Childhood

I was born in the San Francisco Bay area in 1982. My dad, Mike, was finishing up his last year at Stanford University. I was the third daughter (my little brother, Adam, was born four years later). My oldest sister, Sarah, is four years older than I am, and Amy two.

Shortly after my 5th birthday, my family moved to Boise, Idaho. My parents bought a house in a great neighborhood with lots of kids. My childhood was spent playing with friends, riding bikes, climbing trees and building forts.

My parents divorced when I was ten years old. My mom, Sussie, moved to Colorado and my brother, sisters and I stayed with our dad in Boise. The following years were very difficult for me. It wasn't easy going through puberty without my mom around. Imagine my horror when I had to tell my dad that I'd started my period.

My dad remarried a couple months before my 12th birthday. My step mom, Bonnie, had two daughters from a previous marriage. Mandy is a year older than me, and Melissa and I are just 30 days apart. I am very fortunate because I have always had a great relationship with Bonnie and I love my step sisters as much as my biological siblings.

Growing up in house with five girls, all within four years of age, was a bit crazy, except for that one week out of the month when it was purely insane. But we had a lot of fun and I wouldn't change a thing about it.

I have a big extended family. We used to get together fairly often and our typical reunions were spent at various campgrounds. We also frequently got together for Thanksgiving, which has always been one of my favorite times of the year. There's nothing like my family's Thanksgiving: roughly 50 people and 70 pies. My grandmother passed away of few years ago, and perhaps her greatest legacy is her pies.

In the fall 1996 we moved to Albany, OR, just in time to start my freshman year of high school. I don't think any of us were very thrilled at the idea of moving to a new state during adolescence. It took us a long time to make friends. This is especially true for me. For the first year of high school, my sisters were my only friends. We ate lunch together, hung out together, and even had slumber parties together (odd, since three of us already shared a room). We were a little wild sometimes. Many people thought we were crazy when we hung our bras from our bedroom ceiling fan.

In 1998, my mom married my step dad, Terry. They've been living in Anchorage, Alaska ever since. Terry has a daughter from a previous marriage named April, who is married with four kids and living in Idaho. Unfortunately we don't see a lot of each other. She's very funny and I'm always glad to see her when we do get together.

I got my first job a few weeks after my 16th birthday. I was a cook at Angie's, a 1950s inspired diner. I worked there for a few months, and then became a hostess at Wyatt's Eatery and Brewhouse. I worked there through my junior year of high school and the following summer, when I left to study abroad for my senior year. I was selected by the Rotary Club to go to Keuruu, Finland through their student exchange program. I lived with two great families while I was there. It was an amazing experience and I learned and grew a lot over the ten months I was there.

I came home from Finland in June of 2000, just in time for graduation. I came home full of new ideas and experience and absolutely no idea what to do with myself. I held a couple odd jobs, including selling Cutco knives, and I basically spent the next six months getting myself together. I remember one November afternoon, I was looking through a pile of mail that my parents collected for me while I was in Finland. In that pile, I found a letter from Oregon State University. I opened it up and it said, "Congratulations, you've been accepted to OSU as an English major." I didn't even know I applied to Oregon State (I found out later that while I was away, my parents applied to the school on my behalf). I didn't have a better plan for myself, so I decided to start school at Oregon State as an English major.

As it turned out, incoming freshmen could not register without a PIN, and that PIN could only be obtained from an academic adviser. I scheduled an appointment shortly before the fall term ended, and the adviser didn't show. A few days before winter term started I was totally freaking out because I still was not registered, so I decided to change my major, meet with another adviser, and get registered for classes. My first thought was to start with the A's and work my way down, alphabetically, until I found an academic adviser who would give me a PIN. Luckily, I realized there was a more obvious way of choosing an major, and that was to actually consider studying something that interested me: politics.

I was very social in college. My motto was "moderation in all things" which meant that I played as much as I studied (though I still maintained good grades). I was very involved in the student ward and participated in all the activities (indeed, I planned many of them). I've always loved to dance and took a few classes while in college (my favorite dance is Salsa). I had a lot of fun during those years.

In June of 2005, I graduated from Oregon State with a BA in Political Science and a Certificate in Women Studies.