Introduction

My story, well this part of it anyway, begins in June 1996, in a small college town in Western Massachusetts. I was 19 years old and on my way out for the night with the girls. I'd been in the sun and chlorine all day lifeguarding; convinced that there was no one left in this town to impress, I pealed off my suit, pulled on a pair of cut-offs and well worn t-shirt and off I went. Nothing out of the ordinary, a small get together at a friend's house. The usual guys that we'd known forever. Beer, cards, nothing special. In retrospect all big things seem to happen when you least expect them too. This is the night I met my husband. To be completely honest, I knew my husband from a few years before. He went to high school, played soccer, basketball and baseball with one of my cousins. They had in fact been friends. He was however almost five years older. Long story short, we got to talking and we have been together ever since.

Just about two years later I was living in Boston, he was living in New Haven, CT and he was offered a job in Texas. It was, for him, an opportunity he could not refuse and he had to go. There was not much in Massachusetts keeping me there. No career worth giving up the opportunity to live someplace else. Family, but it's not as if there are no planes, trains, or ways to visit. So I left my family, took a job with an airline as a Flight Attendant and joined my then boyfriend, future husband in Texas. We spent the next few years there, traveling, enjoying city life and living with my husband's brother who had been in Texas for several years already.

Then another job opportunity. This one was with the same company but it would require a move to California. My job was in Texas and I could try to transfer to LA, but this move was not going to be as easy. In the midst of our preparations to move 9/11 happened. I had the opportunity to take a company offered leave and we moved to Southern California. The next five years were spent in beautiful, sunny Southern California. We created a life and a family there. Lived with friends from back east, drank in the ocean air, beautiful sunsets, night life, culture, landscape and complained about the traffic like everyone else! A beach bungalow, a wedding, friends, maybe roots.... Almost two years after our 2004 wedding, on Labor Day weekend, we found out we were expecting a baby. Suddenly our 675 square foot beach bungalow, that was barely practical for two people, was an impossible living situation to be adding a baby to. So bye-bye Beach Bungalow, Southern California and our friends and hello desert home. Grace was born in May 2007 then 18 months later, to the day, Lily joined our family.

After Grace was born I stopped working and much to my joy I became a full time stay-at-home mom. We built a house in the suburbs and moved into a neighborhood filled with young families and young children. We have two beautiful daughters and have agreed that our family is now complete, except, for the possibility of a dog in the future.

And that is how my life went from Happy Hour to Story Hour in a nut shell.