My Biography

I was born on 23 March 1977 in Duluth, Minnesota. My sister rebecca was born on 15 December 1979. My brother Michael was born on 2 September 1988. Until I was about 6 months old, my parents and I lived in a house on W. 3rd Street in the West End (now known as Lincoln Park) neighborhood, next to the Rexall Drug Store. My parents had an Irish Setter named Molly, which they gave away when they moved.

The new house, which was where I lived until the age of 24, was located on Hillcrest Drive, in the Piedmont neighborhood. I attended Piedmont Elementary School, and later attended Washington Junion High School in the Central Hillside neighborhood, for grades 7 and 8. (Washington was closed within a year or two after this, and was converted into an apartment building.) This was where I learned to play the french horn, in 7th grade. I continued to play into adulthood. I also played basketball for the school's team, and for a team coached by my father.

In 9th grade I attended Denfeld High School, but I was unhappy there as most of the friends I made in junior high went to Central High School. In my 10th grade year I transferred to Central, and I graduated with honors in June, 1995.

In high school, I continued to play basketball through my sophomore year, and then turned my focus to the French horn. I was a part of the concert band as well as the concert orchestra. I took French through the 11th grade, and was on the yearbook committee during my senior year.

I enrolled in The College of St. Scholastica's biology program in 1995, and was a student there until I graduated in December 2000 with a B.A. in biology and a teaching license. I continued to play French horn in the college's concert band, and in small ensembles, and played trumpet in the jazz band during my sophomore year. In the fall semester of 2000, I did student teaching work for a 7th grade science class at Lincoln Park School in Duluth.

I held several jobs in high school and while working my way through college. My first job paid $4.25 per hour. These jobs included retail clothing and music sales, fast food, conncession, and restaurant jobs, a movie theater, greenhouse salesperson, summer camp counselor, pull-tab sales, computer lab technician, and web page designer for the college. After graduation, I worked as a substitute teacher for the Duluth Public Schools, before moving to Connecticut in August 2001.

I met my future husband in an internet chat room. By coincidence, his mother and her family had ties to Duluth. I visited Connecticut in May 1998 to meet him, and later moved there. We became engaged in May 2002, and were married on 26 July 2003 at St. Lawrence Church in Duluth. We currently rent an apartment in Southington, Connecticut.