I grew up in a small town by the sea where I spent my childhood climbing trees, making up stories and reading a lot of books. When I was eleven years old I fell in love with Owen, who's now my husband. During high school I was a bit of a geek (...I still am) and when I wasn't taking extra classes or having piano lessons I spent most of my time going on adventures with friends.
After finishing school I moved to the city for more study. At university I majored in Anthropology, and some of my other papers were about the Holy Grail, Arthurian Legend, and Greek Mythology. Obviously it wasn't the most useful degree! For the first few months after finishing university I had a variety of temporary jobs. The most interesting was working at a prison for three weeks, where every morning I helped open the mail to search for drugs and pornography (I never found any).
I decided I wanted to do some more study and this time I wanted it to be practical, so I completed an event management qualification and started a one-person company organising events. There were a lot of things I loved about my work (like being self employed, the chance to write a whole lot of lists, and travelling round the country) but after a couple of years I was ready for something new.
We'd been thinking about if for ages so Owen and I set a date to start travelling. After a few months of saving we packed up our belongings and headed to the other side of the world. We lived in Belfast and London, and spent five weeks sleeping in a tent while travelling through France and Italy. One of my resolutions is to travel to one country for every year I'm alive. I've still got a bit of catching up to do!
When we got back from Europe I finished a career development qualification, and ironically couldn't work out what to do next. I ended up with my first ever full-time office job and started teaching music in my spare time as well. In the meantime Owen and I decided it was time to get married after ten years together. Our wedding was the same day as our eleven year anniversary, and included a promise to grow old disgracefully together.
While we were settling into our first house and married life, our city was rocked by a series of major earthquakes. Luckily we came through OK and it definitely made for an interesting year! After this experience we decided to do some more travelling, and after another foray into Europe for a few weeks we found out that we were in line for a whole new type of adventure - a baby!