I was born an only child in the tiny town of Cook, Minnesota on May 16th, 1982. 1998 I began the first of what turned out to be six summers working at Voyagaire Lodge in beautiful Crane Lake, Minnesota. That summer, I met Andy Ganoe. We began dating in early 1999.

In 2000, I graduated from Cook High School and that fall started at Mesabi Range Community College in Virginia, Minnesota to get my Associate of Arts degree, which I did get in the spring of 2003 while also working part time at an RSI group home in Cook. From there, I began attending classes through Bemidji State University’s Arrowhead University Consortium to get my Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Psychology.

In October of 2003, Andy and I were still going strong and the time finally came that we got engaged. We got an apartment together in December and I moved out of my parent house in Cook to live with Andy in Duluth, Minnesota. I began a job working night shifts for RSI at one of their many houses in Duluth. In August 2004, Andy and I had a wonderful wedding in Crane Lake with all of our closest friends and family there to share it with us.

In December of that year, we moved out of our small one bedroom apartment and bought our first house together – an older traditional home with 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom with many updates, but plenty of updates left to be done. Just a couple of weeks later, we adopted our first cat, a beautiful calico who we named “Ember”. In April 2005 we decided Ember needed a friend, and so we adopted our second cat, a fluffy male (we think a Maine Coon) we named “Cole”.

In May 2005 I graduated with my B.S in Applied Psychology, and with an overall GPA of over 3.3 (which was wonderful considering the grades I got through most of High School).
Finally, in January 2006 we ended up adopting one last cat, a black and white female we named “Smores”. I am currently still working the same job for RSI that I have for 2 years, and Andy is a web developer. We are slowly doing things to improve upon our house and we are enjoying life with our three “babies”.