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I was born and raised in Brigham City, Utah. I moved away from Brigham City when I was 18. When I was growing up Brigham City was a small town, but over the decades since I moved away, it has grown a bit. Even though I moved away, growing up in Brigham City had a hand in shaping who I am today. Brigham City is best known for its peaches and its corresponding Peach Days celebration that is held every September.

The train station in Brigham City was featured in the movie Species. It is right at the beginning of the movie.

While growing up, not many people knew where Brigham City was, this was especially true for people who lived south of Ogden and never ventured north of Ogden much.

The one thing I loved the most about growing up there was how pretty it could look during the fall when all the leaves on the trees there turned colors and going for drives up Sardine Canyon during that time. It is really beautiful and is probably why fall is my favorite season.

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Being a mother makes up a large part of what has shaped who I am. In the picture above is my son, Matt (on the right), and his fiancée Alex (on the left).

It might sound strange, but raising my son has taught me a lot about what love truly means. In addition to teaching me what love is, raising my son has brought many laughs and worries. My worries have mostly been about whether I am doing good by him. But I like that I am not certain about how good of a mother I am because it allows me to continue growing and learning as a parent, and as a person.

Certain issues within my home when I was growing up, caused me to rethink what being a parent meant and how to parent your children. I chose to do things differently than what my parents had done. One of those things I changed was the communication between my son and me. I did what I could to foster an environment where he could come to talk to me about anything and that I was open to discussing any topic he brought up.

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Something that has been a large influence in my life has been my German heritage. My maternal great-grandparents immigrated from Germany to the United States in the 1920s.

Many of the traditions, sense of humor, and the German language have been very prominent in my life. Now that my brother and I have grown up and have our own families, we still keep a lot of those traditions alive. These show up around Christmastime mostly.

The sad thing for me is that I seemed to have not inherited the gene for liking sauerkraut and sausages. I can't eat that stuff no matter what.

What has caught on the most with me is the German language. I took four years of it in high school and often my language is peppered with some German phrases and words.

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A few years ago I started attending SLCC, where I am majoring in Computer Science. Specifically, I have been focusing on programming. What I didn't realize at the time I enrolled was that the direction I really would like to go in is web design/web programming. I didn't realize this till I had been through some of the web programming courses at SLCC.

So, outside of school, I have been working with a friend on projects that involve web programming and Arduino. I am excited to be doing this outside of school because I haven't had any other real experience aside from what I have been learning in school and this is giving me experience and I am learning much more.

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Something that is a large part of who I am is my love for history, and specifically the history of England. Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I adore England and its history, and I should probably have a warning sign that says, "Warning! May start talking about British history at any moment!"

Over the past few years, I have been reading and learning about the history of England, from the Mesolithic to the present day. Currently, I am reading about Charles I and the English Civil War (1642). Many events took place in the lead-up to the beginning of the English Civil War breaking out that were present before the American Civil War and are also similar to many things taking place now here in the States.

Through learning about the history of England, I have also gained a great appreciation for history and the lessons that can be learned through studying history. When you study history and understand where we have been, you can see where we are going.

Aside from me just loving England and its history, it is also another part of my heritage. If you want to go way back, some of my ancestors came over on the Mayflower. But more recently, my great-grandparents on my mother's father's side immigrated from Great Britain around 1900.

There weren't many traditions that have survived in our family that were British, but some of us do carry on a few of the traditions that were passed down. But I think that my love of history mostly comes from my father who also loved the history of the British Isles and World War II.