Growing up in Reno, Nev., I had one goal on my mind. I wanted to be a reporter.

As a little girl, I would quietly play on the sidewalk outside our home, taking careful note of every move the neighbors made – and jotting it down in childish scribbles.

The desire to explore everything stuck with me through elementary, middle and high school – all of which I experienced through the lens of homeschooling.

At the ripe age of 18, I stepped onto the University of Nevada, Reno campus ready to learn.

College was a whirlwind of full-time study, part-time jobs and friends that became family. I wrote for the university newspaper, became the managing editor of the university magazine, discovered my love for yoga, mountain biking and the outdoors and savored every minute of it.

Then, I landed my first job. Kind of.

It was internship time and I set my focus on the hyperlocal hometown paper. I was given the internship and started covering everything from county fairs to city layoffs. Along the way I started photographing. Then designing pages. Then running the business section. You can see where this is going. The part time internship quickly became a full-time career. I had found true, unrequited, workaholic love. Or so I thought.

Somewhere in the crazy rat race, I went on a camping trip with friends. There, in the Yosemite woods, I met this really cute guy who needed help setting up his tent. After a year of late-night, laughter-packed, after-work rendezvous, we were married.

One weekday, before we could even change out of our pajamas, the phone rang. My husband had been accepted to St. George’s University, a Caribbean medical school. We would be moving once a year for the first four years of our marriage.

I packed up my reporters notebook and off we went to Newcastle, England for his first year of school. You can read about those adventures here.

Our second year was spent in Grenada, West Indies where I explored, reported and ran university organizations. In this fledgling country where bloody revolution was less than a generation away, I learned priceless lessons about the realities of Western aid in the developing world. The people, their poverty and their personalities changed my view of the world, and my life.

Then, our journey has turned state-side. We settled for a while in beautiful Redlands, Calif. where I was lucky enough to take up my reporter’s notebook once again for the Redlands Daily Facts and the San Bernardino Sun.

Now, we are in Idaho where, no doubt, the adventure will continue.

Along the way, I have had the undying support of family members who feel more like best friends and friends who have now earned the appellation of family.

My favorite forms of exploration in my adult years include mountain biking, hiking, yoga, sushi and, of course, reporting.