500 Word Autobiography

My name is reprehriestless warillever. I am 30 years old, mother to Agent 002 and Agent 004, and wife to mr warillever. The four of us live with our cat Janice in a small New Hampshire village.

I am the youngest of my parents’ five children. My siblings are 6, 9, 11 and 15 years older than me; in many ways my oldest siblings were more like a second set of parents than an older brother and sister. Now that we are all adults it is funny how the age gap has diminished. We all live locally and see each other frequently; my oldest sister has two children younger than ours that spend their weekdays at our house.

We also see my parents frequently. They are very active in their retirement and spend many of their days visiting their six young grandchildren. They have been married to each other for 47 years and obviously love each other very much.

Looking back on it, I had an idyllic childhood. It was an urban neighborhood, but I could ride my Big Wheel tricycle in our yard or explore the large park behind our house. Our house was always the center of activity for entire neighborhood. My mother ran a small in-home daycare, so there were always plenty of children to play with. My older brother’s friends would come over on summer nights to play whiffle ball in a natural replica a of Fenway Park, replete with bases, floodlights, a deep right field fence and its very own Green Monster – a tall maple tree in short-left field.

I loved school. Our parish Catholic school was a few blocks away, and I walked there everyday with my older sister or friends. As a teenager I got a scholarship to attend a prep school, and from there I was off the Ivy League where I majored in Russian language and International Relations.

The year after graduation I returned to hometown as a volunteer with the local immigrant population while mr warillever (whom I had met in college) moved to Vermont to teach. I followed six months later and we spent three years teaching social studies in a rural high school. We then moved to Indiana for graduate school – mr warillever studied law at Notre Dame while I worked in Notre Dame libraries and earned a Masters in Library Science from Indiana University.

While we were in Indiana, we started the process to adopt two children from Russia. Two years later – just as we were in transit from Indiana to our new home in New Hampshire – we adopted a three year old boy and a one-year old girl. Agent 002 is now six and started first grade this year. Agent 004 recently turned four.

I stay home fulltime with the children. We spend our days playing, learning, and hugging. As Agent 002 will recite faithfully, “Hugs first, then work, and we can play after that.” It is amazing to see them grow and discover every day.

Happy 500th-ish post everyone! It has been great sharing our adventures with you.