My earliest memories are of learning are those with my family. My mom taught me how to grow fruits and vegetables in my family's enormous garden, and there was a gardener's market across the street every weekend when it wasn't winter. There were lots of other children to play with there. My dad taught painting and drawing at Utah State University, a land-grant agricultural university. My mom stayed home to care for me and my younger sister. My extended family, especially my grandparents, were also highly involved in my upbringing. We would often visit them in Madison, Wisconsin, and sometimes we would all go on vacation overseas together. By the time I was three, I had been hiking in the Malaysian jungle because of my grandparents, I knew how to read and write because of my mom's one-on-one dedication to helping me pursue my curiosity about language, and I had experience with the recording arts, as I would make up stories with my dad and we'd record them with a Fisher Price cassette recorder.