MY FAMILY

My husband and I live in Moncure with our three children, two cats, and two dogs. Since my children are students in Chatham County Schools, I will try to respect their privacy by not telling too much about all they do to make me proud. While we each have our own interests, we often enjoy time together playing games and traveling.

I met my husband through a college roommate and fell in love with him because of his uplifting personality.  On our first date, he warned me that his "only true love" (at the time) were cars.  Not long after, I convinced him to take a swing dancing class with me.  These two hobbies still fill much of our time together.  After he proposed on the millennium, we married at the Japanese Gardens on June 4, 2000.

He worked as a geologist in Los Angeles but was able to pursue his passion for real estate when we moved to North Carolina in 2003.  I am happy to repay him for all of his support during my long hours of lesson-planning and paper-grading by helping him build his companies, Selling Directly Flat Fee Real Estate and Tru Blu Realty.

For those who are curious, my last name is Egyptian.  My father-in-law emigrated from Egypt to the U.S. in the early 1970s. 

NORTH CAROLINA

My husband and I often hear ourselves saying how happy we are to have moved here to the Triangle.  We knew we wanted to find a smaller community to start a family and enjoyed visiting Oregon and Nevada but didn't think we'd like living there year-round.  We filled out an online questionnaire together at FindYourSpot.com which recommended several locations on the East Coast.  After visiting one summer, we decided we fit in best near Raleigh because of its cultural activities and especially liked the idea of the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees (CARY).  We took our time crossing the U.S. and stopped at many sights along the way before arriving to our new life.  We lived in Morrisville and Apex before building our family home in Moncure.

TRAVEL

I absolutely love traveling and have visited over 30 states and over 20 countries. I have taken advantage of opportunities to travel since high school when I sold girl scout cookies to visit Washington D.C., Williamsburg, Salem, Boston, and New York City. I explored Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic with a former exchange student the summer after my first year of college.  In 2016, I applied to study education abroad and stopped in England, Iceland, Sweden, and Estonia on a trip to Finland with fellow educators through NC State. 

Living in southern California allowed me to camp and hike in Yosemite, Monument Valley, and Sedona as well as visit Mexico, the Grand Canyon, and Las Vegas several times.  On our way to North Carolina in 2003, my husband and I enjoyed White Sands National Park in New Mexico, the riverwalk in Austin, nightlife in New Orleans, and more across the southern United States. We've also visited friends and family who moved to their own happy homes in Florida, Idaho, Colorado, and Montana.  We love living on the East Coast where we can travel easily to many natural and historical destinations like Summersville Lake, the Virginia Creeper Trail, the aquarium in Atlanta, and revolutionary and civil war sites throughout the south. We enjoy the beach and have explored from Tybee to the Outer Banks, but I personally love chasing waterfalls from Nantahalla to Appalachia.

Once the kids were old enough to remember, we spent a month exploring Spain, France, Italy, and Amsterdam. In 2021, we took them to the newest national park, New River Gorge, and the oldest, Yellowstone. To celebrate our son's Spanish skills, we have visited countries in Central and South America, including the Galápagos. There are many national parks and amazing countries left that I look forward to exploring.

GROWING UP

I was raised in Yorba Linda - a suburb in Orange County, California, with plenty of fun things to do: Magic Mountain, Disneyland, and Universal Studios, as well as the beach and mountains nearby.  I worked several odd jobs to save money for college and buy a car: paper collator, data entry technician, telephone receptionist, camp counselor for special needs scouts, and middle school color guard instructor.

While I enjoyed certain classes, I was often bored in school and refused to participate in anything I felt was "busy work."  Consequently, I earned an F in my freshman English class at Esperanza High School.  I enjoyed math and worked diligently to pass the AP Physics test since it was the only honors-level course I had taken after being encouraged by a beloved Biology teacher.  History has always fascinated me, and I regret now not reading more of the textbooks at that time.  The requirements for earning an A were easy since the teachers were more concerned about coaching, and I did no more than what was assigned.

High School did keep me involved in many extra-curricular activities, including Girl's League, Drama Club, German Club, Concert Choir, National Honors Society, Poetry Club, and even the first year of the Ecology Group.  As captain of the color guard team, most of my time was devoted to our school's entertainment unit, preparing for and performing at parade, field, and indoor competitions.  I enjoyed many different circles of friends and was pleasantly surprised when my senior class voted me "most likely to change the world" in 1995. 

During my free time, I was a deep thinker who enjoyed reading books and writing poetry. I fell in love with American Sign Language while on a ferry to see the Statue of Liberty with a girl scout troop in my freshman year, and I studied as much as I could from books (can you imagine what it was like pursuing a passion back before the internet!).  

COLLEGE

To make the most of my money, I took 21 units a semester and every possible summer and winter course at Fullerton Community College so that I could graduate with an Associate degree in Psychology: Family Studies in a year and a half (back before the days when you could take college classes in high school). I transferred to California State University, Northridge because of its reputation for deaf studies and enjoyed earning a place in the deaf community there.

I had always known I wanted to be a teacher, but I changed my focus to English when I realized deaf students needed representation found in deaf teachers. Working part-time as a teacher's assistant in an elementary then middle school classroom allowed me to observe expert teachers and practice many of the techniques I was learning in my education classes.  I hold many wonderful memories from my time as a paraeducator that helped reassure me teaching would be a life-long passion.