I grew up in Hastings, Michigan. When I lived there, my name was Erin Solmes. I have five younger brothers and sisters. Part of our youth was spent on a farm with goats and chickens.
I went away to college at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah where I studied history and Spanish. I took a break from school to serve a mission in Venezuela for a year and a half, then I went back to college. I fell in love with a very handsome boy from Oregon and married him just a year before we gr…