My family background is Mexican, and I was born in Chicago. It's pretty much family tradition every time we get together for Christmas and major holidays to sing. Our family time is centered around the food and a little bit of performing for one another.
I always loved family holidays, and I had this vision and dream as a little girl of having a big family of my own.
When we talk about something like student loans, what we should be talking about is the fact that every American wants their kids to do better than we have done. If we can get that, the other thing we'd really like is for our kids to be able to come home and raise their kids in the community where we raised them. What unites all of us, no matter where you live in the country, is we want our family to be safe, we want the next generation in our family to be more successful than us, and we would like our family to be close together.
I loved raising my kids. I loved the process, the dirt of it, the tears of it, the frustration of it, Christmas, Easter, birthdays, growth charts, pediatrician appointments. I loved all of it.
As a kid, I loved to dress up as Ian Dury and run around hitting people with drumsticks. Members of my family, neighbours, friends, kids at school - no one was safe from my rhythm sticks.
We always had so many kids in our family, running around the yard, sweaty little kids jumping in and out of the pool, the front door and back doors swinging open and shut, all of the parents getting pissed off telling us to stay outside.
I didn't feel the need to rebel as a teenager. From age nine to 16, I went to school in Montreux in Switzerland, and it was heaven. I went to England for the Easter holidays, Cyprus for Christmas and summer holidays, and I was delighted to have that independence.
Since Chip and I try to go on a date night once a week, we don't feel the need to keep holidays like Valentine's Day all to ourselves. We set the table fancy, we all get dressed up, and we serve a big, beautiful candlelight dinner. It's our kids' favorite, too.
All of our family holidays were always work trips for my parents, so my sister and I would sit somewhere or find a kids' club while my parents would be interviewing people.
Our family holidays always include our animals. On Thanksgiving, we love to walk around our farm and visit with our rescued pigs, goats, horses, emus and many other rescued animals. We give them all special vegetables that day, and the whole family enjoys a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner. We know that the animals are giving thanks that day, and we are also giving thanks for the joy they bring to our lives.
We always have a traditional Easter egg hunt on Easter Sunday. My Aunt Lynne organises that for the family, so we go to her house in Hampshire and it gets ever more elaborate every year.
In our family, and not just us but even with my cousins, uncles and aunts, we celebrate every festival - be it Christmas, Easter, Eid, Diwali or our birthdays.
You never create a scene around the Easter egg. The Easter egg is always just, 'Oh, there's an opportunity for something that the fans will enjoy if they can spot it.'
Kids in Washington every year have the big Easter egg roll on the White House lawn. The kids found 300 Easter eggs. They also found about 10,000 missing Hillary emails.
My husband is Australian, and my family is scattered around the U.K. and France mostly, but we try to get a big group together for the holidays.
The really expert riders of horses let the horse know immediately who is in control, but then they guide the horse with loose reins and very seldom use the spurs. So it was with our chief [William Rehnquist]. He guided us with loose reins and used the spurs only rarely to get us up to speed with our work.