Our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple joys...Saturdays at soccer games, Sundays at grandma's house...and a date night for Barack and me was either dinner or a movie, because as an exhausted mom, I couldn't stay awake for both.

I come here tonight as a sister, blessed with a brother who is my mentor, my protector and my lifelong friend. And I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president.

All we can do as women is make the best decisions for us. And that includes everything from how you look to how you dress to whether you choose to stay at home or work when you have kids. All those decisions are so personal, and we have to start with finding what brings us joy and what brings us our own individual confidence. And if we're feeling good with those choices, then it makes what everybody else has to say less important.

I mean, hope doesn't get actualized in three and a half years. If that were the case, we'd be out of luck as a country.

There is no magic to achievement. It's really about hard work, choices, and persistence.

To me, with age, everything has gotten better. You have way more control; you know yourself better.

For the first time, the nation will have goals, benchmarks, and measureable outcomes that will help us tackle the childhood obesity epidemic one child, one family, and one community at a time.