5 favorite things with N.C. First Lady Kristin Cooper

And, as part of my weekly mom features, which appear here on Go Ask Mom every Monday, I thought I'd ask Cooper some questions about her life in the Executive Mansion and as a mom. Her three daughters are now young adults.

So here are five of N.C. First Lady Kristin Cooper's favorite things ...

"It was donated by a family that were refugees from the Holocaust that came to North Carolina after the war and gifted it to the state," she said. "It came in a box, all in pieces. Somebody was able to figure out how to put the pieces back together - like a lot of other things that were getting put back together in that era in history. I think of it whenever we're in there having people for dinner. It's gorgeous. It reflects out on the mirrors."

Her kids loved scrambling over to the former N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, before the current, updated building opened in 2000.

"They used to come up when my husband was in the legislature and they would run across," she said. "They loved that place."

Pullen Park was another favorite. And so was Chuck E. Cheese. But Cooper was happy to bow out of those those visits. Apparently, Gov. Roy Cooper has spent some time with Chuck E.

"That was his job," Cooper said with a little laugh. "I just said, "This is your special thing with Daddy.' I didn't want to spoil that or take that away from him."

Cooper loves to garden. She also considers herself an amateur birder - a hobby kindled during the winter of 1995-96 when, for two weeks, she was snowed in with three children, including a baby and a toddler, on a cul de sac in Rocky Mount.

"All I had was a big window and a pair of binoculars and a field guide," she said. "And that's kind of what I did - just looked out the window and learned how to identify birds. It was better than some alternatives you have when you're snowed in with three kids for a couple of weeks."

"That's why there is a lot of spare dirt out there," Cooper said.

For more than a dozen years, Cooper, a lawyer by training, has served as a guardian ad litem for foster kids in Wake County, representing them in court. At the beginning of her husband's term, helping foster children was a focus.

"But we quickly began seeing the cyclical nature that keeps kids in the system," she said. "Many of the children that I represent, their biological parents also were in foster care."

Today, she's tackling the broad issue of childhood poverty and the things that can contribute to that, including food insecurity, which leaves children hungry, and early literacy.

"We are hopeful," she said. "The big picture right now is difficult."

So, she said, she's focused on working to improve life for kids on at least a small scale - working toward garden grants for schools so kids can learn about healthful eating, for instance, or participating in storytimes.

"Our most valuable natural resource is our people and investing in our children is something that matters," she said. "We may not have, at this moment, a forum for a huge change, but we're going to continue to work on what we can do."

Cooper picked her friend and law school classmate Elaine Marshall, North Carolina's current Secretary of State. Marshall recently married at the Executive Mansion.

In 1996, when Marshall became Secretary of State, she was the first woman elected to statewide office in North Carolina's history.

"I remember watching her," Cooper said. "I was on the inauguration committee at the time and watching her be the first woman sworn in to the Council of State on a freezing January morning ... it was very affecting."