Washington ? First lady Michelle Obama said Wednesday she is pleased with her inaugural year in the White House, thinks she’s been effective and regards the much-publicized state dinner gate-crashers as nothing more than a “footnote.”

Meeting with a small group of reporters, Obama said she’s proudest that her daughters are “sane” and still the girls they always were. She said she hoped she could say the same thing about Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, three years hence.

She said she breathed a sigh of relief last March when the girls seemed to be adjusting to their new home and school.

Obama, who turns 46 on Sunday, also said she tries to stay grounded by thinking of herself more as “Michelle” than as “first lady.”

She described using friends as sounding boards and asking them: “Do you still recognize me? Do you still feel like I’m Michelle, or are you tripping?”

Obama said she felt she’d been an effective lady, mentioning trips to 14 states, eight foreign countries and six military bases and hosting 200-plus events at the White House.

Asked if she’d have any re-dos–an episode, an event or an outfit–she said she would not.

Not even the gate-crashers? “The state dinner was an outstanding success,” she said. Alluding to the uninvited guests, she added: “That other stuff is a footnote.”

The Nov. 24 dinner, the Obamas’ first such gala, saluted the prime minister of India.

Among her most memorable moments were watching her children meet the pope, having tea with the queen of England and visiting a slave-trading site in Ghana. “That is so much the blessing of this job,” she said. “We can see the world with our children and my mother.”

Obama also said she’s pleased that her mother, Marian Robinson, has settled in the White House because, in some ways, she would have preferred to stay in her South Side home.

Obama said plans to visit Chicago regularly have not been realized because of the girls’ schedule of weekend basketball and soccer games and ballet recitals, plus sleep-overs and birthday parties. She also pointed to the upheaval involved in closing down her old neighborhood and thoroughfares such as Lake Shore Drive.