A Little Bit of History

We were asked by our Bishop to do this little project, and I thought it would be fun to post here:


Rich and I both grew up outside of Utah. For me it was primarily Mesa, Arizona, for Rich it was several different states, and two separate tours in Germany, thanks to his dad’s Military career. Like all couples we have a story, maybe not an earth shatteringly different story, but a story none the less. We met in college, in the computer lab, at Weber State University to be specific.

It is funny because I asked for his help with something, and we both laugh about it now because it was a beginning of a lifetime of him helping me with the computer.

We became best friends and enjoyed long drives through the mountains, going to concerts, movies, and spending all our free time together in any way possible. Eventually we realized what everyone else already knew, something had changed, and we were ready for that next step. We joined our lives together on a snowy day in January, 1995. We settled ourselves in a tiny one bedroom apartment in Bountiful, Utah.

Little did we know how quickly we would become a growing family. We welcomed our first daughter, Tori, to our little family the following December, just eleven short months later! Exactly one year after that we learned we were expecting our second child, Whitney, and just before she was born we moved into our first “real” (albeit a rental) house in Farmington, Utah. Nineteen months later we welcomed our third daughter, Paige, to our growing and busy family. Shortly after her arrival came the arrival of a new job opportunity, in Allentown, Pennsylvania.


We jumped on the chance to do something different, and see something different, for a few years at least, while the kiddos were still little and easily portable. Turned out to be nine years, in two different states, but boy was it fun!

Shortly after we were safe and sound in Pennsylvania, we learned of the impending arrival of our fourth daughter, Rylie, and were surprised when she arrived 7 weeks early. That brought with it many trials and health concerns for both baby and Me. At the same time we were going through the process of determining that our daughter, Whitney, had autism. It was a very rough time for our family, but, looking back, it was one that completely knocked us to our very foundation and rebuilt us piece by piece, stronger and even more solid than we started.


We moved to Omaha, Nebraska, in October, 2005. We’ve all heard the saying “I left my heart in San Francisco”, well, we left our hearts in Omaha. Way less glamorous I suppose, but there is something about that place that just captivated us to the very center of our hearts. We lived there 3 years and met many wonderful people and feel like we really grew a lot as a family, both spiritually and physically!


When the chance to come home to Utah presented itself, we eagerly pursued it, and have been grateful to be here in our beloved mountains and repeatedly find ourselves in awe of the beauty that is here.

We love camping (in our pop-up trailer, not a tent) and hiking in the mountains,especially the spectacular Zion's National Park; doesn’t get any better than that for us. Together we still find ourselves loving the exact same things we enjoyed as a young couple, sans the concerts, at least the loud ones, even after all these years.

Rich enjoys his career in the computer field, he enjoys anything electronic, the more “gadgety” the better. He loves home theater projects, and has recently discovered a talent and a love for all things BBQ. As a family we are thrilled with all of his hobbies, but especially the BBQ! Good stuff!

I like to do all things paper craft, scrapbooking, cards, etc. I find myself at a new place as of late, after homeschooling for the past eight years we sent our girls to school, I am now finding new hobbies and re-discovering old hobbies, and choosing which I would like to spend more time with. Photography seems to keep popping to the top of that short list!

We are always surprised by the fact that each of our girls, though genetically linked, and you would assume very similar, are so very different! They are wonderful and keep us hopping, four teen/pre-teen girls, in one house...yep, lots of music, dancing, singing, texting, computering, “Twilight” loving, emotions flying, quarreling, loving, and best of all growing and learning every day. This, by far, has been the most challenging time of our parental career, but we would not change a thing.