As this year comes to a close I have been reflecting on the past decade. How much has happened! And how much I have changed! As we welcomed the year 2000 I was a senior in high school, and I graduated from El Dorado High School in June. I also graduated from seminary, and finished all of the requirements for the young womanhood recognition at church. Now graduating from seminary and achieving the young womanhood recognition may not seem such a big deal to one who has grown up a member of the church. But I was baptized when I was fifteen. I had to go back and make up 2 years of seminary, and 3 years of young women’s (also 4 years of girls camp) in order to finish at the same level as all the other kids my age in my ward and stake. I guess I shouldn’t say I “HAD” to, nobody made me do it. I *wanted* to do it, and I did.
Five days before I graduated from high school my family had the awesome opportunity to go to the Los Angeles, California Temple and we were all sealed together as a family. There was also a friend of my parent’s there to be a proxy for Timothy so he was sealed to us as well. SO awesome! My siblings and I hung out in the nursery while my parents went through and received their endowments and while they were sealed together. And let’s just say that the nursery is not really a place that was created with older children in mind. My younger siblings had things to do and play with, but us older siblings were quite bored. Then it was about time for the nice temple ladies to take us to the sealing room so we could be sealed. David had broken his arm before and had a bright green cast on his arm, so one of the ladies had to cut up a white sock to cover the bright green Then it was about time for the nice temple ladies to take us to the sealing room so we could be sealed. But before they took us they explained to us that we must be reverent and that we should not laugh while we are walking through the temple or while we are in the sealing room. We did pretty well walking through the temple I think, but they led us into the sealing room and directed us to where we should each kneel around the altar (squishing 3 adults and 9 kids around that altar was interesting) and as David knelt he plopped his elbow on the altar like he was getting ready to arm wrestle whoever was across from him. We ALL (including Mom & Dad) started laughing and we just couldn’t help it.
Also after high school I got my first car. It was an old Nissan Sentra. My Grandpa Zig gave it to me for $2500, but when I gave him the first payment, he said “I don’t want your money”. So really he just gave it to me. Despite it having been free, I hated that car. It was old and ugly! But on my way home from the college one day, I crashed! I guess the cars in front of me stopped because there were pedestrians in a cross walk ahead, and I didn’t see that because I had just noticed that there was a post office right there, and I was looking at that. Then I looked forward again, saw the cars stopped, slammed on my brakes but the car hit this SUV in front of me. I FREAKED OUT! And then the SUV door opened and this lady in a police uniform got out of the car, and then I was hysterical. I was crying and I was just so flustered, we pulled off onto a side street to exchange information. I left my keys on the seat of my car and shut the door while we were jotting down each others information. But my car had these locks where the car locks itself after a certain amount of time, so my keys ended up locked in my car. I had to walk back to the institute (which is across the street from the college) to call my mom and ask her to bring the spare key to my car.
The damage doesn’t actually look that bad, but what happened was the back of the light, broke right through the battery and battery acid got all over everything under the hood and therefore the car was totaled. THAT’S when I began to miss my car, when I didn’t have it any more. 🙁
I also met Kyle towards that latter part of 2000 (See previous post).
In January of 2001 Dad and I got to take a business trip to New York. We were going to sell horns and mouthpieces at a convention, but we left a bit early so we could do some sight seeing in the area first. Dad and I got to go to the Sacred Grove and the Hill Cumorah.
We got to see Joseph Smith’s log home and the Martin Harris farm. We also got to see the print shop where they printed the Book of Mormon. Dad got to go through the Palmyra Temple. I got to see it, and I almost got to go do baptisms there, but I guess they weren’t doing baptisms or were too busy or something. We also got to see Niagra Falls. As I’m sure you can tell by the look on my face, it was COLD!
We also got to see two shows on Broadway, Annie Get Your Gun, and Beauty and the Beast. And I must say when the Beast changed into the Prince at the end they did that right on stage and it was quite impressive. 🙂
In June of 2001 I took a road trip with Kyle’s sister Liesl. My mom was quite mad that I was going just because I would be away for her birthday. Anyways! The night before Liesl and I left Kyle proposed and I got to go visit his family as an engaged young woman. 🙂 Right before leaving I got to show my dad my ring and he pulled out the magnifying glass to look at it! I guess he was joking that my diamond was a small one. Whatever. Anyways, Liesl and I had lots of fun. While we were in Utah visiting Kyle’s other sister, Laurel, Laurel took me around to a bunch of the temples here in Utah.
Not long after that trip, some of my family and I made a road trip to Arizona for my cousin, Charity’s baby shower. We met her boyfriend Michael, and got to spend some time with them. And we made a trip to see the Mesa Arizona Temple while we were there.
My family made yet another road trip that summer to go to Utah to see some church history sites, such as Brigham Young’s winter home in St George, the St George Temple, and Tabernacle. We went to the Clarkston pageant where they performed a play called “Martin Harris: The Man Who Knew”. While we were visiting southern Utah we visited Kyle’s Uncle Denis, and we checked out his photography shop, since he was to do the pictures for our upcoming wedding.
About August 2001 we learned that Kyle’s dad had a brain tumor, and was given 6 months to a year left to live.
And 29 December 2001 Kyle and I were married in the Los Angeles Temple. And we spent our honeymoon at Disneyland. 😉
Kyle and I started 2002 off living in Fullerton, in the house that I grew up in. We rented it from my parents, Kyle had actually moved in a couple of months before we got married. It was close to Fullerton Community College (where we both attended classes) and it was pretty close to where Kyle was working at the time. We went to Kyle’s parents house every Sunday for dinner. One night, I think in February, on our way home from his parent’s house Liesl was driving us and we saw this random rabbit along the side of the road. Kyle made some kind of a comment and I said “I dare you to go catch it.” To my surprise he got out of the car and went right up to the rabbit and she just let him pick her up. I called my mom the next day to ask her to bring me a rabbit cage and stuff, since my mom has all that kind of stuff and I didn’t want to go buy it if I didn’t have to. And she came over with a cage and was checking the bunny out then she said “Uh, she’s pregnant”. That’s why she didn’t run when Kyle tried to catch her! Instead of putting her in the rabbit cage I put her in our bathtub along with some towels, since I didn’t know when she would be having the babies, and I didn’t have a nesting box, and I didn’t want the babies to be born and fall through the wire bottom of the rabbit cage. So I got her all set up in the bathroom. That very day she had 8 babies.
They were my babies before I had babies. 😉 I loved to play with them, and we tried to litter box train them, but I think there were just too many of them to try potty training them all at once.
Then in, I think it was May, we found out we were expecting our own little bundle of joy. 🙂 And not long after that we found out that Dad was selling our little house and we were going to need to move. There was NOWHERE that we could move and be able to afford it on what Kyle was making. Well I guess we could have rented some little dump in some scary neighborhood, I don’t know, we didn’t look at any place like that. Liesl wanted to move out on her own, and we needed someplace to go, so we went in together and rented a nice apartment in Anaheim. It was just perfect for us, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a small kitchen, a small dining area, and the living room. It was fun living with Liesl for that time, even though we were so messy it drove her nuts. 😛
Kyle and I both attended the Fullerton college that year, I was in the band, and taking a bunch of music classes. Kyle had been taking all kinds of random classes at the college for years and finally decided that he should probably talk to a counselor and find out what he needed to graduate. Turned out that he only needed two math classes to finish up his associate degree in computer science. So he took them and in May of 2002 he graduated. I wasn’t able to get any pictures or anything of the graduation, since I was in the band and I had to sit on the field playing the music. But I was definitely there.
In December 2002 Kyle and I celebrated our first anniversary, and then about one week later, 6th of January, we welcomed our Ethan to the world. (I made Kyle let me brush my hair before he took this picture. 😛 )
By that time Kyle’s dad was confined to a hospital bed in his living room, so we made sure to go over often. We had Ethan’s baby blessing on 19th of January, at Kyle’s parents house so that Kyle’s dad could participate in it. And right after the baby blessing he requested a blessing of release. All he wanted at that point was to live long enough to see our first baby, and after Ethan’s blessing he felt like he got his wish and was ready to depart this life. He died on the 27th of January 2003.
In June our lease on the apartment that we shared with Liesl was going to be up and we needed to figure out some other kind of living arrangements. Liesl was sick of living with us because, like I said before, we were too messy. We had made a trip to Utah over Memorial Day weekend, and saw how inexpensive houses were versus the cost of houses in southern California and thought that it would be easier for us to be able to afford to buy something in Utah than for us to afford something in southern California. Kyle also had the goal of going to BYU to continue his schooling. When we got back home from the trip, Kyle mentioned the thought of moving to Utah to his boss, and his boss just flew off the handle and fired him on the spot saying “Fine! Leave!” Kyle finished out the days work and came home to tell me what happened. SO our lease was up soon, Kyle no longer had a job, and housing was more affordable in Utah than in California. So to Utah we went.
We lived with Kyle’s sister Laurel and her family for a couple of weeks while Kyle found a job, and we looked for an apartment of our own. And we lived in Orem for the next 16 months.
Kyle went on his first business trip in November of 2003, and I REALLY didn’t want to stay home all by myself with Ethan for two whole weeks, so I got to hop on a plane with Ethan and Chewy and go visit my family in California.
In May of 2004 Tyra joined our family. Ethan had been told that there was a baby in mommy’s belly, but he really didn’t grasp the concept. When he met Tyra in the hospital he seemed to be ok with the whole thing, BUT I wasn’t holding Tyra then (she was in her bassinet) and we weren’t at home. Tyra wasn’t even 24 hours old when I was allowed to go home but it was late, so Ethan got to spend one more night sleeping at cousins house and Laurel brought him home the next morning. As soon as he walked in the door and took one look at me holding Tyra he turned right around and tried to go back out the door with Laurel!
When Tyra was 7 weeks old I had to have my very first surgery ever. It certainly wasn’t fun. You see, I had had an episiotomy when Ethan was born and it never healed properly. See? REALLY not fun. By the time I finally got insurance while I was pregnant with Tyra I was a few months into the pregnancy already and my midwives had me see the doctor and we all agreed that we should just wait and fix it up when I had the baby. The midwife that delivered Tyra, just stitched me back up, but again it didn’t heal probably, this time probably due to scar tissue. So when I had my 6 week postpartum visit and my midwife saw that it still wasn’t healed she had me talk to Dr Parker, who is an OB in the office that I go to, and he also happens to be a surgeon and the next week I went into surgery with him where he had to remove the scar tissue, rough up the area a bit and restitch. But so far that has been the ONLY surgery that I’ve ever had, thank goodness.
We had Tyra’s baby blessing on the 4th of July. It was fun to have my family here with us for the holiday weekend, even if there was a bunch of stress with the surgery right before and Karen’s birthday being ON 4th of July as well. I was sad that I couldn’t even laugh without pain. The day before Tyra’s blessing 3 July, Kyle and I brought both of our families out to Eagle Mountain to show them the model home for the house we were going to have built, but the lady that worked at the model homes wasn’t there, which was really frustrating because we had told her that we planned on bringing our families out that day. So we ended up coming out Sunday after church to see the model.
September of 2004 I had my first experience with canning peaches. Kyle’s Aunt Linda and Uncle Aaron invited us over to pick peaches, and I didn’t want them to go to waste, so Aunt Linda told me how to can them. I also got Laurel to come over and help show me how to do it. I’ve been hooked ever since. 🙂
November 2004 Kyle and I took Ethan and Tyra to California to throw a surprise 50th birthday party for my dad. I actually had my mom tell me who to invite, and she gave me their addresses and I mailed their invites from here in Utah. Then Kyle and I drove down to ‘Grandpa’s house’. Dad knew nothing about it until he saw mom set up the air mattress in the extra room. Mom and I went shopping and hid everything. Kyle was supposed to get dad out of the house by saying he wanted to go to Fry’s (a favorite store of Kyle’s) and inviting dad to go with him. Dad ended up getting mad at something and became quite grouchy and I was starting to wonder HOW we were going to pull off this ‘surprise’ party. But after a shower dad looked at Kyle and said “Let’s go”. YAY! We got him out of the house! Before he left though our first guest showed up so I had to sneak outside and lead them through the gate into the backyard so that Dad wouldn’t see them and suspect. But once dad was gone we went inside and quickly moved the dining tables around, set out the food and got the decorations ready. The guests arrived and dad didn’t suspect anything until he and Kyle got back home and there were a bunch of cars parked around the house, then he said “oh they’re not!” YUP we did! He was REALLY surprised and it was awesome. 😀
Well it was just a quick trip to California and we had to get back home. We were busy packing. We had given our apartment manager a date that we would be moving out and we had to get the place packed up and cleaned out. On 14 November we signed the escrow papers to buy our first house! Then on November 15th we got the key and took our first load of ‘stuff’ to our new house. And we moved the rest of our furniture and stuff in that weekend. We slept on our hide-a-bed our first night in our new house, since we couldn’t find our bedding or all of the pieces of our bed.
December of 2004 we got a cat. Kyle is allergic to cats, but he agreed because there were lots of mice and voles out here in Eagle Mountain. Kyle named our kitty “Boo”, because in the Disney movie Monsters Inc, the little girl calls Sully “kitty” and he calls her “Boo”, so our kitty was named Boo.
Boo really liked Kyle, Kyle doesn’t look too thrilled though. Kyle has built up a bit of an immunity to cats over the past few years. His face doesn’t puff up when a cat is around anymore, and he seems to be just fine around them as long as he washes his hands after touching a cat.
In February of 2005 Kyle’s grandmother moved in with us. She had been living on her own, and was declining mentally and physically. She lived in her apartment and the blinds were closed all the time, and the television was on all the time, and she had lost all concept of time. She didn’t sleep on a bed at all, she would just fall asleep in her recliner in front of her tv (that was still on). She also was constantly recording some show, or even the news. She stopped feeding herself basically because she would watch the food network and she seriously would think that she had eaten, or she wouldn’t eat because she felt nauseous. My guess is that she would feel nauseous because she was hungry (that happens to me all the time), but who knows for sure. Also because she had no concept of time she would forget to take her medications. So I mentioned to Kyle that maybe we should offer to take her in. She accepted heartily. So we went over to her apartment, and just packed everything up figuring that we could sort it out later, and we moved her in with us. Ethan and Tyra had to share a room so that Nana could have the other one. She had been put on hospice because of her sudden physical decline, which was a great help to me. Everything was great for a while. She really liked living with us. Kyle was her favorite grandchild, which I think had something to do with her having to take care of him right after he was born because his mom had to spend time in the hospital. And he was always able to make her laugh. She also REALLY liked Chewy, since her dog Shep had to be put down a couple years previously. Then we had Kyle’s family out for dinner one night. And right after that Nana started having issues with me. She just suddenly didn’t like me. Later when Kyle and I were talking about it, Kyle mentioned hearing Laurel make a comment (as he was walking back into the room) that she didn’t think that I respected Nana. And from then on Nana just did not like me. Kristie, Nana’s aid, also noticed the sudden change, on the next Monday when she was here to help Nana. From then on things got really hard for me.
I feel like I should go back and give some background information at this point. Before moving in with us, Nana always hated something about everywhere that she had ever lived. When I met her and she lived in Anaheim, she hated the noise that the people living above her would make, and she always claimed that they were doing something illegal up there and that would clog her bathtub. When she lived in her apartment in Orem, she would complain about the guy hiding in her attic that was a peeping Tom (there really wasn’t a guy hiding in her attic, but like I said she was mentally declining as well as physically. I’ve heard stories of the other places that she has lived and how she hated each of them as well. So it was just inevitable I guess. She was bound to hate SOMETHING about living with us, I just didn’t know it was going to be me.
Nana’s aide Kristie and I were the only ones that got to see Nana how she really was while she was living with us. Nana would complain to Kyle when he would get home at night, so he saw a bit of that. But whenever anyone else would be over Nana was always on her best behavior, and when I would tell them what she was like when it was just she and I and the kids home, they wouldn’t believe me when I would tell them how bad she was mentally.
I think it was April that we found out that we were pregnant for the third time. While I was pregnant I started working on my family history. In fact the night before Jeremy was born I had been working on family history. Kyle went out in the backyard to try to throw away some of our giant weed pile. When he came back in around 11pm, I mentioned that I had forgotten we were out of milk and that we needed more for breakfast the next day. I asked him if he wanted to go or should I. He said he would go, so that I could get some rest. HAHA! Little did we know that right after he got back my water was going to break! 😀 And so 29 of November Jeremy joined our family. And Debby moved in with us the next month just for a change of scenery.
Easter of 2006 was CRAZY! All of my family came up and we had Jeremy’s baby blessing on Easter. And so we had my family and Kyle’s family here for Easter dinner. Which if I remember correctly we had a lamb roast, and a pot roast, and roasted potatoes among other things.
In June of 2006 Nana moved from our home into a nursing home. She hated me, I was growing tired of the stress and bad feelings. Kyle, I’m sure, was weary of Nana’s complaints against me, and my complaints against her. We decided that NOBODY involved was happy anymore and there needed to be a change. Nobody else could take Nana into their home, so Laurel went searching for a nursing home that she would want to put Nana in. And when she found the one she liked she and Karen came out to pack up what little Nana would be able to take (Nana didn’t trust me to pack up her stuff). I went to California for an overdue vacation, and they moved Nana to her new home while I was away.
Early 2007 Kyle found out that Nortel, the company he was working for would be outsourcing to India and that by June 2007 he would no longer have a job there. So he started looking for other work. In February 2007 he started working at Blue Host while continuing to work at Nortel. He didn’t want to quit Nortel because if he hung in there to the end he was to get a nice severance check. So he continued working full time for Nortel, and started working full time at Blue Host to work up eligibility for benefits before loosing the benefits we had through Nortel. I was pregnant with Dinah and we didn’t want to be without insurance. So Kyle was working two full time jobs at once, and I was really glad that I wasn’t due in February, even though we had originally been trying for a February baby.
After starting at Blue Host he had another job interview with Altiris. He had applied there many times over the past years and had had several interviews there, but had never received a job offer. So he figured he would just go to the interview and if nothing came of it, that was ok because he had a good job at Blue Host. Well I guess he was so laid back and at ease that he didn’t trip over himself and this time they offered him a job, and he started working at Altiris in March of 2007. He decided to keep the job at Blue Host, just because there were rumors that Symantec was going to buy out Altiris, and mergers always seem to start with laying off employees. So Kyle wanted to keep the Blue Host job for awhile as job security, just in case anything should happen to his job at Altiris. But he went down to part time at Blue Host instead of having 2 full time jobs.
Jenny and Tom were married in April, and Tyra got to be a flower girl.
In May 2007, Nana passed away, leaving Kyle with no living grandparents.
Liesl and Ian were married in August.
David moved in with us in July, just to get out of mom & dad’s house, for a change of scenery. He helped get most of our framing done in the basement and put together our backyard sprinklers while he was living with us. Dinah was born in September and Kyle had foot surgery one week, to the day, later. I was a nervous wreck during that time, with exhaustion and hormones messing with me and Kyle unable to help me, even unable to sleep with me. He had to sleep on the couch to keep his foot elevated through the night. David moved out in November before Thanksgiving.
We had Dinah’s baby blessing on Ethan’s birthday 6 January in 2008. Most of my family came up for the occasion.
Late in March this stray cat started hanging out on our back step. She would sit there and stare at me while I was sitting at the computer. Sometimes she would ‘mew’ to get my attention, but she was there almost all the time. She would wander away but she would always come back to sit on our back step. Ok and I admit it, I felt so bad for her that I fed her. One month to the day after she first appeared on our back step, she had 5 babies on our porch. It was cold, often snowing, so I had put a large dog kennel on the porch for her to sleep in, since she REALLY wanted in our house and I wasn’t going to let her in. I put towels in the kennel so she’d have something soft to lay on and hopefully to help keep her warm too. On the 24th of April, Kyle, when taking the trash out, threw an old turkey drumstick into the kennel. Later I went out to see if she was eating it and she was having babies! I left her alone to do her thing, and went out to check on her every now and then. She ended up having five total. When I went out to see if she was finished ‘queening’, she had three nursing and two pushed off to the side. They were just laying there not moving at all. I actually saved their lives and they have come to be called Rolly, and Kit. I warmed a couple of towels and one at a time picked them up and gently rubbed them with the towels. That was also supposed to stimulate their blood flow and that’s part of why mommy kitties (which are known as queens) lick their babies just after they are born.
Wendy moved in with us in the summer. She wanted to come help me out with the kids and she was able to transfer from Kohls in So. California to the Kohls here in American Fork.
19 July Kyle and I went with Laurel & Roine and Karen to the American Fork temple to do Nana’s temple work. We sealed her Karen’s father, George, and we sealed her to her parents, and then Karen was sealed to Nana & George. I got to be proxy for Anna Ruth Glassman, who is Nana’s mother.
In August 2008, Ethan started kindergarten!
And over this year Chloe was born 19 June, and spent her first week of life in the NICU of American Fork Hospital.
We had her baby blessing 2 August, for which, most of my family came up to visit. We also went to the Draper temple open house and the Hogle Zoo while they were here visiting us.
Tyra started kindergarten in August 2009, as Ethan went full time into first grade.
In October 2009, our kitty Boo disappeared 🙁 He used to hide in the garage, and we would only see him every once in awhile, but we haven’t seen him since before Sandy and Robert came to visit the week of my birthday.
And in November we had the awesome opportunity to go to California for Grandma Shirley’s baptism and confirmation. Grandma Shirley asked Kyle to be part of the confirmation circle too.
So many things have happened, and I have changed so much over the years (hopefully for the better). And with that I wish you a Happy New Year.
