History Part 1

Ok, time for a little history lesson (very little). I was born on October 13, 1971 in Feather River Hospital in Paradise California. When I was around three, my father got stationed at Rhine Mien Air Force Base in Germany. I started school there and the cut-off days for enrollment were different there than in the US. I would be the youngest person in my class because of this for the next twelve years of my life. I have very few memories of this time except that I was bitten by ants and had a mirror fall on me and break.

When I was 5 we moved to Fort Benning, Georgia. I have a few memories of this time period. My memories are vivid during this time because they are painful. I got my first pair of glasses there. The day I got them, a girl at the playground took them away and broke them. I was running from my sister and stepped on broken glass and cut open the bottom of my foot, a wound that I still feel today. On another occasion, I threw a broken toy gun at her and she had to get stitches. She threw a brick at me, and so it went. My pinky finger was shut in a closet door and the tip was re-constructed and sewn back on. I broke my arm and have to have it re-set. On my mother’s birthday, I got my foot stuck in the mud. My mother had to come out and pull me out after she was dressed for dinner. My shoe is still out there somewhere.

We moved to Provo, Utah when I was eight, and moved in with my paternal grandparents. I learned a lot from my grandfather during that time. I miss him greatly. We then moved to a basement apartment in Orem Utah where I spent most of my growing-up years. At first I was bused to Westmore elementary school, the third elementary school I attended in third grade. I also went there for all of fourth grade as well. In fifth grade, I was bused over to the completely other side of town to Aspen elementary were I completed fifth and sixth grade.

I went to Orem Junior High in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. The year I entered the ninth grade was the year that they moved that grade out of the high schools and into the junior highs. My class was the king of the jr. high for two years. I served on the student council in ninth grade and really enjoyed that year. I worked my first real job that summer for Utah Valley State College on the landscape sprinkler systems.

I started tenth grade at Mountain View High School. I did not finish the whole year. My friend Chad got his license during that year and not being at school was much better than being there. I went back to give it a go during my junior year, but again, did not make it through the year. I worked at McDonald’s, Arctic Circle, I then got a job working at Brick Oven Pizza doing their salad bar. After a few months of that, I decided to give school another try and started my senior year. I was too far behind to graduate with my class so I dropped out again and worked at a gas station and for a restaurant exhaust vent cleaning company. I joined the Navy that year and was in boot camp when my class graduated. I completed my GED after boot camp.

I was sent to Great Lakes Training Station, near Chicago, for boot camp. After boot camp, I flew home to get married, and flew back to Illinois to begin “A” school. I was seventeen at the time. My wife, sixteen at the time, then drove out with my cousin and her friend to the apartment I had rented with all our worldly possessions in a van. After I completed “A” school in Illinois, I went to Virginia Beach for the next phase of training, and Christy went back to her parent’s house in Utah. After completing the school, we went to Long Beach California and rented and apartment before moving into navy housing. We spent the next three years there and when I was discharged, we moved back to Utah, where her parents still lived. My parents had moved to Arizona right after we were married.

About a year after we moved to Utah, we welcomed our first child, Kyler. About a year after that we welcomed Megan, three years later, Aubree, and three years after that, Jake. We lived in quite a few apartments between the time we moved back and when we bought our house in 2006. We lived in Orem, Provo, and Springville, in six different apartments, before finally buying a house in Orem.