12 years

Twelve years ago, A.J. and I were married in the Huntingdon Chapel in Little Stukeley England. After that we went to the London Temple to be sealed as a family. It was a beautiful day in May. After we were seal we went back to the chapel and had a reception.

We spent our honeymoon in London, seeing shows and walking through museums and eating at great restaurants enjoying our time together and soaking up all the culture that London has to offer.

Soon we headed back to reality to good old Provo and back to BYU to finish school.

Since then we have spent more than 90% of our married time in the city of Provo (which was never in the plan) but we can truly say that we love living here.

It took many losses and 5 years but Leata came in to our lived just a couple of weeks after our fifth anniversary. When Leata was 2 her little sister Taylor was born 7 weeks prematurely. It was a struggle having her in the hospital and learning all the NICU stuff. Little did we know it was in preparation for more of a similar type of trial to come. When Taylor was 21 months old, little Mark was born at just 31 weeks. He had his struggles. His stay was much longer than Taylor's. He required a lot more care also. Just shy of 7 weeks of being in the NICU, Mark came home and is a happy healthy 3 year old now. When Mark was 21 months, Luke was born! He was born at 33.5 weeks gestation. We though his NICU stay would be brief. We thought it would be so easy. Having 3 kids at home means any NICU stay is difficult though. 17 days after he was born Luke was set to come home. Unfortunately while we were filling out the paperwork for him to come home, he started showing signs of being sick. My baby had to stay. He had RSV. He was just shy of 5lbs at that time. He was strong though and while they told us it could be another month in the NICU he came home 11 days after he was supposed to and 28 days after he was born.

Now that our family is complete we can look forward to the future as a family of 6. How very blessed we are to have 4 beautiful children. We love them and appreciate the love and joy that they bring to our family. They are all so different. If you would have asked me 8 years ago where we would be now, I probably wouldn't have been to optimistic about having any children but I would have surely said that A.J. and I would be having some great adventure celebrating 12 years of marriage. I couldn't have imagined the adventure we are having now though. :)