OUR STORY

THE BEGINNING
Kellen was born in Bountiful, Utah on May 6, 1981. His family moved to St. George, Utah when he was 11 years old.

I was born in St. George, Utah on September 2, 1980. We both went to the 6th grade center together and Dixie Middle School. We kind of knew each other in middle school. We had a band class together. He played the trombone and I played the oboe, so we didn’t really associate with each other. I remember he would always show off his juggling skills in the school talent shows.

HIGH SCHOOL
We parted ways in high school. I went to Dixie High and he went to Pine View High until my family moved to Leeds (north of Hurricane). I started at Pine View High the beginning of our Junior year. We had a few history classes together and some mutual friends, but again we did not associate much with each other.

Finally, he got up the nerve to ask me to a school dance :), Junior Prom. Of course I went, I always thought he was cute but didn’t know him that well. We had a great time, but he didn’t ask me out again after that so I figured that was probably it.

On the last day of school we signed each other’s year books and exchanged email addresses because he said he was going to Chicago for the summer and I had been there before, so we thought we would have something in common. We wrote a couple of times to each other, then lost contact.

MISSIONS
Kellen ended up going on a mission to Bilbao, Spain a year later. He didn’t want a girlfriend before he went on a mission, but that didn’t stop the girls from writing him while he was there :) He got back in June 2002, a month before I left on a mission to Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

THE SECOND, THIRD DATE, ETC.
Kellen worked at Shoney’s restaurant while I was in Brazil. He was working on his Associate’s degree at Dixie State College and dating a lot. He was in the school band and on the school dance team. He was also the president of the Swing Club they had going there. My cousin Lynette worked at Shoney’s with Kellen as well as at Mrs. Powell’s (my family’s bakery at the time). When I got back from Brazil, I took over at Mrs. Powell’s. Lynette told Kellen she wanted to hook him up with her cousin who worked at Mrs. Powell’s. He didn’t like getting set up and wasn’t too interested until she told him my name :) She also told me that she worked with Kellen at Shoney’s and I should come in and visit him.

By that time, most of my friends had moved away from St. George to go to school or get married, so I didn’t really have any to hang out with. I knew who Kellen was and decided that, what the heck? I wanted a friend :) My mom and I went to Shoney’s to eat one night and Lynette was our server. She handed our table over to Kellen. I left him my phone number and told him to call me sometime. He came to Mrs. Powell’s like the next day and asked me out on a date. Our "second" date was a Christmas play of Scrooge. Then we went to Denny’s afterward for hot chocolate. For our third date, he asked me to the New Year’s First Night celebration. That is where he met my older sister Teresa. At one point we got separated from her and her friends and she got mad at him for trying to “sneak away” with me by punching him in the gut and twisting his nipple. But that didn’t scare him away, he kept hanging out with me :)

After that we became really good friends. We hiked The Wave together, took a Latin ballroom dance class together and he actually helped me out a lot at Mrs. Powell’s. I had just gotten back from a mission not too long ago at the time, so it took me awhile to want to seriously date someone. But I soon realized that I felt completely comfortable around him and he made me feel like I was the most important person in the world to him. Then one day I found my old yearbook and saw what he wrote in it back in high school: “...thank you so much for going to Junior prom with me. You are a way beautiful girl, and you will make some lucky guy very happy some day...you are the best looking girl in the school!” (he insists he only wrote that in my year book). We officially became a couple on his dad’s birthday, March 21, 2004, 3½ months after I got home. That was the night he told me he loved me.

ENGAGED
Once we were official, it didn’t take long for things to progress. One day (May 13, 2004) we had planned to hike the Subway in Zion’s National Park. I had been many times, but he hadn’t. We stopped by Mrs. Powell’s first to pick up some sandwiches and then headed for our hike. It was a bit early in the year so the water was still ice cold and even though the air temperature was nice, I was freezing the entire time. At one point, we had to climb down a waterfall and there was a pretty big group in front of us. We decided to sit and wait in the warm sun a bit upstream for them to make their way down. While we were waiting, he told me to stand up. I was cold and didn’t want to, but he kept insisting. Finally I agreed and stood up, and he grabbed my hand, knelt up on one knee and pulled a little green box out of the backpack. Then he asked me “will you marry me?” We had casually talked about marriage before, so I knew he was thinking about it, but I was not expecting it that day. I was surprised and responded “are you serious?” He said yes, then I said yes. The rest of the hike was extra awesome. It’s a good thing that things worked out that way though, as we still had a good 5-6 hours of hiking left at that point :)

MARRIED
After we were engaged, we had a lot of fun together. We went skydiving with a group of friends over Zion’s and backpacking for a week with my family up in the Uintah mountains. We got married on August 7, 2004. We were sealed in the St. George temple and our reception was at Nisson Park in Washington city with sub sandwiches and lemonade. Our cake was made of brownies. Our family helped us out a ton with setting it all up. We are lucky they are so supportive.

SCHOOL
We rented out a basement in Salt Lake and lived there for 3 years while we finished school. Kellen got 2 Bachelor’s degrees, one in Spanish and one in Finance. I got a Bachelor’s in Health Services Administration. For part of Kellen’s degree we did a study abroad program in Cuernavaca, Mexico for 3 months. That was freakin’ awesome. It wasn’t cheap, but it was definitely worth it. Before we were married, Kellen had a full ride scholarship to Weber State University but decided to go to the University of Utah instead because that was where I was going at the time (even though I was the one who ended up going to Weber State). But that worked out well because that is how he got an awesome job that brought us out to Michigan.