12 Years: 8 Homes

Blake and I started out married life in a furnished, second-story apartment that had a dance club on the bottom floor. Furnished means the 60's-esque plaid couches you see here and a full-size bed. We lived here only two months, but in that time a student of the Paul Mitchell Academy committed suicide in our entryway leaving bloodstains in the carpet and a bullet hole in the wall. Even in Rexburg!

We moved across the street above Porters, a variety store where Blake was employed. When I called Blake at work I could hear the announcement from the PA below me telling Blake to take Line 1. I spent an afternoon stenciling these cutesy houses and flowers as my first expression of homemaking skills.

Fall of 1998 we moved to Provo. Everything we owned fit in a 8-foot U-Haul. Smalls was a few weeks old. This was a dinky 6-plex and we lived in the middle of the bottom story. Our front door is next to the stairwell. Our washing machine was in the kitchen next to the sink. When it was time to start a load I had to put the hose in the kitchen sink and secure it with something heavy. Once I forgot, went to the library, and came home to flooded cabinets. I can't believe we spent 3 years in this dive. But we were BYU students, we didn't know any better.

Summer of 2001 brought a nice change. Our first house, a sweet little rental across the street from Pioneer Park off Center Street exit in Provo. Too bad it was haunted.

Blake graduated from BYU and secured a job in Las Vegas. I'll always remember this place as the one Smalls nearly burned down. He put a Boggle game in the bottom broiler drawer and forgot it was there until I was making cinnamon rolls and smoke began pouring out of the oven. Blake and I spent hours cleaning ash from every surface- including inside cabinets.


After one year of being employed we were anxious to have a home. We bought this 1,500 sq.ft home and loved watching it get built. It was a shared-driveway home which meant we were set behind another home that shared a driveway with us. In this house Blake and I left the two kids already born alone in the middle of one night in a frenzy to get to the hospital to have Rafe. We had called our friend Brian Robison and thought he was coming over to spend the night and watch our kids. He thought we were bringing the kids to their house. For an hour or so our 5- and 3-year-olds were unattended (in an unlocked home in Vegsas) until Blake started getting worried and called Brian from the hospital to make sure he was there and the mix-up was resolved.

Blake's company opened a satellite office in AZ so we moved to a Scottsdale casita until our Maricopa home was built. I used this picture of Blake and Padawan in the pool because that was where we spent most of the 8 months we lived there. It was 120 degrees that June day we moved in.


Now here we are in our Maricopa cabana and have been here 3 years. That's a long stretch for us to be in one place! Twelve years, eight homes, and four kids later. It's a pretty nice life. I hope the next 12 don't bring eight more homes- or 4 more kids. But whatever the next dozen bring I'm just glad I get to spend them with Blake. Happy Anniversary, babe!