Devin:
I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1985. I was born as an extremely sick baby. The doctors in Las Vegas didn't know what was wrong, so they sent me up to Salt Lake, to Primary Children's Hospital. I had pediatric colitis. but I was also diagnosed with Turner Syndrome at this time. As a result, I saw a pediatric endocrinologist quite regularly. I was on various medications at various times in my life. These include growth hormone injections, estrogen, and currently birth control. I would have to say this was the major part of my childhood. I played soccer from the time I was 8 until I was about 12. I then stopped so I could attend weekly activities for my church, called mutual. I attended mutual from the time I was 12 until I turned 18. I was active in the other church activities they had for the young woman my age, like an annual girls camp. I took piano lessons from the time I was 7 until I was about 14. I stopped piano lessons because I entered high school and joined the marching band and concert band where I played the flute. In junior high, I was involved with the jazz band playing the piano. I think I did ballet a year or two, but I don't remember that at all really. When I was 6 years old my family moved from central Las Vegas, to the outskirts of Las Vegas. Both of my parents worked for a family poultry company, so my older brother would watch us from when we got home from school until my parents got home. When we moved to the outskirts of Las Vegas, my parents got our family horses, goats, chicken, and turkeys. We had dogs and cats, which we had at our central Las Vegas house too. Part of our chores, especially on Saturdays, was helping clean the horse stalls and chicken coop. I would go out almost every night and morning to help my dad feed the animals and collect the chicken eggs too. Pretty much every Sunday we would go visit my paternal grandparents, who also lived in Las Vegas.
Jared:
I was born in Las Cruces, NM. My family has a tradition of naming boys born on the 4th of July Edward. I think Mom was quite relieved that I was born on the 5th of July. I am the second of 10 children, and the oldest boy. As I said there are 10 kids all girls except for 8. My Dad worked for the same company for nearly 30 years. My mother stayed at home to help support the family. When I was younger I played sports like soccer and baseball. I do not think I was very good at these sports when I was young because I never became proficient at any sport. I have several brothers and we liked to play sports in the back yard. Most of our friends liked to come over to our house because there was always something going on. I dislocated my elbow around my 13th birthday and it has been a little crooked ever since. In High School did gymnastics. Let me tell you not being able to hold a strait hand stand made me the least useful person in the gym, but I had fun any way. I had trouble in school growing up. When I was in the 1st or 2nd grade I was diagnosed with ADD and dyslexia. I struggled with English classes and writing. To this day I struggle reading a paragraph that starts with the letter W. For 3 years in high school one of my elective classes was reading improvement. I was not good at reading I do not enjoy reading but I knew I needed those skills. I know what it feels like to be looked at and have your peers think that you are dumb. I had people in school make fun of me for attending the remedial English classes. As I have gotten older I realized that I was not bad at English I was bad at creative writing. Also I struggled with spelling and writing a complete sentence but I grew out of that after high school. I am actually a very good technical writer and a significant part of my job today is writing documentation. Over the years I have also developed the skills I need to do creative writing and I like to do some of that from time to time. I also attended boy scouts from the age of 12-18. I did not like scouts but enjoyed camping and canoing We did not grow up around extended family, so for vacations we mainly visited our grandparents in Las Cruces New Mexico, and Knoxville Tennessee. For vacation we now visit our parents in Weatherford Texas and Las Vegas Nevada. Growing up we moved from time to time I can remember 4 different houses I lived in, but I only have significant memories in the last one. My family has lived there for the last 17 years. This home is outside of town we have about 15 acres set up to house horses and other animals. We have had cows, sheep goats, chickens, dogs, cats. I could go on but you get the idea. For daily chores we rotated responsibilities sweeping, dishes, cleaning the bathroom, picking up stuff in the yard. On the weekends we worked in the garden, built a green house fixed the roof and graveled the driveway and any other thing that needed to be done. I will say that church dances and activities ended projects early to my delight many times. My father was one of my heroes growing up. I have always wanted to be like him. I enjoy engineering because we spent time drawing electrical circuits in the dirt after working in the garden and while training for a hundred mile hiking trip I remember talking about physics with him. I do not think that most of my other brothers care much about the shape of my Dad's HAM radio antenna but I find it fascinating. I love the family I grew up in and I am great full for all that they have done to support us. I enjoyed growing up in a large family and think that only children really missed out on a fun part of life.
Courtship:
When I tell people about how Devin and I have fond memories of the day. I was riding my horse down State street and I saw this cute girl so I picked her up threw her on my horse and took her home. Ok that is not how it happened. It all started one early Saturday morning I had just moved into a new ward and I was helping clean the church. There was the Bishop's son with this cute girl I thought I need to get her away from him. Before I could think any thing else my reclusive inner computer nerd spoke up and said run away so I did. A few weeks later I was attending ward choir. Since I was new they had not consigned me to the same position I had occupied in the last 4 ward choirs I had attended page turner for the piano player. This was a shame because Devin was the piano player. I had picked a good week to attend choir because I was the only guy there and it gave me a chance to talk to all the girls. This ended up being a blessing because Devin will not step out of her shell very often and it softened her up a little bit. A few weeks after that we where at a ward activity, and Devin showed up and said “Hello”. Let me tell you this was the beginning of the end. The activity was in Salt Lake so we car pooled up and Devin came with me. She also brought 2 other friends for backup. We both now regret bring them along with us. They kept answering questions like “Devin what do like to do for fun”. I eventually found out that she listened to music and played the piano. Devin found out that I like to shuffle a deck of cards and then put the numbers in order using different sorting algorithms. The next day I asked her out to dinner we had dinner at “The Rice King” on center street in Provo one of our favorite restaurants because that is where we went on our first date. >From that time on we spent nearly every day together. We love being around each other and we are best friends. That does not mean we have not had our troubles. Before we where engaged Devin told me that she had turners syndrome. This means among other things that she can not have children. When she told me this I did not know what to say or do. I did not know even how I felt about this issue. I talked to my parents that Friday about this issue. They reacted very similar to the way I did. I did research about Turners Syndrome but that was not very helpful. That weekend was general conference for our church. I was watching conference and one of the church leaders talked about a couple who had never had children of their own. He talked about the love they have for each other and the service they have preformed in their years together. At that time I realized that happiness in a family is not drawn from having children or any other such activity. Happiness is drawn from being with the one you love every day. From that time forward I have not worried about the fact that we will not have children of our own. We look forward to raising a family but we are happy to raise children that are not biologically ours. From our first date to the time we got engaged was about 3 months. Devin had a reputation of dating controlling guys. For a long time her family thought that I was manipulating Devin to do something she did not want to do. At the end of August of that year, 6 months into the relationship Devin seemed wishy washy about getting married. Her family had put a lot of pressure on her to call things off. My brother Tyler was getting married soon and we headed of to Texas for his wedding. We had a great time and Devin met my family. She was a real trooper she even slept on the floor of my brother Brian's small 2 bedroom apartment with at least 5 other people. By the way my family thinks if you sleep in a hotel you might miss out on something fun. We had a great time even though Devin forgot to take her cell phone out of her pocket before going swimming in the gulf of Mexico. After we got back from Texas Devin changed her tune and felt like she really belonged in our family. December 28, 2006 we where married in the Mount Timpanogas Temple. This was one of the best days of our life. We have been married for nearly 2 years since then and enjoy being together. I think I have eventually proven that I am not a controlling jerk like they thought and I get along with her family. Devin has been willingly accepted into my family. Devin like my Mom will not spray some one who is not wet with the hose because she would feel bad for getting someone wet. For us most days are pretty boring. We wake up go to work come home have dinner and do something together. Devin has always wanted to be a mother and we feel that we can help many children in the foster care program. Since we know we will not be having children of our own we have been talking about adoption and foster care and we feel that foster care is a way for us to help others. We are still looking into adoption as well. In the last 6 months nearly a quarter of our marriage, we know that is not really very long. We have been preparing our home for foster children to come in. We have spent much of our spare time talking about how we are going to raise children in our home. How do we discipline them and about any other topic a young naive couple would think is important. We know we do not have children to show our parenting skills or much to prove if we will be effective parents, but we are willing to love any child brought into our home unconditionaly.
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