Our Story

Since Erik and I celebrated our two year anniversary yesterday I thought I'd jot down "our story". To give you a little insight, it was a whirl wind romance with enough drama and excitement to keep you on the edge of your seats.

My story begins in the small town of Hurricane (pronounced Hurricun) Utah, where I was born and raised. After graduating high school I left the nest, (and the continental U.S. for that matter) and went to school at BYU-Hawaii, where I earned my BS in Biology. I then took a break from education and went to work for my dad doing traffic control work for his road construction company (a bit far from biology, I know, but there aren't many biology jobs in a town of 10,000). During that time I decided to go back to school and work towards a Master's Degree, so in January 2004 I flew to New Orleans to begin my MS in Human Genetics at Tulane University. It was a one year program. During my first semester at Tulane I got a job doing research on psychiatric genetics. To learn more about the neurological part of that I decided to also earn a MS in Neuroscience, so in August 2004 I started my Neuroscience program. I graduated with my degree in Human Genetics in December 2004. (This is where I leave me for a while as I just to Erik's side of the story). Several states away, Erik was being raised in the great state of Texas, in Houston to be exact. He graduated from high school and then went to San Jacinto Community College to get his AA in Auto Mechanics. After a period of building (and driving) race cars he decided to go back to school. He went to the University of Utah (where he did more skiing than schooling) for a year and then transferred to University of Houston, where he graduated with his BS in Criminal Justice. At that time, he wanted to go into the FBI, but there was a hold on hiring since the war had just broke out, so he decided to join the Coast Guard (it gave him military preference on future jobs and meant he didn't have to go over to Iraq). After boot camp and a short stint on a buoy tender out of Baltimore, Erik went to school to become a Marine Science Technician and was sent here to New Orleans. (This is where I reenter the story).

Erik and I met in typical mormon fashion, at our singles ward FHE. I had heard about Erik while I was in Utah for spring break in March 2005 (a new male in the singles ward here in New Orleans was BIG news). I figured one of the other girls would snatch him up quick and I really wasn't interested. Unfortunately for them, he wasn't interested in any of the other girls. By April we'd become fairly good friends and realized we that we had a special connections. Erik jumped in with both feet and never looked back, I, on the other hand took some convincing. And convince me he did, though it took some work, and there were several bumps along the way. To give you an idea of how our courtship started off, on our first date we went to the Preservation Hall to listen to music. When we got back to his truck, we realized there was no truck, it had been stolen. This was at the end of April, and I graduate and moved back to Hurricane mid May (yes, less than a month later). Still, by this time, we were pretty sure that this relationship was going all the way, so there were many late night, long distant phone calls (it was a really good thing we had the same wireless provider). There was a weekend trip to Houston in June, then a week long trip to Utah (where Erik "officially" proposed, and then we got our engagement pictures taken the following day). There was supposed to be a visit to New Orleans for my birthday (September 2), but a gal named Katrina, changed those plans. So, I was supposed to meet up with Erik a couple weeks later in Houston, however, the Coast Guard had other plans in mind, and called Erik back to Louisiana (on the day that I was supposed to fly to Houston). Erik was able to sneak away for a weekend in October so I flew to Houston for his birthday. Luckily, the things had slowed down enough by November that Erik was able to take a week off of work so he could fly to Utah to get married (his commanding officers weren't sure that they were going to be able to give him anytime off). Erik flew into town, we were married on November 12, 2005 in the St. George temple. We went to Vegas for two days and then got to make the long drive from Southern Utah to New Orleans, unload our U-hal, turn around and drive to Houston for our reception there and then drive back to New Orleans so Erik could be to work on Monday. There have been ups and downs along the way, but we wouldn't change a minute of it. These bumps in our path have been stepping stones to lead us to where we are now. We have two great years behind us, and many, many great years ahead.