About our family

I thought I would take this post to tell you about our family. Next time I will tell the story of our journey with Grace so far.

Dallas and I were married in 1994. We met at church shortly after we both returned from serving volunteer missions for our church. He was in Australia for two years and I was on the other side of the world in Finland for a year and a half. We both arrived home early in 1993. Dal's family had just been transplanted here from northern Virginia. His mother worked for Mobile Oil and had a job transfer here to Dallas, Texas. Dallas and I met in a singles congregation-both very new back to life after a mission. I was preparing to go to Utah and live with my sister and attend the University of Utah. So much for that idea. I met Dallas and knew that I wouldn't be leaving after all.
We dated for a year and got married in the Dallas Temple. A few days after returning from our honeymoon, we packed up his dad's truck and moved to Austin so Dallas could finish up his bachelor's degree at the University of Texas (hook 'em horns!). We lived there for a year and a half. I worked for NationsBank and Dallas went to school full time. We were the typical young married couple: complete with cheap furniture, trips home to mooch off our parents, and scraping change together to go to Taco Bell for cheap food. We made great friends down in Austin and fell in love with the city and the university.

In December of 1995, Dallas graduated with his degree in Political Science. A couple of weeks before that, my father died of a heart attack at the age of 73-the day after Thanksgiving. My parents are truly amazing people and I plan to write a book about them soon. My mother and father raised 6 children on their own--not so amazing you say, but when you find out that they were both blind, it does become quite amazing. I was the youngest of the 6. My father was a great man. I only wish Dallas could have known him better. My mother still lives with one of my brothers and his family here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and we visit her weekly. She is about to be 80 next week.

After graduation, Dallas and I moved back to DFW and lived with his parents for a year. Dallas got a job at an investment company here locally thanks to the contacts of some friends. We decided to begin trying to have a child. In August of 1996 I found out that I was pregnant. We were so excited and began telling everyone our great news. At my 12 week appt., I was having a sonogram when the doctor began to look worried. He could not find a heartbeat. Apparently at about 101/2 weeks the fetus had stopped growing and the heart had stopped. We had the fetus tested for genetic abnormalities, but there were none. She was a normal little girl. We do not know why the pregnancy terminated, but miscarriage is fairly common. This was a difficult time. I had to be scheduled for a D&C. I felt so devastated. We had to un-tell all of the people we had told- not a fun task. After that, we vowed never to break the news until I was safely into my second trimester.

I was still working for NationsBank, but the miscarriage prompted me to want to go part time. I took a position closer to home and with less hours. Within the first couple of months of 1997 I was pregnant again. McKay was born in the fall of 1997. She was a fun, roly poly little girl, with lots of energy. She was a fairly easy baby with only a brief brush with jaundice and mild colic.
We decided to move out of the apartment we had moved into in the fall of 96 and build a home. We moved into a little 3 bedroom house that we rented from Dal's parents when McKay was almost 1 year old. I began getting baby hungry again, and we found out we were pregnant again in the spring of 1999. Alexa was born the day before Thanksgiving that same year. She was what we called "our little peanut" weighing in at 6lbs 8 oz. A little ball of fire with endless energy. Both of our girls were right on time with their milestones, and even a little early with the talking and cognitive ones. I was just like any other mom, comparing my girls to other peoples' kids and patting myself on the back for all of their great accomplishments. Life was carefree and simple. I had no idea what our third child would bring.

When Alexa was almost 2 and McKay was almost 4, we moved into a new four bedroom home that we built a little closer to Dal's work. We qualified for a relocation package and shortened Dal's commute from almost an hour to about 10 minutes. Again, I began getting that baby itch.....