Answer # 2

I think most of you know the answer to Julie's question about how Brent and I met, so Julie, this one is for you:
I enrolled to BYU for my freshman year. My mom didn't want me so far away and begged me to reconsider and stay closer to home for a year or two. But when I looked at the fledgling and, at that time, very small CSI in Twin Falls (by this time we were living in Wendell, which is a farming community about 20 miles out of Twin Falls - my graduating class had about 30 kids in it) and compared it to the great and magnificent BYU, I'm afraid BYU just outshone everything else in my eyes.

Which is kind of funny, because at that time I really wasn't very strong in the Church and one would think I'd try to find a place a little less religion oriented. But I didn't. I wanted to go to BYU. Arnie had been there and Ron had been there, and now it was my turn to have been there, too.

I showed up at BYU with barely enough money to get me through my first month. I figured I'd find a job but didn't have a clue how hard that is to do when one doesn't have transportation and at that time there was no public transportation, either. So a few weeks after starting the term, one of the "family fathers" of our next door apartment mentioned they were looking for a cook for his apartment. The cook would be able to eat with them and be paid a weekly portion as well - don't remember how much but it seemed to bail me out so I immediately volunteered.

The fact that I really didn't know anything about how to cook was immaterial. (Don't know why, but I seem to get myself into trouble doing things like that a lot.)

So I started cooking for Brent's apartment. It was kind of strange. When I was in high school I was really kind of an outcast. I never dated much. Considered myself too tall and too clumsy and too much a nerd and way too much a talker to be much of an interest to the guys. But when I started cooking for Brent's apartment, suddenly they threw out this big rule: NO BODY DATES THE COOK. Like anyone would want to anyway.

Brent came over one day to see if I could arrange a date for him and one of my roommates. For homecoming. Which I did. At that time I really wasn't all that interested in dating, anyway. But when homecoming came around and I was stuck at home without a date, suddenly it started to feel painful. I made it worse by borrowing my roommates sun lamp and proceeding to get a torturous burn.

The next day, I stayed home from Church. I was way too bright red to be seen in public. But then Brent showed up at the door. He was wondering if we could talk. Seems he wanted to know what my roommate thought of him. Like I'd know?

(Becky, the girl looking at the camera on the far left, the one with the long silky hair and beautiful eyes?,
Yeah, that's the one he had me set up the date with. Picture taken at my bridal shower.)

I think it was sometime the next week that I pulled out my mom's old high school cookbook which she allowed me to pack to school with me and I found a great, hearty recipe for cabbage rice soup. That would be wonderful to fix for a group of hungry guys, right? See, we had a lot of cabbage in my house growing up so I just figured it was a staple everyone ate.

Even if I burnt the onions while I was sauteing them.

Ouch. Cabbage and burnt butter onions. Yumm.

The guys ate it - there wasn't anything else to eat. And I suspected my days as a cook for that apartment were coming to an end.

Then one night I heard that Brent was sleeping out in his car because the apartment was being too noisy. I grabbed a pillow and a blanket and took it out to him so he wouldn't get cold. Now mind you, we had never even been on a date. And I was a terrible cook. And he was interested in my roommate. I thought.

But that night, we visited in his car. And he made some comment about hoping to marry someone like me.

And that was it. I was totally and completely twitterpated, so bad I found myself downtown the very next day looking at rings in jewelry store windows (shh, don't tell Brent - he still hadn't even asked me out on a date yet).

I was fired as a cook, but not because the food was so terrible (although I'm sure that was part of it) but because one of the guys started dating the cook - that was Brent dating me. He found me a job where he worked and we commuted to Salt Lake City together. He even brought home an old ten key adding machine to teach me adding skills so I could do the job right.

By New Years we were officially engaged and we were married in the Idaho Falls Temple in June at the end of my first year in college. By the end of that summer, I was expecting Sean and never got back to school. Guess I did not show those people who were teasing me about attending BY "Woo."

Here's a blast from the past (l-r):
Norma, Edna, Leo, Leland, David, Howard, Brent, Julie, Maureen Stevens (my friend), Ann, Susie, Connie, and Mark
June 18, 1971, Reception in Wendell, Idaho

You know, thinking back on it, I have to confess I didn't love Brent then. I thought I did. But knowing the love I have now, I realize how very immature my love was then. Someday I will probably also declare that in comparison to that distant future, I don't even love him now - certainly not in comparison to what our love will continue to grow to. And that's kind of an awesome thought, don't you think? I mean, I cannot imagine how I can love him more, but I know it's happening every single day. That's an exhilarating life to look forward to.

So there you have it, Julie. That's how I became part of the same family you became part of over twenty (thirty?) years later. And it's a pretty great family, don't you think?