March 9, 2011- Purchased a mobile home with my wife We decided that it would be a better idea to buy a low cost mobile home for the remainder of our education in Rexburg rather than renting. We found a place for $8900 in a nice area and celebrated our one year anniversary by writing the biggest check either of us had ever written.
January 2011- Got first credit card Not having much credit history was starting to eat at me so we decided to get credit cards. We use them just like a debit card, but it will help us build credit for when we want to buy a home someday.
January 2011- Found out my wife was pregnant Yay for babies!
January 2011- My wife and I started school at BYU Idaho Finally. We moved out here in March last year hoping to start in April and are just now starting. Having the time off school to work and establish ourselves more has been good though. We got to spend a lot of time together and have some fun adventures.
December 31, 2010- Broke my no stitches streak by stabbing myself in the hand with a razor at work I was trying to cut the top off of a 5 gallon bucket at work. It had fabric softener in it and I wanted to combine two buckets. One hand slipped and the other hand (holding a razor blade) stabbed into it. I could see the tendons in between my pinky finger and ring finger of my left hand and needed 4 stitches to seal it back up. Good thing for workers comp because I got a copy of the bill and it was $800 because the emergency room was the only place we could go.
December 2010- First Christmas that my wife and I spent with my family My parents and all of my siblings met up at my brother Christopher’s home in Murray, UT that he purchased earlier in the year. We had a lot of fun playing games and spending time together. Amanda was disappointed because she moved to Idaho and there wasn’t any snow on the ground for Christmas (there was in Idaho but we were in Utah) and for the first time in many years it snowed in Tennessee for Christmas. So we headed up one of the canyons around Salt Lake City and found some snow to go sledding on Christmas.
November 2010- Found out my wife was pregnant and then she had a miscarriage We were headed to Tennessee for Thanksgiving and were going to break the news to Amanda’s family then. Maybe it had something to do with the long drive out there, but she lost the baby. We enjoyed spending Thanksgiving with her family though.
October 2010- Got a higher position at work doing maintenance work Working as a housekeeper at the Marriott had been getting really old. Amanda worked evenings at Bambinos (fast food restaurant) and I worked mornings, so we didn’t get to spend much time together usually. A position opened up and they let me make the switch. I got more hours than I had in housekeeping, went from $8/hour to $9/hour, and my wife and I were finally on a better schedule.
September 2010- Lost my binoculars in Harriman State Park We purchased some binoculars earlier in the year to be able to see wildlife on all of the hikes we were going on. We went on a hike in Harriman State Park one day and somehow they got left behind. To top it off that day there were some bad storms and we didn’t really see much wildlife. We did get soaked from head to toe though.
August 2010- Took a trip to Reno NV to visit my wife’s sister and her husband. Went to Yosemite too. Amanda’s sister and her husband (who is from Nevada) were headed to Reno NV for a vacation so we decided that we would pay them a visit while they were sort of in the area. We drove the 600 miles and stopped at Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls Idaho on the way. We spent some time recreating with them and then Amanda and I broke off on our way to Yosemite. The park was breathtaking. The landscape was much more impressive than Yellowstone, but we didn’t see much wildlife. I would like to somehow combine the two parks into a giant super park. We were only able to spend a day and a half there but we really enjoyed it.
August 2010- Hiked to Union Falls in Yellowstone National Park One of the more impressive waterfalls in the park. It was a 7 mile hike in from the South side of the park. The waterfall comes over the face of a rock and spreads out. There was also a stream on a detour before the waterfall that mixes with some of the geothermal features of the park upstream that was semi warm to swim in and relax.
July 2010- Hiked to the top of Table Rock in the Tetons Amanda and I took a trip to the Idaho side of the Tetons with my sister Brenda. We all crammed into a tent that just barely fit the three of us the night before and got started early the next morning. It was a long hike with a lot of elevation change, but the view at the top was beautiful. The backside of the Tetons isn’t as impressive as the frontal view, but from Table Rock you are much closer.
June 2010- Played in the Idaho Falls Soccer League with my wife and our neighbor It wasn’t nearly as fun as the casual soccer we played in Tennessee, but we still had a lot of fun.
May 2010- My wife started working at Bambinos and she flew to Tennessee for her little sister’s wedding and high school graduation Marissa got married and so Amanda flew out to support her. I stayed in Idaho to work.
April 2010- Went to conference in Salt Lake City with my wife and visited Yellowstone. Both firsts for my wife. The opening week of Yellowstone is my favorite so far. There is no gate fee and hardly any people in the park. I told Amanda to not get too excited about seeing Bears and Wolves etc. because I had been a number of times before and never seen either one. We saw 3 wolves, 6 bears, (almost ran one over) a bunch of bighorn sheep, some antelope, elk, bison, and many different kinds of birds. We both had a blast. We also had a chance to go to conference in Salt Lake City. It’s a lot different in person than it is on TV and we had a good time visiting with family in the area. We also hiked up to the Y on the mountain above BYU Provo.
March 25, 2010- Got a job working as a housekeeper at the Marriott in Rexburg, ID Jobs in Rexburg are hard to come by and I was fortunate to get one very soon after we moved out to Idaho. A friend from my mission in Tennessee was working there and talked to his manager for me. It wasn’t my dream job my any means, but it helped to pay the bills.
March 20, 2010- Got our first apartment in Rigby, ID We got an apartment in Rigby because we had a Teddy and most apartments in Rexburg don’t allow pets. We were kind of in a hurry to find a place because we just got married and were living with my parents in Aberdeen. Driving an hour and a half to look for apartments and work got old really fast so we jumped into one of the first suitable apartments we could find. We really enjoyed the people that lived below us there James and Melissa Ward, but didn’t care much for the rental company or the commute to Rexburg.
March 9, 2010- Got married to Amanda Lynn Roney in the Salt Lake City Utah temple Around 9:00 a.m. we were sealed in the Salt Lake City temple. A Tuesday in March was the perfect day to do it. There were only two other weddings that day so we didn’t have to fight any crowds. Usually there are a lot more weddings and they give you a restriction on picture taking time etc. We had ample time to take pictures, but it was a bit chilly. It had been raining but it stopped right before we came outside. Both of the missionaries that baptized Amanda were able to attend and she was really excited about that. We spent our honeymoon in Jackson Wyoming and stayed at my favorite hotel ever The Rustic Inn. Log cabin setup with log beds, fireplace, etc. Breakfast there was included and incredible. They took hotel breakfast to a whole new level. We spent a lot of time visiting the shops in Jackson, went to the wildlife museum, the elk refuge, and Grand Teton National park.
March 7, 2010- Started driving from Tennessee to Idaho We left around 7:00 a.m. from Clarksville TN and started driving. Amanda’s friend Morgan Gibson had flown out for the ceremony and helped us drive back. My parents had done the same thing. A moving company had fallen through so we ended up having to get a moving truck which complicated things. Now we had 5 people and 3 vehicles and needed to be in Utah by Monday afternoon to get a marriage license so that we could get married Tuesday. I ended up picking up a lot of the slack with the extra driving time. We had some issues with our bank cards in Wyoming. We were stopping quite a bit to keep the moving truck fueled up and apparently our banks thought the sudden drive across the country with all of the stopping was a little suspicious. Luckily my parents had a credit card because their debit card was cut off as well as my card and Amanda’s. Once we got to Salt Lake and got the marriage license Amanda and I got back into the moving truck to drop off our belongings in a storage unit in Idaho Falls. Then we proceeded to go to Aberdeen to drop off Amanda’s dog Teddy who had been whining for the majority of the drive. (as a result he spent the trip in the very back of the moving truck) Then back to Salt Lake at about 10:00 Monday evening. We drove probably 2100 miles in less than 40 hours.
March 6, 2010- Had a ring ceremony in Tennessee with my wife’s family We had a wonderful ring ceremony in Clarksville with Amanda’s family and our friends in the area. Stephen Dunaway made a speech during the reception and the main thing I remember is him using the word patienceness. Amanda’s institute director was the officiator at the ceremony and did a wonderful job. We convinced him to use some of the lines from the wedding on the Princess Bride. There was a ton of extra food so we took a lot with us for our drive and honeymoon.
February 2010- Amanda took out her endowments. Moving company for our move to Idaho fell through, a couple of wedding photographers fell through too. Amanda had her endowments taken out in the Nashville temple and had some great support from people in the ward. We also had a lot of stress as we were preparing for moving and getting married. There were final arrangements with flowers, wedding cake, photographs etc. My main stress was a moving company I had arranged falling through. I had arranged a move through budget van lines or something like that. Basically a company was transporting someone from the West to the East coast somewhere. Rather than drive back empty there were going to pick up belonging from people moving back the other direction. We save money, they save money. Apparently they had overbooked and didn’t have enough space for our stuff. I didn’t find that out until the day before I was supposed to be out of my apartment. So I ended up renting a moving truck and a storage unit to hold our stuff for about a week. Then we had to get another moving truck to move everything to Idaho where we rented another storage unit. Then once we got our apartment we got one more truck to move everything in. The moving company was supposed to come load everything up and put it in a storage unit for up to a month and then move everything to where we were. I ended up spending a lot more money getting the 3 trucks and the storage units. Plus the gas to drive all of the way in addition to the headache caused by having 3 vehicles instead of 2.
December 2009- First Christmas spent with my wife’s family We had a great Christmas with my in laws. We played lots of games, had a ton of food, and got very little sleep. Her family was very generous and we got some great gifts. Her brother and mom got us a 32” high definition tv in 1080p. That on top of everything else blew us away.
October 2009- Took Amanda to Cincinnati OH to visit my aunt and went trick-or-treating with her kids My mom’s sister Karen lived about 300 miles away from us compared to the 1700 from Aberdeen. Their daughter Mia was getting baptized so we drove up and then spent Halloween with them. We had a lot of fun and their girls enjoyed putting costumes together for us. Somehow I ended up in a dress and got poked in the eye with a mascara applicator. It was fun walking around with the kids and they even gave us some of their candy.
August 16, 2009- Proposed to Amanda and asked her to marriage me I asked Amanda to marry me and she said yes!
July 7 2009- Interviewed with a WalMart Distribution Center in Hopkinsville KY for a job and was hired within the hour I was very fortunate to get a job almost immediately after moving to Clarksville. It had great pay and good benefits. I started at $14.60/hour and when I left 8 months later I was making $15.95/hour plus a dollar/hour incentive. It didn’t do good things to my shoulder or my back working as an order filler there, but I enjoyed the people I worked with and it the pay was great.
July 5 2009- Started driving to Tennessee to court my woman. Got a call from WalMart saying they were doing interviews Amanda had flown out to visit my family and then drive back to Tennessee with me. We had a great time visiting many of the different temple grounds in the area, we went to the Oquirrh Mountain temple open house in the Salt Lake Valley, visited Mesa Falls, and the Tetons in Idaho/Wyoming. I didn’t have a job in Tennessee but I did have an interview lined up with a grocery store. As we left Aberdeen to move East I got a call from WalMart and set up an interview for the day after we would get to Tennessee. I had applied online a while before just for fun and it ended up paying off in a big way.
June 2009- Went to visit my mission in Tennessee and spent the week with Amanda Roney Austin Burgess who was my favorite companion from my mission. He had asked me back in May if I wanted to take a trip to Tennessee and visit our mission. A couple days before we were leaving he had something come up and couldn’t make it so I went alone. I had set up a day to spend with Amanda and do sort of a super-date. Since he wasn’t there I ended up spending the majority of the week with her and we had a blast together. I decided that I wanted to move to Tennessee and look into marrying that girl.
May 2009- Started texting Amanda about lady troubles I was having with dating I was spending some time at the St. Anthony sand dunes with Ben Millett and some of his friends. I was super frustrated with the dating life at the time and texted Amanda to see how life was going for her. We hadn’t talked much since we broke things off, but ended up texting back and forth quite a bit. At one point she said something to the effect of “any girl would be lucky to date you, much less be your wife” and I took that as a hint that she was still interested.
April 2009- Finished my second semester of school with 31 credits and a 3.92 GPA which granted me a full tuition scholarship for my Sophomore year at BYU Idaho I got really lucky with a couple of my general classes and ended up with a good GPA. The school has a scholarship incentive program with GPA accomplishments and above a 3.9 going into my sophomore year landed me a full tuition scholarship. (Getting that made it a little harder for me to decide to move to Tennessee)
September 2008- Started school at BYU Idaho I hadn’t ever really wanted to go to school at BYU Idaho, but it was close to home, tuition was cheap, and my mission president got me a quarter tuition scholarship for my first year. I ended up having a good time and making some great friends.
June 2008- Broke up with Amanda Roney I was starting school at BYU Idaho and Amanda was starting school at Austin Peay in Tennessee. Neither of us was really planning on moving and I didn’t see the relationship lasting over the phone, especially once we both started school in the fall. We had planned to meet up in Phoenix AZ while she was visiting her brother Erich, but I had some car repairs come up and spent about $2400. I didn’t feel that I could afford to take a week off of work and then drive down to Arizona for a few days. That was supposed to be our reckoning point when we spent some time together in person and decided if it was worth continuing our relationship. Since that wasn’t happening I decided to break up with her. She didn’t say much of anything at the time and we stopped talking after that, but I learned later on that she was really upset and had been planning to send some care packages in the mail to me right then. Hindsight makes me really wish that I had just taken the trip and things would have worked out a lot better for the both of us I think.
March 2008- Started a long distance relationship over the phone with Amanda Roney From our messages back and forth on facebook we decided that we liked each other and started talking on the phone for a few hours a week.
February 2008- Started chatting with Amanda Roney on facebook When I got home from my mission facebook the social networking site had just started. I looked up a lot of people that I remembered from Tennessee and starting adding them as friends. Amanda was one of those people. I hadn’t really meant anything by it, but she read into it a bit and started sending me messages. We ended up hitting it off and the messages got longer and longer. We were trying to explain who we were to an extent and I think we both had a lot of fun with it. One day Amanda asked if I talked on phones and I called her the next day. For the record she told me that she was a morning person so I called her when I got off work at 8:00 a.m. which was 9:00 for her. Let it be known that she was not a morning person and after a year of marriage still hasn’t shown any signs of becoming one.
January 2008- Got a job working at Simplot in Aberdeen Idaho I was fortunate to get a job at Simplot again shortly after returning home from Tennessee. I started off as a general laborer again and moved up quickly to a packaging operator. I was able to purchase my first car, a 1997 White VW Jetta, buy a computer, and pay for housing and tuition for school. In May I ended up picking up the shifts of the other operator who was moving. I worked on average 70-80 hours a week for around a month. I would have continued that, but they started having other people do it. Not quite sure why. I was better trained in the area and wanted the hours, but most of the people that they had covering the shifts didn’t really want to be there.
December 28, 2007- Returned home from my mission Getting home took a little longer than predicted due to some nasty weather in the South and Utah. Lots of rain in Atlanta made our plain late getting to Nashville. Leaving late made us arrive late in Utah and I missed my connecting flight to Idaho Falls. Then a snow storm in Utah prevented some sort of a driving thing from happening.
October 2007- Served with Jadin Frongner We had a good time together and had a lot in common. He was from Firth, ID about an hour from Aberdeen (two transfers)
September 2007- Transferred to Lebanon TN with Archie McDonnell I was really disappointed when President Lords called me to let me know that I was going to be serving with Elder McDonnell again. He had been my least favorite companion so far and we had a number of issues first time around. It ended up being a little better but mainly because we lived with the Spanish Missionaries (one transfer)
July 2007- Served with Elder Smith My most vivid memory was about a week into the transfer when he had a heat stroke or something. We were riding our bikes and when I looked back he was nowhere to be found. I rode back and found him throwing up on the side of the road. We didn’t end up riding bikes much that transfer (one transfer)
June 2007- Served with Elder Mehr We rode bikes a lot this transfer, 30-40 miles a day sometimes. He had some issues with seizures that complicated things a couple of times. We were in Sparta about 11 miles from our apartment and he felt like he might start having some issues. It was getting dark too and the car lights driving past didn’t help. Our personalities didn’t mesh very well and so I offered to kick him off of his bike if he started veering into traffic… not sure how he took that comment, but there didn’t end up being any issue (one transfer)
April 2007- Transferred to Cookeville TN with Scott Riley My very first companion from Idaho. He was from Mountain Home and I finally had a companion that wanted to ride bikes as much as I did (one transfer)
February 2007- Served with Lincoln Gardner Elder Gardner was a Spanish missionary so I ended up working with a lot of Hispanics that transfer. I got to where I could understand a bit of Spanish and at least follow where the conversation was going and hold up pictures at appropriate times. His dad was my grandparent’s mission president in Michigan (one transfer)
January 2007- Transferred to Shelbyville TN with James Palmer This transfer was really hard. He was one of the least motivated companions that I had and we butted heads quite a bit (one transfer)
January 2007- Baptized Jeff Meir in Percy Priest Lake by Nashville We had been teaching Jeff for quite a while and he agreed to be baptized but wanted to do it in a lake. So we went out to a lake east of Nashville at the beginning of January and performed the baptism. I baptized him but he made Elder Burgess come out into the water too because it was so cold and we wanted both of us to share that with him. He was a big guy and when I put him under the water I shifted over a couple of feet. He wasn’t going to go under all of the way and I was pretty sure he would protest doing it again so I kind of threw myself on top of him. He probably thought I was trying to drown him, but it all worked out.
November 2006- Austin Burgess comes to Antioch Elder Burgess and I had a lot of fun with most everything we did together. He was my favorite companion by far and our personalities worked together really well. I had more fun and enjoyed missionary work more these two transfers than any other point in my mission. I have stayed in touch with him since coming home and spent a lot of time with his family as well. He came to my wedding and I went to his. I count him as one of my best friends and appreciate the influence that he had on my life (two transfers)
October 2006- Transferred to Antioch TN with Clint Johnson Elder Johnson was probably the only companion I spent one transfer with that I would have enjoyed spending another one with. We had a good time and taught some great people (one transfer)
June 2006- Trained Andy Faerber Training Elder Faerber was a much better experience than my first training experience. He was very willing to do whatever I asked him to do and really applied himself to learning. We baptized Kara Matthews together (two transfers)
May 2006- Transferred to Tullahoma TN with Archie McDonnell and became District Leader This was one of my more stressful transfers. Elder McDonnell and I didn’t get along well at all and with the added pressure of being a district leader I think I was in tears in the interview with President Lords that transfer asking for a change (one transfer)
April 2006- Trained Andrew Barnard I had been out just a couple of months when President Lords asked me to train a new missionary. I had initially declined because I really didn’t feel that I was ready for something like that. I called him back and said that if he felt this was what needed to happen then I would do it. I still regret accepting it somewhat. He resisted a lot of what I was trying to teach him and was resistant to many of the activities we did. After a few weeks I gave up to a degree and ended up becoming somewhat lazy and complacent. I often wonder how the rest of my mission would have gone if I had trained just one transfer later (one transfer)
January 17, 2006- Went to Clarksville TN and served with Moresby Tauiautusa I enjoyed our time together and thought that Elder Tauiautusa did a great job as a trainer. He was from Samoa and I enjoyed learning a little bit about a different culture through our time together (two transfers)
January 17, 2006- Taught my first lesson to Amanda Roney and her sister Heidi Burns who had both just been baptized the weekend before Little did I know that my first lesson as a missionary would echo into eternity. My companion and I were both new to the area and the previous missionaries had set up this appointment for us. We ended up getting lost and rode our bikes about 7 miles in the rain. Once we found the house we taught them a lesson on the restoration of the church. I remember Amanda being very interested and asking us what the term gospel meant.
January 16, 2006- Arrived in the Tennessee Nashville Mission As we were going to bed our mission president told us to dream about the gospel. Apparently I taught the first lesson in my sleep that night.
December 28, 2005- Entered the Missionary Training Center in Provo UT I enjoyed my time in the MTC. My companion, Jon Beutler, was great and we learned a lot. The first week seemed to drag on forever, but once they started letting us go to the gym on Saturday everything went a lot better. Something about being in a classroom all day without much physical activity was really draining.
November 2005- Took out my endowments in the Idaho Falls, Idaho temple Great experience going through the temple for the first time. I really didn’t know what to expect because I hadn’t studied very well, but my dad rode up there with me and explained some things before we got there.
May 2005- Started working at Simplot up the road from my parent’s house in Aberdeen ID Not my favorite job ever but it helped me save some money before I went on my mission. My schedule was kind of hard socially though. I worked from 4:00-Midnight five nights a week. Just so happens that all of the excitement happened during those times. Many nights after work I would come home and change then ride my dad’s bike for a couple of hours. Sometimes I would ride as far as American Falls or Springfield and it was somewhat therapeutic. Riding all by myself with not a whole lot going on around me gave me a lot of time to think and was great exercise. The seat was really uncomfortable after riding for that long though.
May 2005- Graduated from Aberdeen High School and was given the champion character award I tried to have a lot of fun in high school and be friendly to other people. Apparently nobody else does that so I was given this award.
April 2005- Attended state track and field championships and placed first in the triple jump, first in the long jump, and second in the high jump I had a lot of fun doing track and field. I was always running around anyways so I figured that I might as well do it competitively. I high jumped 6’4” and didn’t miss a single time between 5’10” and there. I almost cleared 6’6” twice, but didn’t quite make it. The triple jump I jumped 45’6 ¾” and had the farthest jump at state that year in all classifications. My last jump I had gone clear back to the end of the runway and gave it everything I had. I think I was about 2-3 feet off of the board at the end though or I could have had close to 48’ I think. The long jump I jumped 21’ 2 ¾” and just barely won by less than an inch I think. I shared a hotel room with someone who coughed all night so I didn’t sleep well the night prior to the high jump and long jump events.
April 2005- Played the role of Snoopy in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown musical at our high school The musical director asked me to do musical this year even though I really didn’t want to do it. It was the end of my senior year and there were always time conflicts with track and other things. So I told him that I would do it as long as he didn’t give me a large role and he made me Snoopy. Kind of a big deal, but at least I was a dog and didn’t have any lines to memorize. There were a couple of elaborate songs and all sorts of running around though. It ended up being a lot of fun in the end and I had a little kid call me Snoopy after my mission a couple years later.
March 2005- Was named Mr. Aberdeen at our school. The competition was a spoof on the Jr. Miss program This event was loads of fun. We had a great group of guys get together and have a contest using a lot of the same competitions as the Jr. Miss program did. We would do a fitness segment with light jogging and pushups choreographed into it. There was a poise competition too where we dressed up some and wandered around the stage. My favorite was the talent section. I borrowed a dress from a girl who had done the Mexican Hat Dance in Jr. Miss the year before and did my own rendition of it around a baseball cap. I was about a foot taller than the girl I borrowed the dress from so it didn’t fit all that well. All kinds of twirling and flourishing of the dress. I ended up winning the competition and the grand prize of a box of KFC chicken.
February 2005- Went to the Simplot Games, a national track meet held in Pocatello Idaho. Took third place in the triple jump and extended my personal best by 3 feet jumping around 45 feet I was just as surprised as everyone else when I took third place at the competition. Each of my six jumps I jumped about 6” further than the last and ended up at 45’ that was 3’ further than my jump at state track the year before.
November 2004- Was the 2nd leading tackler on our football team as a safety and was given the sportsmanship award I had played football in the 6th and 7th grade but didn’t really get to play much because of how small I was. I came back as a senior and had a lot more fun. I was about 6’ tall and had started lifting weights at the beginning of the season. I put on about 15 lbs of muscle between August and November of that year. It really made me wish that I had played throughout high school.
October 2004- Crowned homecoming king Not quite sure how I accomplished this, but I was voted the homecoming king. Not sure what I was thinking about my hair style at the time either.
Summer 2004- Played Tommy in the Music Man musical This was a community musical done with people other than just high school students. It was fun working with a wider variety of people, but more stress than I wanted at the time.
April 2004- Took second place in the high jump at State Track and Field, third place in the triple jump, and fourth place in the long jump This was the first year I participated in the triple jump and I progressed a little further every time I competed. I was in first place until the last round and lost by a couple of inches. I had to high jump against a kid that was 6’8” tall all 3 years I did track. So I jumped 6’2” and he set a classification record for our size of school at 6’10 ½”
April 2004- Played the role of Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady at the school play I think that the director wanted to club me during this play. I don’t think I ever actually learned all of my lines and I was one of the lead roles. Luckily the part of Professor Higgins was played by a very quick witted person because one scene we were doing I skipped about half of the lines, but he adapted quickly and most of the audience probably never knew.
April 2004- Went to junior prom with Kelsey Wahlen who I had a crush on throughout high school and the beginning of my mission I was convinced throughout high school that someday I would marry this girl. Seems there are a lot of other girls in the world though and that Tennessee was a much better place to look for a wife than Aberdeen. I tried asking her to homecoming earlier in the year, but someone else beat me to it. So I ended up asking her to prom about 5 months before the dance. I made a cake with a report card on it showing some pretty bad grades, then at the bottom I wrote “I may not know much, but I know that I want to go to prom with you” Or something like that.
September 2003- Got in a car accident with Eli Westover and Alfredo Enriquez. I was driving and my B2000 Mazda pickup was blown into a guard rail. They were both seriously injured and in wheel chairs for a couple of months following the incident. I tore a muscle in my neck. This was a really hard time. I felt really bad that these guys had been hurt because of me. I don’t know really what happened, but there were really strong winds that day and the sheriff suggested that the wind probably blew us over straight into the rail. I had just started to get my life in order after not going to church for a couple of years. A couple days prior to the accident I had been ordained a priest and I couldn’t help but wonder why this happened to us. Over seven years later I still have problems with my neck and my back and I think at least part of it is attributed to this experience.
May 2003- Got a summer job with Terry Yancey moving irrigation lines, cutting hay, transporting hay, and whatever else he asked me to do. I worked two jobs this summer. I spent the mornings out on the farm helping out the Yanceys and then in the evening I worked at a pizza place in town called The Pizzeria. I had more money than I knew what to do with at that point and wasn’t very good at using a savings account. I started a bottle collection buying Sobe. I would offer to buy my friends drinks when we went to the store as long as they got a Sobe and gave me the bottle. I ended up with about 600 bottles by that fall and they were all neatly stacked in my closet. The caps went around the ceiling of my bedroom 2 times. Afterwards I regretted spending probably around $700 on drinks.
April 2003- Went to the state track and field meet and participated in the high jump, long jump, and 4X100 relay. Placed 4th in the high jump and 6th in the relay I was really excited to make it to state my first year competing. I cleared 6’ in the high jump at the event and tied the school record at the time.
April 2003- Played the part of a forest ranger in the musical Little Mary Sunshine This was my favorite musical I have ever participated in. I still remember the forest ranger anthem we would sing “stout hearted is the forest range he’s a scout. He is thoughtful, friendly, courteous, and kind. He’s reverent and grave, he’s healthy and he’s brave, he’s clean in soul and body and mind (yes sir) He’s cheerful, honest, thrifty, and obedient. To love the good and hate the bad is his plan. So if there’s any danger you can be sure the forest ranger ever will march on man to man.” I didn’t have a lot of lines and just sang in a chorus group. So for the most part I just goofed around with the other kids in my class and had a lot of fun.
2001- Was given an award for academic achievement No comment. I actually was fairly lazy school wise at this point in my life, so I’m not sure what to say about this.
June 23, 1999- Soccer team won the league championships We had an awesome soccer team and I had lots of fun. They didn’t have any kind of soccer program for older kids at the time so this was the last I played until I moved out to Tennessee and started playing with Amanda and her friends.
Fall 1998- Started playing on a youth basketball team I was not very good at basketball. I was fast, but somehow mixing a ball in with that didn’t work out right. I hadn’t ever really played basketball prior to this and I think the only points I scored all season were from a lucky half-court buzzer shot from the corner.
Summer 1998- Our little league team, the Braves, won the championship. We played the town next to us who had won the last few years and expected to win again. The 1st place medals already had American Falls written on them and the 2nd place medals had Aberdeen on them. Aberdeen won.
Spring 1998- Was in a group called GT (gifted and talented) throughout elementary school. A group of 4 of us, including my twin sister Brenda, attended a convention known as Idaho History Day. We met in Boise, ID and had a presentation set up about concentration camps during World War II We had two rooms at the hotel and I had locked the deadbolt to the outside and managed to lock the door connecting the two rooms also. So we ended up getting locked out of one of the rooms and someone from the hotel had to break in through the window. I remember the drive there more than the reason we went. The wind was blowing a lot and there was a bunch of sagebrush going down the middle of the interstate. I thought it was super cool when we ran them over and they came shooting out from under the van and up into the air.
1997- 5th grade teacher Mr. Wampler (my dad) There were three different fifth grade teachers at our school. Brenda was in one of the classes and they wouldn’t put us in the same class. My dad started teaching 5th grade this year too so they gave me an option between him and Mrs. Freeburn. I thought that she was a pretty scary old lady and that it would be much better to take my chances with my dad.
Summer 1997- Took a trip to Canada to visit my mom’s aunt and uncle. Visited Waterton National Park and saw 14 bears in the half day we were there. We also took some swan shaped peddle boats out on the lake. David and I shared one and couldn’t really go straight. He was a lot bigger than I was then and so his side went faster than mine and we ended up going in circles. When we stopped for lunch there was a deer that stood up in some long grass in the middle of our picnic site. We walked right up to it and started to pet it. My parents weren’t too happy with us. We also helped shoot gophers on Paula and Wendell’s ranch. That was a lot of fun even though I hadn’t ever shot more than a BB gun and didn’t have much success.
1996- 4th grade teacher Mrs. Corbett I was kind of nervous about taking her class due to a Halloween experience from a year or two prior to this. She lived about a block away and when we knocked on her door she told us that we could have a couple of pieces. I very carefully picked out five and off we went. I learned that a couple meant 2ish and what I had taken was really a few.
Spring 1996- I lost part of my front tooth My parents were going to Yellowstone as chaperones for a school trip and I was spending the night at a friend’s house. (Jesse Arnoldson aka Baseball Bat Boy) The first morning there I shot him with a nerf gun and somehow he knocked out half of one of my teeth with a baseball bat. He went way beyond an eye for an eye. We were still friends afterwards and even kept it hidden from his mom for the next three days so he wouldn’t get in trouble.
1995- 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Byron She used to get upset with me because I would turn my homework in to early. She would give us something to do and bring back the next day and I would just hurry and finish it in a couple of minutes and turn it in.
November 5, 1994- Was baptized Word
1994- 2nd grade teacher Mrs. Krehbiel She taught us how to square dance
1993- 1st grade teacher Mrs. Taylor
1992- Kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Anderson Mrs. Anderson was one of the nicest ladies ever.
1993- Took a trip to the Southwest with my family- That summer my family took a trip around the Southwest and visited the painted desert, the Grand Canyon, and Carlsbad Caverns for about a week. I fell asleep on a floatation toy in the pool at a motel and drifted into the deep end where I fell off. I didn’t know how to swim and almost drowned but my dad dove in and grabbed me. We had a skunk get into our trash one night while we were camping. We saw a rattlesnake while we were out wandering around. And for some reason I remember thinking that we could ride the jackrabbits if we figured out a way to catch them.
1990- My first trip to Canada
1987- Parents moved into the house they currently live in
December 7, 1986- Baby blessing
October 20, 1986- I was born at 8:36 in the morning, just a minute after my twin sister who somehow cheated. A C-section was done and in a cruel attempt at humor the doctor pulled her out first.
Between February 7th and the 14th 1986- Conception I didn’t ask for any details on this event.