Thirteen, and counting.

It was nearly 13 years ago, August 2000, when I moved to this town between the mountains. I’d been an official high school graduate for all of three months and this place was my next chapter, my college town. It was viewed as a quick pit stop, my stepping stone to bigger and better things. I would come, get educated, and then move on. I’m not sure where my “move on” destination was, but this place wasn’t on my short list {or long list, quite honestly}. I liked it here well enough though. I moved in with nine {!!!} great roommates, became bff’s with some girls from my program, and got a job at Jamba Juice on Yellowstone.

It was late December of that same year when I meet Spencer. And by July we had both fallen truly, madly, deeply in to dating each other. Things moved quickly for a couple of Mormon kids {ha} and by the early part of 2003 we started talking marriage. Over time ‘my life’, and ‘your life’, was given a fancy little title of ‘our life’ and we spent a good portion of our time sharing future dreams and plans. We’d marry. Finish what was left of our education. And then move far, far away from our college town {naturally} and live happily ever after.

We bought our first little house on 8^th Avenue a couple months prior to our wedding. And then on July 12, 2003 we married.

Life was so dreamy as newlyweds in our cozy yellow house on 8^th Avenue. And those years of just me + him are some of my most prized memories. Around our second year of marriage we decided it was a good time to move a baby crib into the guest room. And honestly, the schedule was bedazzled with perfection: we’d get pregnant in July, I’d graduate in December, the baby would come in April, and we’d celebrate the babies first Christmas in the same house that we celebrated our first Christmas together three years earlier. In the spring Spence would get his diploma and then we’d move far, far away from our college town {naturally} and live happily ever after.

In July we found out we were pregnant. I graduated in December. And baby Brynlee arrived March 22, 2006 three weeks earlier than we’d expected.

Spence was offered an engineering internship for a local semiconductor company in the fall of 2006, and although we knew we wouldn’t be in this town for much longer the work {and pay} was so much better than his previous janitorial job that he took the internship position without hesitation. It was good to get his feet wet, we reasoned, and it would make him more saleable to future engineering companies that existed outside of this college town.

That year we wrapped enormous empty boxes in pretty Christmas paper and barricaded the Christmas tree from our curious 9 month old.  And then with the New Year we started talking graduation and future career plans. Every plan had one thing in common: it existed outside of this town. The time had come, and we couldn't wait to move on.

Honestly, Spencer never even typed up a resume or filled out an application to try to market himself as an engineer. A month or so before graduation he was offered a full-time engineering position with the company he was interning for. The company that was in this town, the town that we’d been so fixed on leaving. And something about it felt right. In fact, everything about it felt right. We knew it was what we were supposed to do.

I can still, very clearly, remember our often repeated conversation when trying to decide if we should take the offered position. You know, I would say between gritted teeth, mainly trying to convince myself, we can be happy wherever we are.

And here we are. Thirteen years later. And, can I just say: I LOVE THIS TOWN!! Like, all caps and exclamation points kind of love. This is home. This is where our story is being written. This is where we belong – right here in this town between the mountains. 

I'm so glad it's home.