It all started when I was only 14......

Science fair nerd - look closely, there is a pocket protector under that sweater. It was 8th grade, and I had just finished demonstrating my machine I made to measure the specific gravity of minerals. I thought it was a pretty cool project. I don't think I won any awards.

Enter the most beautiful girl in the world. I first saw her at an assembly at South Davis Jr. High. She sang a solo up on the big stage. I was at the back of the auditorium. How could anyone sing like that! My heart went aflutter, but she was a big ninth grader. Gorgeous, smart and no less than a rock star. She was out of my league. There was no use in even thinking about it. Even in a dream.

Fast forward one year. I couldn't believe what was happening to me. Here I was. Still every bit the nerdy kid, but I was sitting next to that girl from the assembly. We had really only met a month earlier. Of all things, my obsession with rocks and minerals had brought us together on top of a mountain where we were finding fossilized oyster shells. Here we were in Southern Utah, having just spent an evening on the banks of Duck Creek, where I first held her hand on a moonlit night under a starry sky.  It doesn't get much more romantic than that.

I went home from that summer science class and everything in my life was turned upside down. I had a girlfriend! When I got home, I went downstairs where Mom was ironing clothes and told her I thought I had found the girl I was going to marry. I can't imagine what my mother thought. I was only 15! You don't find your future wife at that age.

All through high school, I was in heaven. We would meet between classes and walk hand in hand to our lockers. The principal had to break us up a few times. He also insisted that I tuck in my shirt, but that is another story.

The next year, we took the summer science class again, I think just so that we would have an excuse to be together during the summer break. When I wasn't with her, we were on the phone. With the cord stretched across the house, we would each talk for hours, all while hiding in the closet. Janene's dad would not be too happy about that and tell her to get off the phone. They had a party line and other neighbors couldn't use the phone when we were on. What did we talk about? It didn't matter...... I just wanted to hear her voice and couldn't bear to be "disconnected" from her.

Head over heels - crazy in love. I was the luckiest guy in the world. It would make a great movie script. Geeky boy meets the beauty queen. They fall in love. The beauty queen falls in love with the nerd. Doesn't it just bring a tear to your eye? It does to me ... of course, what doesn't.

Almost as soon a I was out of high school (Janene was a college girl at SUSC, majoring in Geology) we got married in Cedar City. When we came back from our honeymoon, our parents held a reception for us. My grandfather was my best man. It was probably a little awkward for our parents, but I will always be grateful they did it for us. Our honeymoon was paid for by my Dad. He loaned us his Phillips 66 credit card. Otherwise, our little trip to Zion National Park would have been entirely out of our reach.

Working at the restaurant for $1.35 an hour was no way to support a family, so by the time Shon was born two years later, I had switched careers into the fire protection business. Those were lean years. We ate leftover food from the restaurant and put gas in the car two dollars at a time. When we ran out of money at the end of the pay period, it was heartbreaking to know that several dollars of gas was just sitting in the gas tank. Still, I was married to my best friend, and money really didn't matter. We were able to buy our first home only because of a government program to encourage poor people to buy a home and made it possible. Our first house payment was $70 a month.

Within one year of buying our first home together, we were off the government subsidy. I had a union job that paid pretty well and we could afford to put money down on our new property in Bountiful. By the time Heather was born, we had moved into our dream home that we built ourselves with my kid brother. I was 24 years old. I had the trophy wife, the dream home and three incredible children. I was living the dream that Janene and I had talked about since we first started talking about marriage in my junior year of high school

The biggest change in our lives came when we moved to Bountiful. Here I found the blessing of membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We took our little family to the Salt Lake Temple and were sealed for all eternity. We also started expanding our family reach as we added first Lisseth, and later, Doug to our family group.

The next years were a whirlwind of car pools, science fair projects, (our kids won several awards, unlike their father), and swim meets (more awards). As the proud parents of a beautiful family, the nerd was overworked. The beauty queen was constantly sleep deprived, had been pregnant eleven times, but was still as radiant as ever. We all were devastated when David died at the Grand Canyon, but we took strength from the knowledge that we are an Eternal Family, and always will be.

Now it has been 40 years since our first wedding night. Our hair is getting gray, our bodies ache sometimes, but I still am always with the smartest, most beautiful girl in the room. There have been times when things haven't gone too smoothly, There have been times when we each thought we could not bear the thought of another day, but through it all, that first crazy love has never dimmed. I am still head over heels in love with my best friend.

 
Even though our love has matured, we have grandchildren, (even great-grandchildren  when you count Lisseth's and Doug's grandkids), I still feel the same way I did when I first held Janene's hand at Duck Creek under a starlit sky. Twitterpated, indeed.  I am the luckiest guy in the whole world.