Angel and I both grew up in Utah. Angel grew up in a household with 3 much older siblings and 1 much younger sibling, and so spent much of her time playing with the other girls who lived on her block. With a love of song and dance, she participated in high school in programs designed to encourage students to avoid drugs and alcohol. After graduation from high school, she first attended a community college before moving to northern Utah to attend Utah State University.Roy grew up in a household with 7 kids, himself being #6. Roy played soccer in high school (full disclosure: he wasn't very good!) and loved playing computer games, too (he was much better at that). An Eagle Scout, he did well in school and managed to get an academic scholarship to Utah State University. He took two years off from this to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in eastern Texas. There, he learned much about the causes of human misery, but equally much about the sources of pure joy -- family.
We met at Utah State when Roy was in his senior year in the mechanical engineering program and Angel was in her junior year as a student in the elementary education program. We had both moved to off-campus housing near the university's local LDS Institute of Religion and our apartments shared a wall. Just a week after that school year began, we met, and 7 weeks after our first date, we were engaged. A lengthy 3 1/2 months later, we were married in the Jordan River Temple near Salt Lake City. It was the start of a wonderful life together.
With Roy graduating in the spring with a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering, and with Angel having another year to go, they decided to stay at Utah State so Angel could finish her dual degrees in Elementary Education and Special Education. While waiting, Roy pursued his Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering, and completed that degree in just one year.Knowing that graduation was looming for both of them, Roy began seeking employment. All of his undergraduate work had been in the aerospace field -- spacecraft design, orbital mechanics, space environments -- and he wanted to work somewhere in the space program. Eventually, Roy was able to leverage his senior project into a job offer from a NASA center in California.
Meanwhile, we concluded there was no real reason to wait to begin our family and at the time of graduation, Angel was 3 months pregnant with our first child.
Moving to California was a big event in our lives. Both of our families were almost exclusively in Utah, so moving so far away was emotionally challenging. What we discovered, however, was that as we relied upon each other, exercised faith, and carefully planned our future, all was well.
Five months after arriving in California, our first child, Nathan, was born. Angel never did utilize her degrees professionally. Instead, she put her education to good use caring for our son. Just over a year after he was born, we decided to have another child and were soon expecting. The little apartment we were living in just wasn't big enough for a growing family, so just before our 2nd child was born, we purchased our first home -- a modest "starter" home. Our daughter, Megan, was born soon thereafter and that home suddenly felt very small.
Life was pretty good, as we focused on caring for our two children and in moving Roy's career forward. A few years went by, and we decided that we wanted another child. Our starter home simply wasn't big enough to comfortably cram in another child, so we built and moved into a new home with enough space, we calculated, to comfortably house up to 5 children.The plan to expand our family was set in motion ... and immediately frustrated. Conceiving our third child didn't prove as easy as the first two. What was originally expected to be a gap of two years between our 2nd and 3rd children soon stretched to a gap of three years, and then four. Finally, our 3rd child was born with a gap of 4 1/2 years. While it was a great joy to have that third child, in the back of our minds we were worried about how easy it would be to conceive again.
The children grew, as they do, and life moved on with work and school and church activities. After a few years, we decided we did indeed want a 4th child, so we started trying to conceive again. Our earlier, nascent fears about the difficulty of conceiving again soon turned into visits to lots and lots of doctors, months and months of waiting and missed periods and pregnancy tests ... and one horrible miscarriage.
It was evident, in all likelihood, that our family was not going to get any bigger through natural means, and we mentally prepared ourselves for that. Most of our associates would tell us we already had a "big" family (especially by California standards) and how lucky we were to have so many kids. We appreciated this sentiment, but even so, we felt that our family just wasn't complete.
So, that's our story. This blog is an effort to communicate our desires to bring another child into our family, that we may love him or her just as much as we love our natural children. It's been a long road, full of pain, doubt, and disappointment; but we recognize the road isn't done, yet. To potential birth mothers, know that we really would welcome your child into our family as if it were one of our own. We have lots of love to give, and can provide a secure and stable home for your child to grow.
