High School
Madison High was the big red school from Rexburg that constantly beat Sugar-Salem in almost everything. I saw Wade once when I was at their school for a track meet. I think I was wearing shiny royal blue tights. That was surely memorable. Then I remember Wade being an associate justice of the Idaho Supreme Court at Youth Legislature our senior year. I thought he would just joke about everything, but it seems like he did a good job. He was in the famed Madison Boys Drill Team (what was that called?) so I would have seen him in that, but did not realize I was watching my future spouse.
College
Summer ward. Ricks College. Kirkham Auditorium. Random (were they random?) encounters on campus. We talked about Wade's math class, me giving tours, devotionals, mutual friends, and Wade's beginning running program for Fitness for Life class that he was working on with Ann. One thing we did not discuss was me not returning to BYU in the fall. It was a last minute decision in August, and it was a little embarrassing for me that I was going back to a junior college, and I really did not think that I would see or date Wade after school started, so I just didn't mention it (how rude!).
But time and again he came home to Rexburg to visit and asked me out on enjoyable dates. One time I had been on a completely lousy date the night before my date with Wade, and was in a quiet, moody mood. I was teaching Relief Society the following day in church and was frustrated from the previous night's interactions. Wade was mellow and fun, lighthearted and kind. By the end of the evening I was calm and in much happier spirits. That was the first of many fun dates that year. Wade won my heart during those college years by being consistent and thoughtful. One night he just dropped by with Al, a friend from BYU and his little brother Paul. We ate yummy triple chocolate cake and I started thinking of Wade more often. Paul was a likable character and Wade brought him along on many of our dates. Seeing him intermittently while he was at BYU was good and got better and better.
By this time I was in the nursing program at Ricks and Wade was in Pre-optometry/Psychology at BYU. Once when visiting BYU with my dad and sister, Carol, we were bowling and I ran into Wade. He has more details on this chance meeting. If he doesn't share that, then I'll add it later.
Over time we grew closer as friends. Finally, I was spending the summer between years of nursing school at LDS hospital in Salt Lake City, as a nurses aide. Wade was doing summer school at BYU. This was the summer I fell in love with Wade. He courted me with roses from the yard at the house he lived and we hiked, attended plays and movies, explored Provo, Salt Lake and surrounding Utah towns. It's a good thing I acknowledged my feelings and had prayed about loving Wade, since at the end of the summer (1990) he asked me to marry him. The subsequent semester with me in Greece, Turkey, and Israel was long. And I missed Wade. We wrote to each other, got to talk on the phone a couple of times, and got good at being apart (turns out that was good practice!).
After returning home from Israel, I stayed with my sister, Carol at her apartment at BYU for a few days before returning home. I was able to attend some classes with Wade, the most memorable of which was his Anatomy class with Dr. Van DeGraaff, the man who wrote the anatomy textbook. Wade was an engaged and hard working student at BYU. It was fun to see him in his element there.
The first year of marriage at BYU was THE BEST! Wade and I loved our newlywed years of marriage, and Provo was an ideal place for a young couple such as us to study, work and live the BYU-Cougar dream.
Graduate School
We moved to Chicago for Optometry School. Being the part-time working nurse spouse to a full-time doctor student was crazy hard sometimes, since we had little Jimmy and I was a full-time mom, too. I helped Wade study for harder classes like bio-chemistry. Amazing that I could quiz him on stuff I don't even know. Anyway, we had 2 more babies and with lots of blessings and hard work from Wade, he graduated with flying colors in 1996.
Your Mom Goes to College
The next school experience we had was when Wade went to Turkey in 2006, ten years later. I went back to school to get a bachelor's degree in nursing in Rexburg and BYU-Idaho (the former Ricks College). Thanks to internet technology I was able send papers to Wade for editing and suggestions. It was a HUGE help. Half of my classes were online, too, so I lived on the computer that year between Skyping Wade and doing classes. Going to school kept me busy and made the time go by quickly. Now we both do continuing education for our medical fields and Wade periodically does professional military education and similar training for the Air Force.A family that learns together, knows more stuff!
