In 2010, I began blogging about my experiences as a woman, wife, mother, and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (This website does not represent the Church.) I also wrote about some of my experiences while teaching part-time at a California state university for nearly 25 years. I taught G.E. courses such as Argumentation & Advocacy, Speech Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Small Group Communication, and an upper division course for graduating seniors called Writing For Influence. I also helped supervise our department’s Communication Lab for student mentoring. In 2019, I retired when my husband’s employment offered him a job transfer to Utah; we excitedly moved to the same neighborhood where all of our children and grandchildren lived. During that time, I chose to step away from all social media platforms but have transferred some of that content to this website.
Thanks for visiting,
Julie
Rick and I typify the old adage that “opposites attract.” A farm boy from New Plymouth, Idaho, Rick enrolled at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah after serving a two year mission in Argentina for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was a native Californian raised in San Jose. After graduating from a California community college, I transferred to BYU Provo in the fall of 1978. In December, the semester nearly complete, I met Rick on a Sunday evening; my roommate had invited him to attend a “fireside” meeting with us — but instead of listening to the speaker, Rick and I sat on the same row watching each other. In January of 1979, we literally ran into each other on campus. Rick’s rustic, homespun charm soon won me over, and we married later that year in the Oakland, California LDS temple.
We spent 40 years working and raising our family of two sons and two daughters in California’s vibrant Bay Area. Now, as grandparents to four granddaughters and five grandsons, we love being an influential part of their everyday lives. Like all families, we deal with our inevitable idiosyncrasies and quirks but navigate our challenges with unwavering love as we strive to uphold the covenants we have all made in the holy temple.
