Jeremy and Celeste Boehme

As we were leaving high school I doubt any of us thought much about what really was going to be happening (or not happening as the case might be). I decided that after graduation it was my mission in life to make sure that every single female on the campus of BYU-I had the opportunity to go on an amazing date with yours truly. I am sure that many broken hearts ensued, but it just wasn’t meant to be, as I hadn’t found my one-true-love. So I attended church on campus throughout the summer and decided that I would start school in the fall. In my mind I would have preferred to send in my mission papers as soon as I graduated high school, but my birthday precluded me from turning in any mission papers until most of the way through the college semester anyhow. I decided to major in Biology and minor in Chemistry thinking that I would be headed to medical school after I finished my bachelor’s degree when I got back from my mission (little did I know that wasn’t going to be happening!)

I went to the Fall 2002 and Spring 2003 semesters at BYU-I and then this small town country boy was shipped off to the 8^th largest metropolitan area in the world, São Paulo, Brazil to learn Portuguese and serve a mission in the Brazil Riberão Preto Mission. I can honestly say the hardest two years of my life, but definitely the most rewarding. Little did I know I would be returning stateside at the same time my future bride was returning from her mission to Panama City, Panama. I wouldn’t even meet her for three months, but little did she know I was going to be the next best thing since sliced bread! After my mission I decided I needed to buckle down and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. So between my 4-6 dates per week and a busy school schedule, I proceeded to job shadow several MD’s and realized that it just wasn’t my calling in life. I also job shadowed a pharmacist at Memorial Hospital and found out, that it was something I really enjoyed.

I met my wife Celeste Taphous, from Ohio, through a mutual friend, only after dating three out of the four of her roommates. We were on talking terms, but that was about it. Then, the week before the 18^th of February 2006 I decided that she needed to go on a hike/date with a group of us during one of the coldest winters on record in Rexburg. She was the only girl I had ever met that had so bluntly told me “NO”! Then I proceeded to hear it four more times until either I wore her out or she just wanted me to leave, but that was the start to something amazing. We were engaged in April outside of the Idaho Falls Temple, and we were sealed for eternity on August 18, 2006 in the same temple. I couldn’t imagine my life without her and every day is one I look forward to living with my dream girl.

I applied to the Idaho State University-College of Pharmacy with just my pre-requisites and a $55 application fee gamble, and it paid off. I lived in Pocatello for the first three years of my program where we had our first kiddo, Eva, while I was pursuing my degree and Celeste was getting her Master’s in Public Health. Right before my final year of pharmacy school we had our number two, Hunter, and then two weeks later we moved to Coeur D’Alene, ID for my final year of clinical rotations. We enjoyed every minute of it! I graduated with my Doctorate of Pharmacy in May 2011, moved to Twin Falls, Idaho for a job, and had baby number three, Londyn, in September. I went through the process of applying for clinical residency, to become board certified, and lo-and-behold I am now starting a residency program with the Veteran’s Affairs in Lincoln, Nebraska.

I can usually be reached at jeremyboehme@yahoo or gmail.com and if you would like an invite to our usually not updated blog you could always shoot me an email. 

Jenny Hobbs Steiner

I remember wondering when I graduated where I would be in 10 years.  I can't say that all my dreams came true or that all the criteria I set for myself has been met, but I can say the last 10 years turned out completely different than expected, and l have been richly blessed. In some ways, not much has changed. I still play soccer when I can, I still live in the area, and I still cuss the winter and wonder why I still live in the area. I get to see some of my good friends from high school once in awhile because like me, 10 years settled them right here as well. But for those of you that don't see me in the local Walmart, here is a short synopsis of my life since high school.

 

After getting accepted to several colleges, I decided to let  BYUI pay me to go to school. I actually made money the first two years and enjoyed a study abroad program in Europe and a new car as part of my education. I took school pretty seriously and made sure I got good grades. Little did I realize, the real world would care more about my major and less about my grades. Apparently, a BS in History doesn't go far in SE Idaho. I did make one good decision in college and married a MHS class of 2000 alum, Mark Steiner. We shared a seminary class together when I was a sophomore, but he never came so we didn't know much about each other. Kurt Schwab set us up on a date in March of 2004, and we hit it off. We were married in October that same year. I graduated BYUI in 2006 and worked a number of pretty crappy jobs for a few years waiting for Mark to finish.  My plan was to work until I got pregnant; I could endure any job for a few months right?! Unfortunately, my plan never really worked out and I never could get pregnant. I suppose someone pitied my situation enough and thanks to my Exercise and Sports Science minor and networking through various soccer leagues, I landed a temporary dream job teaching soccer classes at BYUI. It literally saved me and gave me a reason to smile in the morning. After years of discouragement, I started to realize my path to motherhood was destined to take a different direction. Mark and I started our adoption process in late 2009. We were just about finished when our world came crashing down. Mark was diagnosed with stage IV Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma February 12, 2010.

 

We spent the next few months in and out of medical facilities and thanked the heavens above for health insurance. I honestly felt our adoption was out the window, but a good doctor encouraged us to keep the hope alive. We learned that hope really is the best medicine. After months on hold, we finished our paperwork and were officially approved to adopt in May 2010. We were cautiously optimistic and absolutely floored when a birth mother contacted us in July. She will ever be our saving grace and angel on earth. The cancer didn't scare her off, and perhaps more shocking, neither did our "nerdiness". On December 15, 2010 our little Paige came into the world and became one of the most loved babies on the planet.

 

Today we find ourselves living pretty normal lives. I stay at home with Paige and Mark works in software sales for NAVEX Global. He has been given a clean bill of health and we really are kind of boring now. Paige keeps us on our toes, and we are so grateful to have her in our home. We are in the process of building a home and learning patience. Thanks to serious pressure from Jill Hancock, we will be attending the reunion and look forward to seeing some of you there.

Jaxon and Megan (McBride) Anderson

Hey all y'all!! It's been a while since Megan or I have seen or spoken
with many of you. Some of you may know our story, some of you may not.
I had a major crush on Megan McBride our senior year... she was the
talented, beautiful, acting, singing, skateboarding, dancing chick
that I thought was pretty untouchable for a band/choir/health
occupations geek like myself. But I FINALLY (as Megan would say) asked
her to our commencement dance and it was pretty much history after
that. We dated and went to college at BYUI together the summer after
we graduated, and then I went on an LDS mission to Germany/Austria.
The mission didn't go quite how I planned and ended up coming home
later that year. The next year was a blur filled with interesting and
trying experiences (such as breaking up with Megan on R mountain,
working construction, etc...). We ended up getting back together, were
engaged in March of 2004 and got married in the Idaho Falls temple on
August 14th of the same year. Meg finished her Bachelors degree in
secondary mathematics education and minored in american government
while I got my associates degree in nursing. I started working at
EIRMC on the cardiac unit and Megan did some substitute teaching for
Madison and Rigby school districts. We bought a trailer right behind
the high school and acquired a little Shih Tzu named Minnie, and lived
there for a couple years. We had our oldest child, Courtney Rose, in
June of 2007 and I started my bachelors in nursing. I graduated in
2008 with my bachelors in nursing and we moved down to Idaho Falls. At
that same time, I also transferred to the ICU at EIRMC and worked a
second job with Creekside Hospice. In August of 2009 we welcomed Azely
Marie into our family. After much contemplation and prayer we decided
to move to Raleigh, NC in January of 2010 as I began applying for
graduate school. I worked in a large level one trauma center in
downtown Raleigh (WakeMed) until I luckily got accepted to the Raleigh
School of Nurse Anesthesia/UNC -Greensboro. What an experience it has
been living in hot humid NC!!! We have frequented the beach as many
times as our limited budget allows, learned how to cook on a charcoal
grill, and many other things that this area and the south has to
offer. Megan is currently pregnant with our third child (a boy which
has been temporarily assigned the name of "g-money") and is due on
July 15th. I will be finished with my clinical residency on August
18th with my masters degree in nurse anesthesia. We will then be
headed back to the motherland and I will be working at St. Alphonsus
Medical Center (St Als) in Boise. We've had many great experiences
together and hope to have many more!! Due to financial constraint and
the fact that Megan is ready to pop we will not be able to attend the
10 year reunion. Hope all is well and hope to see some of you soon!

Jaxon, Megan, Courtney, Azely, G-Money, and Minnie

Emily Head

I will have to agree with everyone else that the past 10 years have gone by so fast! After graduation, I got to spend the summer up in Stanley, ID (close to Redfish Lake, for those of you who know where that is) working and enjoying the beauty of the mountains, lakes and hiking. That's how I spent most of my summers in college. :)  Soon after, I started school at BYU-Idaho in the Fall semester. I started as a music major, but soon realized that even though I loved music, it was not what I was supposed to major in, so I soon switched majors to Family & Consumer Sciences Education (although I still took many music classes and participated in the BYU-I Symphony Orchestra).  I absolutely loved my time in college and all of the experiences that I was able to have there.  In the spring of 2005, I decided that I wanted to serve a full-time mission for the LDS church, so I started on the paper-work that summer.  I also completed an internship at Island Park Scout Camp as their Trading Post Director that summer before I left on my mission! It was so much fun to work up in the beautiful outdoors! I was called to serve in the China Hong Kong Mission, and I left for the MTC in September 2005.  I was there for 3 months learning the Cantonese language, and couldn't wait to get to Hong Kong.  I absolutely loved my experiences and my time in Hong Kong! I returned from my mission in March of 2007, and then went back to school in the summer semester at BYU-I, I continued to go to school and graduated in April 2008 in Family & Consumer Sciences Education.  
I got my first teaching job in Star Valley, WY teaching at Star Valley High School and Middle School in Afton, WY.  If you have never visited this part of the state, it is one of the only beautiful places in Wyoming!  I was teaching Culinary Arts at the High School and Home Ec classes at the Middle School.  I had a very busy schedule and hardly had a break all day (even my lunch break was normally spent at the grocery store and traveling between schools) but I loved my time there, and made many friends that I consider some of the best people in the world!  But even though it was a great job, I was discouraged that in a town of 1800, there was not many single guys my age, since they were all in college somewhere else, and after being set up on some pretty awful blind dates, I pretty much gave up on the whole dating game! But the Lord had a different plan for me, since one of my neighbors down the street had a son (Jason Head) that she gave my number to.  Jason called me and asked me out on a date on Valentine's Day. (I know it is totally cliche, but it was an awesome date!) We went snowmobiling to Granite Hot Springs, and ended the day by making dinner together, and watching movies.  I guess you can say that we hit it off, because after dating for only a month and a half we got engaged April 1st and were married on July 1, 2009 in the Rexburg LDS Temple.  We spent our 1st year of marriage in Star Valley, where we both worked, and then decided to start our little family by getting pregnant with our first daughter.  In July 2010 we made a big move to Pocatello, ID where I taught at Highland High School, and Jason continued his education at ISU.  We welcomed Rebekah Ruth into our home on December 6, 2010, and she is such a joy to have in our family! She is super busy all the time, and was walking by the time she was 9 months old.  She is 18 months old now and can already say so many words and some short sentences! We love her so much! She is going to be getting a little brother in September, and we are so excited to be welcoming baby #2 into our family this fall! In November of last year, Jason was offered a position back in Star Valley to finish his Electrician's Journeyman, but because I was still under contract with the school district, it would mean that we would only see each other on the weekends.  It was a very hard decision to make, but ultimately we decided to take the job because it would allow me to finally stay home with our little ones. So after 6 months of temporary separation, we are finally back together again here in Star Valley, WY. I also became a Mary Kay Consultant in the middle of all of that and I am enjoying the freedom that it gives me to keep my priorities in the right place, and still earn an income.  We just bought our first home, and we are loving this time in our lives! 
Its been great to read about everyone's lives these past 10 years!  

Kersten Hendricks Searle

After High School I attended BYU-Idaho for about 1.5 semesters and then on 16 August 2003 I married my husband Matt, who is from Shelley. It seems like we've spent most of our marriage moving around (just completed our 14th move last December).

Shortly after getting married we moved to Orlando, Florida. Matt got his degree in Audio Engineering at Full Sail University. While he was at school I worked at a fitness center, and then at a Veterinary Clinic. We played a lot and also endured 5 severe hurricanes. After all our hurricanes we decided Florida was not the place for us, and when Matt graduated we moved to Los Angeles, California, where we lived for 5 years. There my husband worked at an Independent Record Label, Cheap Lullaby Records. In 2006 I had my first son, Arley. People there thought we were crazy when I chose to be a stay-at-home-mom, though I also took some night classes on the side. 

Eventually the company Matt worked for made the move to Wisconsin, so after some thought we felt it was time to come back to Rexburg. I went back to school full time and my first week back I found out I was pregnant again. I got to finish my first year back at college, super pregnant and miserable. I got the swine flu among various other ailments, but still managed to finish my last semester of the year four days before I had my second son, Henry in December 2009. 

I continued at BYU-Idaho until Matt was transferred to Provo for his job. We loved Provo and only ended up living there 6 months before Matt was surprised by the perfect job at BYU-Idaho working for the BYU-I center running their post-audio department. With that we moved back to Rexburg, and have now been back for about 1.5 years. We bought a house here in December, and I just had my third child, Evelyn, May 17th. 

My kids are awesome and crazy. Arley is a whirlwind of energy and emotion. He is constantly singing, or just making noise, I can see him following in my dramatic nature. The poor kid spent more time in the principal's office his first year at school than I ever have. It makes me dread when he'll be a teenager. Henry loves sports and can take his big brother down in about 2 seconds flat. He does not get his athletic ability from me, as I have none. He also loves music, and likes to drum and play air guitar. So far Evelyn is a great baby, she will be 6 weeks old tomorrow. All I can really say about her so far is that she sleeps great at night (from 5-8 hours) and has from the start.

As far as I go, I'm planning on again returning to school to finally finish my last little bit of my BA. My plan is to major in English, and then eventually get my Master's in Library Science, with the intention of becoming a children's librarian. On the side I also love to sew, crochet, knit, decorate, and paint. Now that we live somewhere with a decent yard (yards are hard to come by in Orlando & LA) I also plan on giving gardening a try.

Chris Marcum

A lot can happen in 10 years, so I'll just start at the high light - my wife. Shortly after returning home from my mission, I reconnected with a couple of our class mates, Kim Erickson (Kim West, now) and Sean West. I think they took pity on me because I was so awkward and had lost what little game I may have had, so Kim set me up on a blind date with their neighbor down the street who had moved in the year prior. I nervously knocked on the door to pick up my date and was brought inside by my future father-in-law, where I first laid eyes on my wife-to-be. Of course at the time I was actually picking up her sister, Patty, for the date. But I still remember seeing Jules and thinking, "yowza." 

Jules' and I had an odd courtship. Basically it was non-existent. We were in the same ward at BYU-Idaho and her home teacher wasn't around much, so I took it upon myself to sacrifice my time and visit the hottest girl in the ward (it was tough, but someones gotta do it). We became friends and enjoyed being around each other. We'd go out on a date every few months, but it never really progressed. Throughout the process we dated other people, but always stayed in touch. Long story short, she went on a mission, we wrote each other, fell in love and got married 3 months after she came home. It's been a party every since. 

I graduated from BYU-Idaho in 2009 with a degree in Communications (advertising) and a minor degree in Culinary Arts. Seems random, but I love to cook and I needed something to keep me sane through my education. I'm now working as the marketing manager for a software company in Provo, Utah. Jules and I bought a house last year in Spanish Fork, where we've been living since. Jules actually blogs quite a bit about the work we're doing on our house and you can see that here: http://chrislovesjulia.com

A little over 2 years ago we added little Greta to our family. Greta is tall for a 2 year old. I feel bad for her sometimes because people think she's 3 or 4 years old and they expect her to behave that way, but she's not even 2.5 yet. And she has staggering amounts of energy; I've never known a kid with such energy. And I know it's not just me, because her pediatrician says the same thing. But she's smart as a whip and keeps things interesting, that's for sure. We really love that little girl and get so excited every day to see the new things she learns.

Anyway, that's us. We're livin' the dream down here in Utah County. We'll be at the reunion so we're looking forward to seeing those of you that are there. If anyone is living down this way, let us know. We'd love to connect - we're all about having people over.

chris

Alan Patterson

 After high school, I started attending BYU-Idaho in the fall. I finished up two semesters before leaving on an LDS mission to Baltimore, Maryland. Crazy fact – at one point, we had 5 missionaries from Rexburg in our mission (one being Ben Brubaker). After returning home, I went right back to school and decided to major in accounting. A few months later, I met my wife Kristy on campus. She is from Southern California (Anaheim area). We started dating and were married in August 2006. We have had a lot of fun together and shared some exciting experiences. We lived in Connecticut for 4 months in the winter of 2008 as I was working on my internship for an accounting firm there. We were only an hour train ride from New York City so we were able to see most of the sites on the weekend and got to see quite a few Broadway shows.
I graduated with my Bachelors of Accounting in July 2008 and moved to Utah to attend the University of Utah to work on my Master’s degree. I finished that up a year later and we decided to stay in Utah as my wife has a brother and sister living here. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that at first but we have grown to love the area. We bought a house in West Jordan where we still live. After graduating, I found a job with Deloitte, a large global accounting firm with an office in downtown Salt Lake. I am a tax accountant mostly dealing with business tax. Kristy and I decided to start a family and had a boy in October 2009, who we named Tanner. He has kept us on our toes for the past 2+ years. He is constantly on the move, which has caused him some pain (5 staples in his head to close a gash and recently a broken elbow after falling off his bike). He enjoys cars and sports, especially going to BYU football games (yes I know, I went to the U of U but stayed true to the Cougars despite taking a lot of heat from my classmates).
The first year after Tanner was born was very busy for us. I was working a lot of hours during tax season and also studying for the CPA exam. I was lucky enough to pass the exam and am now a Certified Public Accountant. Things were going smoothly when we decided to add a second child to our family. Kristy and I were worried that having two children would be difficult with me spending long hours at the office. I was able to find a new job with a company called Extra Space Storage working in their tax department. I started there in December 2011 and we have loved the change. Shortly after I started my new job we added our second son, Trevor, to the family. So far, he seems less busy than his older brother was but we will see how long that lasts. We enjoy being parents and the challenges that come with raising two boys.