A Love Story

Happy 7th year Anniversary!

I can't believe it, we've been married 7 years and together for almost 10! Without sounding too cheesy or getting too mushy, here is our love story.

I grew up in San Jose CA (just South of S.F.) and in 2000 I graduated high school with decent enough grades to get accepted into the University of California at Davis (just outside of Sacramento). Phil was born in Wyoming but pretty much grew up in Davis CA, a cute little university town that I would still love to live in if it wasn't so expensive and if it didn't get sooo hot in the summer. Phil and I attended the same congregation but it wasn't until my second year of college that we really got to know each other. We were not set up but since we had a mutual friend we started hanging out often.

Shortly thereafter we were inseparable and we saw each other almost every single day, we dated for a year and a half before getting engaged. Phil at the time was in junior college and put off applying and transfering to UC Berkeley by a whole semester so that we wouldn't have to be apart for so long. How could we survive being a whole 1hr away from each other for a whole 5ish months!!! We were engaged for a year which allowed us to to plan our wedding, finish up college, Phil applied and was accepted to UCB.

In the summer of 2004 I graduated from UC Davis with a B.S. in Microbiology, a major I totally loved and am fascinated with. We got married just a month later, I was 22 and Phil was just three weeks from turning 22. I went from Janet Jimenez to Pittsenbarger. We had a cute wedding with about 125 guests and then we spent two weeks honeymooning in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia. When we got back we officially moved into a cute tiny little 400sq ft apartment in Berkeley CA, which we paid a whopping $900/mo!

Since Phil would be going to school full time I had to find a job to support us and fast! I applied to over 100 jobs that I was somewhat qualified for in 3 short months, I only got about 4 interviews. I was so relieved and excited when I was offered the PERFECT job that paid more than I had hoped for and was only a short 15min commute from our apartment. I would be working in a lab at Children's Hospital of Oakland researching a bacteria that causes meningitis, Neisseria Meningitidis (OMG I still remember how to spell it!). It is an awful disease that I'm getting my boys vaccinated for as soon as they are old enough!

Phil got straight A's and was able to get lot's of grants and scholarships which paid for most of his schooling and a couple of vacations for us too : ) He graduated in 2006 with a B.A. in Architecture. We had a blast and loved the two years we lived in Berkeley but it never felt like home to us and we wanted to move on to something different. Everywhere we wanted to live in California was too expensive and everywhere we could afford we didn't like. So we thought we'd check out Portland, OR.

Shortly before moving to PDX we visited Peru. Machu Picchu is one of the awesome-est places ever!

We were amazed, Portland had everything we wanted and was so affordable. We were sold. Phil applied to several firms and most called him back for interviews. He got several job offers and he took the best one. With experience under my belt I quickly found another job as well working at OHSU in a prostate cancer research lab. We said good bye to over priced housing, commuting, road rage, and 8+% sales tax. The only thing we miss is family and the sun. Phil and I embraced the Portland life style. We hiked, back-packed, fished, went to countless happy hours, took light rail to work in the winter and commuted by bike in the summer.















Backpacking in Oregon, we were always able to catch enough fish for breakfast and dinner, yum : )

The plan was to eventually have kids and most likely 2 max. I didn't want to start until I was 30 but also wanted them to be at least 4 years apart. The four year plan sounded better so we started a little earlier than we wanted. I got pregnant at 28 and you pretty much know the rest! We've had to make major lifestyle changes but we couldn't be happier to be blessed with a wonderful marriage and three great boys!

A trip to Cambodia and Thailand was our last hooray before kids. In Cambodia visiting the temples.