"Did you know that_____?"

Seven Semi-Interesting Tidbits about Us

1) Steve is a Martial Arts instructor. He has a black belt and teaches once a week. He also loves doing jujitstu and has recently started wrestling as well.

2) Last summer, there was a rattlesnake in our house. No, I'm not kidding. For a year and a half we were living just in the mouth of Ogden Canyon in a lady's house while she was on her mission. While it was beautiful there, there were some down
sides-- many in the form of giant hairy spiders and slithering snakes. One day, Steve went to turn the pilot light off on the gas fireplace. He opened up the grate thing where all the knobs are and heard a rattling, but thought it was just the sound of the grate clanging on the stone hearth. So, he proceeded to reach his hand in to the knobs. He quickly realized that the rattling was actually a rattlesnake whose head was inches from his hand!!! The snake continued to rattle and pulled its head away. Obviously Steve was quick to pull away also once he saw the movement and realized what was going on. He called Animal Control and they came and got the snake out. Luckily, I was not home at the time and decided not to come home at all that night.... I slept at my sister's house : )

What a cute little boy...


3) There were a few years when I, Jenni, was little that some people thought I was a boy. Embarrassing, I know. I look back at pictures, and I did look like a boy when I didn't curl my hair...... a pretty boy, but a boy none-the-less. (If you want to hear about the most memorable of such incidences, click on the comments following this post)

4) Steve can speak 3 languages-- English, Tahitian and French. He went on an LDS mission to Tahiti and had to learn two different languages! Man, I imagined learning one new language would be hard enough…. But learning two at the same time? Amazing. I speak a little bit of French, but probably only about as much as a missionary would learn in their first week at the MTC.

5) Speaking of the MTC…Did you know that the summer after I turned 21, I had my mission papers filled out and ready to give back to the Bishop?? I prayed so hard to get some sort of directions to what I should do with my life that summer. Should I pursue a certain career? Should I move out of my parents house and get an apartment? Should I go on a mission? Needless to say, I didn’t get some huge, straight forward answer telling me what path to take. I didn’t feel like there was really any right or wrong choice at that point, but rather that I was just supposed to start pursuing one of the paths and if that wasn’t exactly where I was supposed to head, I would be stopped before I got too far. I really had wanted to serve a mission since I was 19, so I got my papers and started filling them out. It was right about then that I started going on some dates with this one guy named Steve Toller. This seemed to delay the process a bit. Soon, I felt like HE was my answer and the path I was to pursue… and… well….. I’m sure you can guess how that story ends : )

6) Some members of my family claim that I am a hypochondriac. I don't think this is true... so maybe I do get anxiety about my health at times, but take a glimpse at the happenings of my past 12 months and tell me if you wouldn't be a little anxious as well. In the past 12 months I.......:

got braces on and all sorts of other contraptions in my mouth; due to the contraptions I was in typical pain and also got a bad sore on my tongue making it nearly impossible to swallow; my pinky toe grew to 4 times it's size, incredibly swolen and painful (still don't know what the heck caused it); as a result of the strong antibiotics I took in attempt to clear that, I got an infection in my intestines; somewhere in the midst of all this I started losing weight unintentionally (15 pounds) and continued to until just recently when I have finally been able to gain some of it back!; I was pregnant three times; I miscarried three times; I got some sort of flu or something with a fever of 102; I got some other weird infection that I couldn't seem to get rid of but finally did; Okay, so those are the highlights. Now tell me........ hypochondriac?........ Or a cursed year of bad health?????

7) I've been skydiving before!!! It was so awesome. I loved it. I went 8 weeks before we got married (so.....May of 2005?). My aunt Gayla is a certified skydiver and I decided to go up in a plane with her and try it out for myself! Your first time you jump attatched to someone else. Gayla isn't an instructor, so I wasn't attatched to her. But it was an awesome experience we had together. I wathced her jump out of the plane ahead of me.... then there I was at the open door, billions of feet in the air (okay, not billions....) and suprisingly not nervous at all. It was almost like I was just watching someone else do it... it didn't seem real. But it was so freakin awesome. Here is a clilp from the video they took of me. The quality isn't very good because I used my digital camera to record the TV playing it on the VCR.... But, it gives you a glimpse nonetheless.

Don't you just love how my cheeks and nose are flapping in the wind....????? Very flattering indeed.