My Parents mini life Story

My Mom

Carla was born in Montpelier on July 27 to Florence and Wesley. She is the oldest of 8 children. She was raised in Dingle  on a 4 acre farm. They lived in the basement of her Grandparents house till she was about 11 and then they switched places and they lived upstairs and her Dads parents lived in the basement. She got along really well with her siblings and preferred to play with them over the neighbor kids because they were more fun. She got to help with some of the fun chores like feeding the cows. Her dad would start the truck and put it in gear and then have her “drive” it while he was in the back throwing out the hay to the cows. She thought that was just so much fun. Her dad died from pancreatic cancer the summer after she graduated high school. She was 18 and her youngest brother was just 4 years old.

She went to Ricks College in Rexburg for 2 years and that is where she met my dad. He was there visiting some friends from his hometown of Mountain Home. He ended up going into the army and came back on leave to marry her in early 1972, then took her back with him to Panama where he was stationed.

They eventually moved to Caldwell Idaho after he got out of the Army and he got a job as a phone repair man. They then moved to Mountain Home Idaho where their first daughter was born. They then moved to Ray Colorado where their second child, a son, was born. They moved back to Mountain Home and had 2 more daughters. When the youngest was 3, they moved to Dingle Idaho. They lived there for 13 years before they moved back to Mountain Home to help take care or Russ’s dad. That was in 1996. They still live in Mountain Home today.

My Dad

Russell was born in 1950 in Salt Lake City. He was born 2 months premature and had some complications from that. He does not have a belly button because they used his umbilical cord to give him medicine and sewed it up when they were done so now there is just a smooth indent where the belly button should be.

His dad worked in Boy Scouts and he has memories of going to Scout Camp when he was just 5 years old. He was the camp bum. He could go around to all the different camps to see who had the best food and would bum off of them. They would take him fishing and he remembers pictures of him with some pretty big fish.

He went to college at Boise State University but all of his friends went to Ricks College. He went to visit them one weekend and that is how he first met my mom. At the time she was dating his friend. After the friend went on a mission, he told him to look her up, and he did. College was not going well and it was during the Vietnam War and he was going to be drafted, so he decided to just volunteer and get it over with. So he went into the Army and stayed in touch with Carla through letters. He never properly proposed to her, he just told her that he needed to start saving money for a ring and hoped that she would agree. They had not really spent that much time together. They were probably only together a handful of times before they were married. Two of those times, he was just there as her boyfriends friend.