Shauna’s family:
My parents fell in love before my dad left to serve his mission but he decided that answering the call to Michigan was just what he needed. While my dad was serving his mission my mother decided since her prospect for marriage was gone, she would serve a mission too, in Central America. When my dad came home they continued to court and were soon married on July 11, 1980 in the Manti Utah temple.
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| Lloyd and Janice |
Soon after they were married, my dad decided to go to school in Portland Oregon to be a chiropractor. During this time my three older siblings were born: Maria, Joseph and Bradley. Once done with school, my parents decided to open up shop on the other side of the state in the Baker Valley. This is where I was born the day after Christmas.
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| Left to Right: Janice, Maria, Bradley, Lloyd, Shauna and Joseph in the front. |
I was not supposed to be the baby of the family because I was followed by three younger brothers: Benjamin, Cory and Scott. That put me right smack dab in the middle of my six others siblings.
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| Scott, Shauna, Cory and Ben. |
Right now my parents are still live in the same valley and my youngest brother Scott who is the last sibling at home. My dad is still working as a chiropractor and my mom takes care of the books for his business and cares for my dad’s parents. It’s always fun to go home because there is so much to do. There is always someone to visit with and plenty of outside activities with the chickens, the garden and a couple of acres to roam on.
Pictures of my Family:
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| Shauna, Maria, Ben, Cory, Scott, Bradley, Sean, Joseph, Carrie (Josephs wife), Aaron (the first Grandson), Angie (Brads wife), Papa and Mom! |
Sean’s Family:
After my dad returned from his mission in Chile, he decided to marry my mom. The problem was that my mom didn’t feel the same way. Finally, after being rejected two times, my mom said “yes” to my resilient dad. They were soon thereafter married June 10, 1971 in the Salt Lake Temple.
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| Terry and Kathy on there wedding day. |
My dad had lived in Washington and Idaho as a kid before moving to Utah, and probably didn’t realize that he would not leave Utah again. My mom and dad began by their lives in Provo, Utah, while they were both studying at Brigham Young University. During this time of school, my brother, Eric, and my sister, Melanie, were born. After my dad finished his bachelor and master’s degree at BYU, he decided to continue to work in the BYU library and move all the way to Orem. The next wave of Dahlins came along when my youngest sister, Brittany, and I were born.
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| Brittany and Sean with Kathy and Grandma Beverly |
Now, my dad is still working at the BYU library and my mom and dad are living in Pleasant Grove, Utah. They sometimes have Brittany living at home, but they are basically empty nesters that take crazy trips to places like Laramie, Wyoming, and Fort Collins, Colorado. They are near retiring and are looking forward to being grandparents. Sports and especially BYU sports is the one thing that everybody in our family has in common, aside from our religious beliefs.
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| Eric and Kathryn, Shauna and Sean, Melanie, Mom and Dad, and Brittany |
Pictures of the Dahlins:
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| Eric, Grandpa, Grandma, Mom and Dad. |
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| Shauna, Brittany, Melanie, Mom, Dad, and Sean. |
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| Mom, Dad, Sean, Shauna, Melanie, Eric, Kathryn, and Brittany. |
To families joined to make a new family:
Sean and Shauna:
Our story as a couple began in 2005 when we met while attending Southern Virginia University. I was studding business and Sean was studding me, just kidding it was Spanish. When we first met, we were both dating other people and when those relationships closed, I decided to be brave and ask Sean to a Sadie Hawkins dance.
I asked Sean to the dance by sending him on a scavenger hunt across the campus and he responded by toilet papering her room. Well for the few weeks before the dance we were almost inseparable.
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| My room after Sean toilet Papered it! |
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| Right before the dance. |
We would hang out pretty much every night after our practices and games were done but we were so tired that we ended up spending the majority of the time sitting on the couch or on the steps in front of Shauna’s apartment.
A couple weeks after the dance, Elder Oaks gave a talk a broadcast about how the young adults needed to stop just hanging out and needed to start dating. So we got off the couch and started going on more dates. As the school year was drawing to a close Sean invited me to dinner. He didn’t tell me much about what we were going to do but when he picked me up, we walked down to the baseball field. Now the baseball field was like Sean’s home away from home. When he got there, he marched up to the pitching mound, laid down a blanket, pulled out a laptop and some snacks. So on a warm almost summer evening, we watched a movie, ate and talked about our futures together. This was by far our favorite date.
The next day I was leaving for a track meet in Illinois and Sean was going to be leaving for a tournament in Florida. After that I was going to spend the summer in Boise and Sean would be in Orem
During the summer Sean would drive up to see me about every other week. In the middle of July he made a surprise visit, and in front of everyone at my work, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Even though we had talked about this and I knew we were going to get married, he still surprised me.
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| This was taken the day I first met Sean's Family. |
Well we wanted to get married before school started but since my sister was getting married in August we decided that we would get married over a long weekend at the end of September.
It was a whirl wind weekend because we flew out of Virginia on Wednesday after classes and we sealed the next morning on September 29, 2005 at 8:00 in the morning in the Portland Oregon Temple. After pictures were taken we went to my aunt’s house for a brunch for all our family.
We then hopped in the car, made the 6 hour trip to my parents house and had a reception that evening. The next morning we got in the car again and made the trip down to Provo for our reception down there.
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| North Powder Reception |
Even though we were an hour late to the last reception, it all worked out.
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| Reception on the BYU baseball Field. |
Then the following Monday we flew out back to Virginia to head back to school.
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| At the DC Temple after our wedding weekend. |
We are very grateful for the decision that we made to be married in the temple and be sealed together for all time and eternity because is the foundation that we have built our marriage on and our family. Since that beautiful day in September, we have had the opportunity to have many adventures and I would like to share those through the pictures below.
(more pictures to come)
Thank you for learning more about our family and we look forward to sharing the tail of our new greatest adventure: Finding our children through adoption.
