Isaac's First Birthday Cake!

Super Garrett!

So fast he can only be seen as a blur! So intelligent he's been outsmarting his parents since birth! So brave he makes Chuck Norris look like a chump. It's SUPER GARRETT! He made himself into a super hero with baby sunglasses that wrap around his head and a blanket for a cape. We love this little kid!

Four Years

There we are. The Price Family. A family of four.

Four years ago, Brad and I were dating. It was his freshmen year and we were newly returned missionaries. We knew each other as missionaries, friends, then much to everyone's surprise we came to know each other as boyfriend and girlfriend, for a short period as fiances and then as husband and wife, all by the end of his first semester as a freshman at the Colorado School of Mines.

By the end of his second semester as a freshman at CSM we found out we were going to get to know each other as husband and crazy pregnant wife, with our son due three weeks before our first anniversary. We knew money would be tight and sacrifices would need to be made. Brad, through counsel from our wise bishop applied for several scholarships, school work programs and worked all summer in an internship for the state of Colorado. I worked long hours at an optometry office 5 days a week until two days before our due date. By the end of Brad's first semester as a sophomore we came to know each other as new parents. Garrett Bradley Price was born December 2nd, sixteen days before our first anniversary.
By the end of Brad's second semester as a sophomore, the Price family was going through some trying times. I was still working, driving an extra two hours a day to take Garrett to our kind bishop's house for daycare. At night I was helping Brad grade college biology homework. He had taken on work at school as a grader for two math classes and a biology class, I stunk at math so I took over biology. Some how Brad was able to keep up in school with a 4.0 GPA, as he was writing text books for Uganda for his Humanitarian Engineering Scholarship, grading two math classes and attending 2 hour practices every day to be the 184lb varsity wrestler for CMS.
We came to know each other as survivors through this as well, the struggling through postpartum depression took it's toll on our whole family.

First semester of junior year we were thinking we had things figured out with this whole parenting thing. Brad had worked in Borger, TX for the summer, without Garrett and I. That was hard but good for us in the long run. I was able to get through the depression and Brad learned what would become his future profession. We were thinking the next year would be better than the last. By the end of Brad's first semester as a junior, Brad was going into his third year as a college wrestler, we'd celebrated Garrett's 1st birthday, our second wedding anniversary and found out that against all odds, we'd be expecting our second child.

Junior year came to an end with us packing up and moving to Texas two weeks after Brad had knee surgery and a week and a half after school was out. Thankfully this was the last year that Brad graded and also the last year that he would have to write text books for Uganda. I was six months pregnant and Garrett was a ball of energy. We went to Baytown so Brad could work as an intern at Chevron Phillips Chemical.

We started off Brad's senior year with a bang! He missed the first week of school! I gave birth to Isaac Daniel Price on August 24th 2011, two weeks after Brad had knee surgery on the other knee. Two days after giving birth, I flew back to Colorado with our newborn and Brad drove from Tx to Colorado. We got acquainted as parents of two boys, running on little time, money or sleep. Thankfully this go around with a newborn was smooth sailing compared to the last.

Brad finished up his senior year at the Colorado School of Mines May 2012. He graduated magna kum laude with his bachelors degree in chemical engineering. He was a varsity wrestler all four years of college. He was awarded the Presidents Senior Scholar Athlete Award, one of only two given. He was given a special title from the chemical engineering department and his name is now engraven on a wall at the Colorado School of Mines Chemical Engineering Building, the male recipient of the award that year.

We made it. We were so abundantly blessed and could not have made it on our own. We made incredible friends and met so many who touched our lives more than they'll ever know. Heavenly Father had a hand in every detail of the journey. We survived four years at one of the toughest engineering colleges in the nation, two children, almost zero money, five trips to the ER, countless stitches for everyone, two knee surgeries, four wrestling seasons, two major callings at church, more tears and laughter than we could ever count and three and a half years of marriage.

We are a family of four. We all worked hard. We all sacrificed. We all learned a lot. We can't believe we made it through. Especially Brad, the super human. I'm so proud of you.

Incredible father, patient and loving husband, scholarly genius, persistent wrestler, worthy priesthood holder, college graduate, Process Controls, Automation and Chemical Engineer at Chevron Phillips Chemical.

ps: Brad's wonderful parents were able to come out for graduation day from Idaho.

My family came up from Colorado Springs.

To top it off, it snowed during the May Commencement Ceremony!

pps: Then two days later Brad had one last 5 week high intensity course of school and then we moved to Houston. But I'll tell ya more about that another day.