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Grayson and I practically had the wedding all planned before he actually asked me to marry him. Our engagement occurred March 19, the night before my brother Scott was getting married. On July 22, 1992 we were married in the Jordan River Temple. I was the only bride that day and got plenty of attention from the workers. We had a wedding lunch, then went off on a little honeymoon (downtown and then Park City) and had the reception that weekend. It was nice to split the wedding and the reception, which was held in the Westra backyard.
Our first home was in the basement of Gray’s childhood home. A few months earlier we had been sitting in the living room talking with Pam, when I had an image of us all sitting, just as we were there, but in the room below, that was unfinished at the time. Grayson joked that it sounded more like a nightmare than a dream, but the idea stuck, and the unfinished part of the basement became a cozy, newlywed apartment, with a little kitchen, one bedroom and a large family room that had a brick fireplace. My parents had recently replaced their stove, and we got the old one, as well as the old refrigerator, for the apartment. We did some of the work ourselves, and while moving some sheetrock, Grayson got a rusty nail impaled through his finger. He turned to me to pull it out, but it would not come, luckily Mommy/Pam was upstairs and with the help of pliers, she pulled it out. After making certain that Gray’s last tetanus shot was up to date, Gray and Pam came over to the couch where I was lying down to make sure I was ok.
Our little home was mutually beneficial. We were low on funds and it was nice not to have a rent payment. For Pam, it was good to still have a man in the house, and other adults to talk to. Gray had another brother and two sisters at home and I felt that while the apartment was wonderful, I thought that probably only family should live there, because strangers might feel obliged to call the police to stop the “murders” that would sometimes take place in the rooms above us. Olivia, Grayson’s sister, had a voice that would carry, and Clayton could provoke such screaming as I had never before heard. One other downfall to the apartment was that a bathroom was not included. The east part of the basement, not included in our separate space. The bathroom was outside the apartment, and Gray and I shared it with Clayton, who was fourteen at the time.
Like most young couples, we purchased the “necessities” for our own home. A television, a VCR, a piano, a cordless phone and answering machine, were all purchased during our first year. It had not always been that way- I can remember that VCR’s and cordless phones first came out during my early teenage years. My family was always a little behind the times, and we had a rotary phone in the kitchen until at least Junior High School and we would often have to rent a video machine along with movies, which was a great treat when I was young. Grayson had grown up with a waterbed, so we bought a queen size waterbed for $200, that barely fit into our bedroom; it was pushed against the wall and I had to climb down the bed to get out. We inherited my parents' old kitchen table, and Gray bought a couch and loveseat from a neighbor for $150. Neither Gray nor I brought a car into the marriage, so we ended up purchasing our first car the day before our wedding. It was a little, grey, 1984 two-door Honda, and we paid $1,200.
In addition to our little Honda, Gray had the use of the Blackham family’s little Toyota truck, and we needed the two cars as our schedules did not permit us to share. I commuted daily to BYU until I graduated in December, Grayson went to Salt Lake Community College and continued to work at UPS. Life was very busy, Grayson would leave early in the morning before I awoke, and he would be asleep when I came home. After graduation I started working for AT&T and Grayson worked a second on-call job for Roadway Express. When Grayson was approached by his neighbor who built homes with a job offer that he could not refuse, he quit school and started working full-time. Over the coming years, nearly everywhere we went, Grayson had numerous job offers from people who got to know him .
We lived in the basement apartment for over a year and a half. When Kolby returned home from his mission, we felt it was time to leave. We found a little, two bedroom duplex for $500 a month and moved in shortly before Christmas 1993. Being on our own was like being newlyweds all over again. Grayson was making good money building homes with Mac Development, and we managed to put away most of my earnings in savings, as we did not want to become dependent on two incomes. We planned on my being a full time mommy and homemaker when children came into our family. As early as eight months into our marriage we had been ready to accept a child into our life, and yet, no child had come. I was still working at AT&T and carried the family insurance, and when I looked into it, I found that, unlike most insurance companies, infertility was covered at the same rate as other medical bills. After trying for nine months, we discovered we were pregnant.
We often said it wasn’t the medication we were on that helped us finally conceive, but that we had decided to build a house, and now could not afford a child. Nevertheless, we were so excited, as were the soon to be grandparents on both sides. My mother had 4 grandchildren and another on the way, but I was the first daughter to have a baby, and ours was to be the first grandchild on Grayson’s side of the family. I had an easy pregnancy and was just so happy to be pregnant that I enjoyed nearly every minute of it. We had not found out the sex of the baby (much to the chagrin of the grandmas) but felt in our hearts that it was a boy. We had agreed on a boy’s name, Landon, quite a number of months past and had never changed our minds. My delivery was as easy as the pregnancy, and Landon Gordon Blackham was born, Thursday, September 7, 1995 a little after nine o’clock in the evening.
Read all the boy's BIRTH STORIES (page), or chronological posts ...
