High School Sweethearts

We've got a little history here. Crysta and I started dating as juniors at Highland High School about 5 min from the farm. At that time we were both pretty good athletes with demanding travel schedules, but you could bet that if we weren't at practice we were probably with each other.

After high school, I spent a year playing junior hockey on the east coast, but ended up back home at the University of Akron. Crysta went to University of Cincinnati where she found a love for theater. I proposed to her the summer after she graduated while she was working at the Utah Shakespeare Festival and I was presenting a research publication in Salt Lake City.

Crysta went on tour with Broadway shows while I finished up my engineering degree. Over the years there were a lot of long drives to meet in an obscure city for a weekend. One of our favorite memories is from skipping Monday classes to get one more day together in a noname town in Kentucky.

We got married at the Allardale Lodge about a mile from the farm after having been long distance for 6 years. I accepted a job in Kalamzoo, MI and we bought our starter home. Renovated it ourselves... which slowed significantly after having our two kids. Lore 3.5yrs and Koda 2yrs. COVID realigned some priorities for us. We found out how hard it is to raise kids without family and that we weren't meant for neighborhoods. So we sold our starter home and moved back to the farm, and to the same house where we would sit in front of the fire together as teenagers. A new chapter has begun.