Josh Rhodes

Hi everyone from Ashton! Josh is having me write this for him. (This is his wife, Tiffany.) The past ten years have flown by for Josh (he says). After high school he served a mission in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which he loved. Then he went to BYUI and after dating many (many, many, many.....) girls he finally met me and decided to give up his bachelor ways. Annie Marsden (wife of Jordan Marsden, Josh's college room mate) told me after our first couple group dates, "I'm surprised to see you again! Usually Josh's dates are only once then the next double date he has a new girl." So, I didn't know how I felt about that but he did convince me to marry him and after a six-month engagement, which everyone insisted we'd move up, (we didn't) we were married August 19, 2004 in Nauvoo, Illinois.

After getting married we did our junior years at BYUI. Then we went to live in Minneapolis for the summer where Josh worked for APX Alarm. That was a really fun summer and I recommend that place to anyone. Then it was back to Rexburg for our senior years. We thought we were pretty smart when we got pregnant with my due being scheduled for one month after graduation. Pretty good timing, huh? Wrong. Gabe decided to come 11 weeks early, about five weeks before our April graduation. Turns out I'm a bit defective when it comes to cooking a kid! Those were a hectic five weeks of running around between school, home, and the hospital, but we both still graduated with our Bachelor's degrees - Josh in Health Science and me in Communications. Our tough little guy quickly grew from 3 pounds, 10 ounces to over six pounds and was released from Madison Memorial after six weeks (still five weeks before my due date!)

That summer Josh managed for APX and we went to lots of places - Birmingham, Virginia Beach, and Kansas City. I do not recommend Birmingham to anyone. The only plus was that we lived practically in the backyard of The Cheesecake Factory. Virginia Beach was okay because of the beach, but otherwise really, really hot and humid. Kansas City was pretty nice. We got to see all the church history sites while we were there. So... this is requiring a lot of memory digging. Oh yeah, then we moved back to good ol' Ashton. Josh worked construction and we rented a house from Mary and Weldon Reynolds that was so cute! But after nine months we decided we had stayed in one place too long and decided to sell for APX again, this time in Sin City. We went with the brothers Fransen (all but the oldest) and had a pretty fun time there. For me and Gabe it was lots of pool time and trips to the Golden Spoon with the other wives! For Josh it was knocking doors in the blazing heat and swearing he'd never do it again. "Haha," I thought. "I've heard that before." But this summer he's been true to his word! After Vegas ended we moved to Wisconsin in the fall and we recently bought our first home. After being nomads for so long you'd think we'd be ecstatic but I think a part of us is a little sad. We like change. (Can you tell? I think we counted that we've had eleven addresses since we got married.)
We're expecting our second child (another boy) to be born anywhere from tomorrow to July 2 (I'm unpredictable) so we decided it was time to make some grown up decisions. Maybe the change of baby number 2 will be enough to satisfy us, but who knows. I'm sure someday we'll move back to Idaho but we'll probably move a few times before that too. Josh has been taking classes online through Lewis and Clark to get his secondary education certificate to teach science. He has about 2-3 semesters left. I'm sure he'd love to coach football too someday. So we'll see where that takes us. Right now our goal is just to have a healthy baby! That's about all I can think of and I'm sure it's more than Josh would've said! I've been on bed rest for eight weeks trying to keep this kid in me and I'm bored out of my mind! We also have a blog for Gabe at: http://gaberbaby.blogspot.com/ . Josh says hi and hopes everyone's doing well! Take care!