Brough Family Update 2018
Happy Holidays! We really don’t think anyone even looked at our update last year! But that’s okay. We totally get it and we understand and our life is really not all that interesting anyway. Hopefully our posterity will find something of value though! We mainly do this as a history of our family since we are not journal writers! Warning! This is SUPER long so we are not offended if you want to get out now!
Our Arizona kids:
Jordan and Casey are in Gilbert and we are so grateful that we at least have them nearby and get to have at least one of our families for Sunday dinner on Brough Sunday (2ndSunday). Jordan is still working at Go Daddy and is involved with scouts and the young men in their ward. He also coached high school swim team in the fall. He just recently had an appendectomy but is healing nicely. Casey is a fun mom to their busy girls and has a darling salon in their home where she does hair and Maskara makeup. She also styles hair for weddings. Casey serves in the presidency of the Primary (children’s auxiliary) in their ward. Lindy (4) is a budding makeup artist herself and loves to put makeup on Jade. She goes to pre-school and takes dance classes. She completely decorated their nine foot Christmas tree this year going up and down the ladder while Casey helped with only a few things AND it looks fabulous and professional! Jade (2) is a cutie and sometimes a force to be reckoned with. She loves to ride her scooter and also takes dance classes. One of the dance numbers they did at the summer recital was a dance with their dads so Jordan danced with Lindy and Don danced with Jade! We just went to their latest Christmas recital this weekend. They did so great in their dance numbers and even though it is a little out of Don and Nancy’s element it was fun seeing them enjoy what they are doing! The exciting news for this family is that Lindy and Jade are going to have a new sibling in June! We are so excited for grandbaby number nine!
Our Washington kids:
Zachary and Tara are in Seattle. Zach graduated in April with his MBA from Brigham Young University. Following graduation they took the kids and went on a month long trip to Europe before moving to Seattle where Zach works at Amazon headquarters. Tara is a busy mommy vlogger on their YouTube station, Broughington. She has gotten a few editing jobs as a result of people that have viewed it. A portion of one of her vlogs was featured on a Google Assistant commercial recently. In September our prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, spoke to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from the greater Seattle area at SafeCo Field so Zach and Tara and Porter went to that. Then the next day President Nelson attended their ward’s sacrament meeting (worship service). Tara had been scheduled to sing a solo at that meeting before they knew that President Nelson would be coming and earlier that week her bishop called her to let her know that the prophet would be there and wanted to know if she would still be comfortable singing. Fortunately, the song she was going to be singing was one she was familiar with so she was okay with it and did a beautiful job. (Zach recorded the song). After the meeting they got to meet President Nelson and his wife and he thanked Tara and gave her a hug! They love their new ward where Zach serves as a ward missionary and Tara teaches in Relief Society (women’s auxiliary). Porter (6) is in first grade and is really starting to enjoy reading and writing. He loves playing with his friends and playing with Piper. Piper (4) goes to pre-school and loves to color, draw, paint and sing and is almost always singing while she is coloring, drawing or painting. She loves playing with her brothers. Beau (1) is a delightful little boy and almost always has a grin on his face. He loves trains and animals and Porter and Piper love wrestling with him.
Landon and Ashlin are in Pullman. Landon is in his second year of veterinary school at Washington State University. He is the class president so along with being busy with school and studying he is also a party planner! Landon also enjoys cooking and experimenting in the kitchen and every once in a while calls and asks for one of Nancy’s recipes! He serves in the Elders Quorum in their ward. Ashlin does freelance graphic design and has an Etsy shop called Popsicle Paint. And she is also doing online classes through Arizona State University majoring in Graphic Information Technologies. She is a fun and busy mom and serves as the activity day leader for the girls ages 8-11 in their ward. Dora (3) also loves to color and draw and is into horses now, although she still loves her sharks and recently took a pocketful of them to church. She goes to preschool and takes gymnastics. Theodore (1) AKA Theo, Teddy and Bubba loves stuffed animals, books, balls, cars and trains. Our grandkitties, Ruben and Maple continue to survive all the love they get from those two!
Our Utah kids:
Dalton and SARAH! Yes! Dalton married the beautiful Sarah Cummings on August 4thin the Payson Utah Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are so thrilled to add Sarah to our family and she fits right in. All of our kids and grandkids were able to be in Utah for all the wedding festivities as well as some extended family and a few friends from Arizona. Our Christmas card picture was taken in front of the temple and I’ve decided that with this many little people we will never get a picture with all of them looking at the camera! It is what it is! At least you can see all their faces on the picture on the back of the card! After a honeymoon to the Bahamas they settled in Orem, UT in a conveniently placed basement apartment close to the Frontrunner train for Dalton to take to work and they are super close to school for Sarah. Dalton is finishing up his last year at BYU and will be graduating in April majoring in Human Resources. He works in Lehi as a recruiter at a tech company called Jolt. He serves as the mission leader in his ward. Sarah attends Utah Valley University majoring in Deaf Studies with an emphasis in Interpretation. She works on the Payroll team at Bamboo HR. She previously worked for a jeweler designing engagement and wedding rings and she still designs for them from home on the side. Sarah teaches an adult Sunday School class in their ward. We hosted an open house for them in October so our friends in Arizona could celebrate with us. (Casey did Sarah’s hair on the wedding day and Ashlin designed our pre-wedding dinner invitations, table numbers and seating chart as well as our open house invitations.) We really enjoyed getting to know Sarah’s parents a little better when they came for the open house.
Caleb and Mollie live in Provo. Caleb works for Wells Fargo Bank full time and took courses earlier this year to complete the FINRA Securities Licensing program for the bank. He is now taking college courses through the Brigham Young University-Idaho’s Pathway Program and plans to major in Business Management. Mollie is finishing up her masters program at Brigham Young University in Communications Disorders. She interned at Avalon West Rehabilitation Center in West Jordan as a speech therapist intern and is currently one of the graduate speech clinicians at the BYU preschool as she is finishing up her thesis. Caleb and Mollie teach the nine and ten year old kids in Primary and just recently had a class party for them at their apartment. They are also so good to tend our great nephew in West Jordan from time to time. Caleb and Mollie adopted a pretty and playful cat named Peia so we now have three grandkitties. They also bought their first home in Mesa and are renting it out until Mollie graduates and they move back to Arizona in April! We can’t wait!
The Empty Nesters!
Don and Nancy are missing the kids in Washington and Utah but fortunately we have been able to travel often*this year to see them quite a bit and they’ve made a few trips here as well. Don is still working hard at Wells Fargo Bank and though he’s not loving a lot of the changes the bank is making he is grateful for employment and dreaming of retirement sometime in the not too distant future. He is enjoying working from home on Fridays. He only went on two business trips this year – one to Richmond in March and a quick trip to Charlotte in December. Don serves as the executive secretary in our stake. Nancy continues to love working at the temple on the Tuesday morning shift. She is still in the process of getting a sewing room set up so she can dabble in quilting a little more. She still has a small calling with the young women in our ward encouraging them with a program called Personal Progress and has almost completed the program herself. She also teaches an adult Sunday School class every third week, something that is totally out of her comfort zone! We have enjoyed being ASU Gammage season ticket holders the past couple of seasons and especially getting to see Hamilton in January!
*Travel Log (you can seriously bow out now and just scroll down to our Holiday Greeting!)
January – Before heading off on our first trip of the year we got to have a wonderful visit from our niece, Rachel, and her family while they were in town for a family event on her husband’s side. Then we took off on a meandering road trip starting with a stop in Las Vegas. We are not Vegas people but thought it might be fun to hit a show and went to Blue Man Group which was horrible! We hit St. George to celebrate Don’s dad’s birthday and then headed to Provo via of Manti where we stayed at an inn across the street from the beautiful and historical temple. We had been to the Manti Pageant in the past but never been in the temple so we went to a session this time. After leaving Manti we stopped at a cemetery in a nearby town called Spring City where some of Don’s ancestors are buried. We spent the rest of this trip in Provo spending time with the kids and grandkids and just enjoying the snow. We also went to Bountiful to visit my mom’s grave but had to spend a lot of time digging through snow to find it! Don was able to work remotely on this trip so he didn’t have to use any of his PTO.
February – Our nephew, Brayden, returned home from his mission so we went on a quick weekend road trip to St. George and Santa Clara to hear him report and while there we also celebrated Don’s 56thbirthday. Dalton and Caleb drove down from Provo and met us there.
March – We headed to Utah again since the Gilbert Temple had a two week maintenance closure and Don could work remotely. We hit St. George on the way up where we got to have lunch with family. We took Dalton, Sarah, Caleb and Mollie with us to visit Don’s brother’s family in Clarkston, UT on the Sunday we were there and went to their ward for church. The building they meet in is a unique old one with lots of church history and family history on Don’s mom’s side. We also visited a cemetery there where some more of Don’s ancestors are buried as well as the grave of Martin Harris. On the way back to Provo, we drove through Logan and visited a couple of friends. That week, Don worked in an office in the same Wells Fargo building that Caleb works in while I did some sewing projects in the hotel, went to the Provo City Center Temple, shopped and met up with Don and the kids for lunch. We hung out with the kids at night and went to a couple of their BYU intramural flag football games. One night Don and I went to Sundance with Dalton and Caleb and they snowboarded while Don and I skied for the first time in 40 years! On our drive back home we found out that Nancy’s brother, Eric, and sister in law, Alex, from Pennsylvania were in St. George, so we got to meet them for brunch!
April – We went to southern Florida for the week of Easter to spend some time with Nancy’s extended family. It was so wonderful to spend some time on Easter Sunday with aunts, uncles and cousins, most of which Nancy hadn’t seen in years. Her cousin, Joe, hosted it at his beautiful home in Miami Beach. While there we did a whirlwind day trip to Key West. We spent some time at the Everglades and Homestead, which is where Nancy’s mom grew up. We attended an endowment session in the beautiful Fort Lauderdale temple (actually located in Davie). This temple was dedicated shortly after our temple in Gilbert and has some similar architectural features. The decorative theme of this temple is the Everglades and there was a beautiful mural of the Everglades in one of the rooms! After our session we drove to Hialeah so Nancy could drive by one of her aunt’s homes and then ate at a delicious Cuban food restaurant (we discovered our love of Cuban food on this trip!). We enjoyed a dinner cruise in Fort Lauderdale as well as a nighttime cruise to see Millionaires Row in Miami. We got to spend a little more time with a few of Nancy’s cousins at breakfast in Hollywood. The rest of the time we just drove around taking in the sights and going down Nancy’s memory lane to see each of her aunts’ homes, most of who have passed away. This trip brought back a lot of happy memories for Nancy and she was sad to leave. And it wasn’t even humid at all and the weather was perfect! Nancy loves her “Engel Folks”! Her mom’s maiden name is Engel and that’s what her family always called their extended family on her mom’s side. Later that month, we went to Provo for Zach’s graduation and the night that we arrived Dalton proposed to Sarah and she said yes! So we got to celebrate with them as well! And we also got to see my sweet dad again.
May – We flew to Provo for a few days so we could watch Porter, Piper and Beau while Zach and Tara went to Seattle on a house hunting trip. We also got to see Nancy’s dad. Then I flew home for my temple shift and Don flew from Provo to Pullman to spend some time with Landon while Ashlin and the kids were in Arizona for some of her family’s events. Don was able to work remotely in the day and then hang out and explore with Landon in the evenings. Dalton and Sarah came to AZ for a quick visit this month.
June – Nancy went on a trip to Hamilton, Missouri with a dear friend. Any quilters would know what Hamilton (the town, not the play) is all about! An amazing lady, Jenny Doan and her son and family have revitalized this small town! Forbes recently had an article about them! The Doans have done for Hamilton what the Gaines have done for Waco but through quilting instead of home renovations. But they don’t have a TV show! We had a great time there and then also got to see the temple in Kansas city and go to some church historical sites in Liberty and Independence. Later this month Don and Nancy wanted to get out of the AZ heat and actually went back to Pullman because now that Don got to see the rolling green hills of the Palouse during the spring, Nancy had to see them too and it just happened that Landon and Ashlin were spending most of the summer in AZ, California and Mexico with Ashlin’s family and so we were able to stay at their apartment with the cats while we were there! So, Don worked during the day while Nancy hung out with the cats, ran some errands and just relaxed and then we ate out at some of our favorite restaurants there and checked out some new ones and went on a really cool hike one morning and several drives. We also met up with a childhood friend of Nancy’s from when they lived on Fairchild AFB near Spokane when she was little. Nancy had reconnected with her on social media.
July – We wanted to get out of the AZ heat again so decided to drive back to Provo for the week of the 4thof July. Eric and Alex (Nancy’s brother and sister in law from PA) were in Provo this week as well so we got to see them and we had an impromptu gathering with my dad at the VA home. Again, poor Don had to work during the day at the hotel but we had fun every night with the kids and got to do some 4thof July activities in Provo, including getting to watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks from our hotel across the street. The 4thof July in AZ stinks so it was nice to get to spend it in UT. Nancy and Mollie attended a wedding shower for Sarah in Centerville. Later that month, Caleb and Mollie came to AZ for a week to purchase their home in Mesa and during that time Dalton and Sarah came for a few days as well for a wedding.
August – Back to Utah for the wedding of Dalton and Sarah on August 4th! We hosted a dinner on the eve of the wedding at Archibald’s in West Jordan and a brunch before the wedding. The sealing in the Payson temple was beautiful and the reception that evening at Cactus and Tropicals in Sugarhouse was lovely!
September into October – At the end of September we embarked on a three week road trip, stopping first in St. George and celebrated Don’s mom’s birthday and saw the plays at Tuacahn, Prince of Egypt and Matilda. Then on to Provo to see the kids and to celebrate my Dad’s 90thbirthday at a nice big room at the VA in Payson. Tara put together a video of all the pictures through his life that Nancy could dig up. It was a wonderful gathering. We took the Provo kids to Bountiful and Centerville one day to show them all of our old houses, schools and stomping grounds and have a picnic in Muehler Park which is in the mountains behind the house that Nancy lived in during high school. Sarah is from Centerville and she and Don actually went to the same high school. From Provo we drove via Boise, where we got to have lunch with some family friends, to Pullman to spend time with the Landon Broughs for a few days and got to attend the WSU vs UofU football game. Then off to Seattle to be with the Zach Broughs for a bit. Since we had already been there when Zach was doing his internship and seen most of the iconic Seattle things we mostly hung out with them, eating at yummy places, spending time with the grandkids and Don and I went on a tour of underground Seattle which was very interesting if you can handle a little potty and brothel humor! We headed to Portland via Cannon Beach and Tillamook and that night we went to the Portland temple which is gorgeous! It has a two story Celestial Room! And the sister missionaries at the visitor center on the property were darling and invited us to watch general conference with them the next day, which we did for the Saturday afternoon session. We ate Voodoo Donuts and watched the morning session in our hotel room where we were excited to hear about the change to the two hour block next year! We tried to go to Multnomah Falls but it was closed for some reason so we just drove around until we came to Vista House and got to see a beautiful view of the Columbia River Gorge. We took a tram ride where we could see an amazing view of Portland then ate at Screen Door and it was fabulous. Took off the next morning (watching/listening to conference on Nancy’s phone) and headed to the Redwoods via Acata, a cute little California town where we stayed overnight. We spent the whole next day in awe of the huge redwood trees stopping everywhere we could to see them and taking little hikes to every point of interest. Such a unique part of this earth. We made it to San Francisco that night. Don worked at a Wells Fargo Bank office for the next couple of days while Nancy enjoyed the city and then we ate at our favorite restaurants at night. For years Don had traveled a ton to San Francisco on business and in more recent years Nancy would get to go with him several times a year. But it had been two years since we had been there so it was so nice to get to be in what is probably our favorite city. We headed back home via Bakersfield, where we stayed overnight and then made it home safely the next day and got to see our front yard renovation (we had to do something to spruce up the house for our upcoming open house for Dalton and Sarah) which had been going on the whole time we were gone! Thanks to our neighbors we got play by play photos of the process during this whole trip. At the end of the month Don went to West Jordan for a week to help with the family of his sister, Joye, who is battling cancer.
November – Caleb and Mollie came to AZ for a family event in Mollie’s family and stayed with us for a week and were here for their birthdays. Since they were here we had an early Thanksgiving dinner with them. Then the next weekend we went to St. George for the wedding of Don’s nephew, Brayden and his darling bride, Sammi. While in St. George we had another partial extended family Thanksgiving dinner. For the week of actual Thanksgiving we both went back to West Jordan to help with Don’s sister’s family and had another Thanksgiving dinner! Congratulations to anyone who even read any of this long drawn out travel log! Like we said, this is really just our annual family history update mainly intended for our posterity.
Our Holiday Greeting
We are so grateful for this time of year where we can reflect on our many blessings which includes our association with each of you. We love celebrating the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ and hope and pray each of you may feel of His love always. Wishing you all a beautiful Christmas and a wonderful new year!
Instagram: @herdofbroughalo
Email: brough7@q.com
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