Personal History, Part 1

(started this last night)
Well, looks like insomnia has struck again. I've been thinking that I need to be a lot more consistent with this anyway, so I might as well take care of this now while I'm awake.

A lot of the time, when people ask me where I'm from, I never have a straight answer, and that's mostly because there isn't one. You see, my dad worked for a gas company as a project manager since before I was born, and the family's location was based on where he was needed for work. So I've got a few places I could call "home," but it's always been difficult to choose just one. I'll get to the whole moving around thing in a little bit, though; first, let me actually talk about my family.

Family pic from a couple years ago: Me in brown, Claire in white, Dad in black, Chris in green, Mom in white, Lindsay in yellow, Caleb in gray, Joe in blue, Katie in purple/black, and Sarah in purple/white. Evalyn was on the way at the time.

My parents met at Brigham Young University, some time after my dad had returned from his mission for the LDS church in France. He was a convert to the church, and had already moved around a couple times himself, whereas my mom had generations of ancestors in the Church. One of our more notable ancestors through her is Ebenezer Beesley, composer of the music for such hymns as High on the Mountain Top and 'Tis Sweet to Sing the Matchless Love. The musical gene seems to have been passed down to some in the family since then. My mom is pretty dang awesome at piano, as are some of my siblings, and I've got a sister who rocks the flute and was a drum major in marching band her senior year of high school. Myself? I play some basic piano, basic guitar, and love alto sax. Also, music-based video games seem to come fairly easy to me.

There are five kids in my family. There would have been six, but none of us were fortunate enough to meet our oldest sibling. Amy Elizabeth Bowerman passed away before she was born, and we visit her grave every so often in southern California. I know I'll meet her one day, so the thought of not knowing her in this life doesn't distress me all that much.
Chris, my only brother, currently lives in Murray, UT, and is a computer whiz. Then comes Lindsay, who graduated from BYU-I a while ago in graphic design and lives close to my parents in Lehi, UT. (Or Highland? The city boundaries up there always confuse me.) Then comes Katie, who is currently stationed in California while her husband Joe does work with the Navy there. They have three kids so far: Claire, Caleb, and Evalyn. Two years after Katie was born, I came along, and three and a half years after that came Sarah, the last of us. She's currently serving a mission in Houston, Texas, and has about a year left before she comes back home. My mom (Lisa) and dad (Rich) are now retired, and living in a house they built in Alpine, just about half an hour north of where I'm at now.
We've had a few pets over the years, including a guinea pig named Nala (mostly under Katie's care), an assortment of saltwater fish (one of my dad's hobbies, and I helped take care of them for a number of years as well), and I have vague memories of a dog named Jake when I was pretty young. I believe he was an Akita... again, not many memories of him. The pet I do remember most was a black and white Shih Tzu we appropriately named Oreo Noel Bowerman - "Oreo" because of the coloring, and "Noel" because she was one of Santa's Christmas presents when I was 6 or 7 years old. We had her for a long time, and only from old age and some basic necessary functions not working in her later years did we have to put her down a while ago. She was just awesome, though, and loyal as any pet could be. One noticeable trait was that she was incredibly protective; regardless of the size of neighboring dogs (including a German Shepherd at one point), she would bark like crazy and make sure they knew where her territory was.

She loved opening presents as much as anyone else in the family. No lie, wrapping paper was her favorite!

Location, location, location... I remember starting out in southern California. Supposedly I was born in Santa Maria, CA, but because we moved away from there when I was still an infant I have no memories of it. I know we've driven by there as a family on vacations and what not, and even had our old house pointed out to me. Never rang any bells. Oh well.
The first place I really remember is Orange, California. I can even still remember our street address from back then – who knows if it's the same today, as this was well over a decade ago, but I digress. (Me sidetracking and getting slightly off-topic might happen a lot throughout these posts, if you haven't picked up on that yet.) We stayed there until I was about 9 years old. When we did move, the whole concept was new, strange, and unappealing to me. I mean, I had some awesome friends where I was at! The elementary school I went to was great! I was comfortable with everything around me, and the change that happened wasn't welcome. But, being as young as I was, I obviously didn't have any choice. We moved up to a city called Danville, kind of in the Bay Area of California. I even remember throwing a bit of a tantrum the first night that we spent in our new house there. It didn't yet feel like "home" to me. Eventually I learned how to make some new friends, like the school that I would go to, etc. It took some time, but soon Danville started to feel like home.
Of course we moved a little less than a year after that. See, every time that the family moved was directly related to my dad's job. Being in the positions he held during his time with one company (which ended up being bought by other companies, merging, dividing, splitting, doing what knows what – it's business, and I don't claim to fully understand it all) meant that they were very influential in saying where he was most needed. Which, considering the fact that he's now been able to retire, ended up working out very well for him. In the meantime, we ended up taking trips across the country a few times, not necessarily planting any permanent roots wherever we went but definitely sowing seeds.
So from Danville we moved up to a town called Bellingham, Washington. For those who have lived in western Washington, they've probably heard of it before; it's pretty dang close to the Pacific Ocean, and right on the path for those heading up to that part of Canada. We ended up staying for three years, again making a lot of friendships and enjoying our time there. It initially seemed like we might be staying there for a good while, as we had a house built big enough for our whole family instead of trying to find an already existing house to move into. (And that house was AWESOME, by the way. The driveway was its own sledding hill during winter!) But again, because of how my dad's job went, the time came for us to pack up and head out.
This time was a little different, though. We ended up moving back to Danville, less than a couple miles away from the house we lived in the first time we were there. His company thought it most convenient for what he was doing to be in the Bay Area again, and since we had enjoyed Danville so much the first time we were there it just worked out. I got to meet up with a bunch of my old friends from there and really develop some of the friendships I'd barely started by the time we left the first time. And make plenty of new ones, especially since I was just starting high school by the end of our second time there.

So, to recap, in my ages:
Birth - about 2: Santa Maria, CA
About 2 - 9: Orange, CA (it's called the City of Orange, located within Orange County)
9 - 10: Danville, CA
10 - 13: Bellingham, WA
13 - 14: Danville, CA

"But Marshall! That can't be everywhere you've lived! There's a HUGE gap between when you were 14 and now!"
Is that what you're thinking? I bet it is. I'm just pausing the story for now, and I'll continue the journey in my next post.



No new movies since last time; I'm working on watching the ones I own and still haven't seen. That, and there are a couple movies I'd like to see in theaters soon, including Ender's Game (coming out this week ohmygoshI'msoexcited!!!!) so I'm refraining from purchasing hard copies of movies for a bit so I can see them as they come out.
On a semi-related note, I've mentioned the X-Men movie franchise before, and a trailer came out recently for the next one in the series, Days of Future Past:

Already being a fan of the ones that have come before, this just looks amazing. I've always been fascinated with certain aspects of time travel (and I've had a couple in-depth discussions with my dad about it... let's just say be ready to have a good long conversation if you ever bring it up with him!), and from what I can read about the story here (minor spoiler alert) I can already tell that I'll enjoy this.