Shannon Fuller Tales

After a few months dating James, he decided he was going to move on, he didn't want to waste time.  He tried to move on, but kept coming back.  In October that year he gave me an ultimatum.  Either I marry him, or he was gone.  I married him.  What???  I did it again, another mistake.  I should have just let him move on.   He moved in with us so I could continue to take care of grandpa.  The transition into married life did not go well.  James seemed to expect all the attention, all the time.  He knew that I had two 2 year olds and a grandpa that I was taking care of.  3 months into our marriage I got a text from him in the middle of the day saying that he and his friends would be at the house at 3 p.m. to get his things.  He was moving out.   Then a month later, James called and said I was the woman of his dreams and asked if we could try to make it work again, but only if we left grandpa's house.  Jam...

When we returned from Cancún, I moved with the girls into a small apartment in Clearfield.  I knew it was going to be a difficult road as a single mom, but I felt so much hope and an excitement for a new beginning and a second chance at happiness.   We were super poor, but we made it work.  David was paying $1,000 a month in child support and I was paying $750/month for the apartment which included utilities, cable and internet.  The other $250 went for diapers, food, gas, clothing, insurance, phone and everything else we needed.  I did have some savings from the equity in our home, but I needed to ration that out so that I could make it work until the girls were in first grade, then I would get a job.   I was anxious to start dating again.  I was hardly ever leaving the house, so I knew the only way I would meet anyone was online.  I created a profile and started getting to know people.  At first it was really fun to see all the me...

About a year and a half after we adopted the girls I started to realize that I didn't want Alyssa and Holly to grow up with a mom and dad who didn't love each other.  I wanted them to grow up in a home full of love.  I did some research about the effect of divorce on children.  I learned that divorce would have the smallest impact on kids that were too little to remember their parents together.  If I was going to go through with a divorce it was then, or I would have to wait 18 years.  I couldn't stay any longer.   Our divorce was amicable.  We wrote up the paperwork together and went to the court to file together.  We even went for ice cream together afterward.  We had two trips planned that we decided we would still take.  One was to Disneyland over Thanksgiving and the second was to Cancún a couple weeks later.  During our trip to Cancún our divorce decree was signed by the judge and we were officially divorced.   ...

My marriage to David wasn't all bad.  These are some of the highlights: David was doing really well at work and won an Alaskan Cruise.  We traveled the inside passage and got to see a glacier calve and watched orca whales breach.  We took a gorgeous hike to a beautiful lookout in Sitka and enjoyed watching the bald eagles.  It was a wonderful trip.   The view from our hike in Sitka The bank gave us matching coats. I was lucky to snap the photo just as one of the orca whales breached. We went to Lake Powell twice with my team mates and their spouses.  We played lots of games, ate tons of yummy food, laughed a lot and had the best time when we were all together.  We stayed on a house boat both times.   Hitting golf balls into the lake Fishing Water Skiing Sleeping on top of the house boat. Me falling off the cliff During our time together we got scuba certified.  Our dives were at the crater at the Homestead. We also had the opportuni...

After hoping and praying for years, I was finally the mommy of two beautiful, sweet baby girls.  The ward threw me a big baby shower and I got lots of darling outfits.   Those first several months were exhausting.  It took me about 8 weeks to get Alyssa sleeping through the night and then I started over with Holly.  Luckily, I was eventually able to get them both on the same sleep schedule.  With two little ones, I felt like my life revolved around feedings, naps and just holding my babies.  During the first nap I would try to exercise and clean, during the second nap I would try to shower.  David was working in Salt Lake, so he was often gone before the girls woke up and home after they were already in bed at night.  I felt like a single mom sometimes and some days it was really hard.   But I loved my girls and felt so lucky to have them.  We went on walks almost every day.  I had a double stroller and would walk about 3 ...

We decided to go through LDS Family Services for our adoption.  In order to get on the list, we were required to take some classes and do a home study which took several months.  Then we created an online profile so expectant mothers could look through and choose a family.  We were told that it could take a year to several years to get picked.   Some of our adoption profile pictures Around the time our online profile went live, a Bishop in our stake, who knew we w ere hoping to adopt gave us the name of a girl who was planning to place her baby for adoption.  We called and scheduled a time to meet with Katie and her boyfriend, Luke.  We had a great visit and they told us that they would love for us to parent their child.  We were so excited!  It was November, and she wasn't due until April so we knew there was a lot of time for her to change her mind.  We decided to leave our profile online with LDS Family Services just in case the adopt...

As mentioned before, things were never great in our marriage.  I had promised to give our marriage a try for a year.  At a year I still felt that we should get a divorce, but David didn't feel that our relationship was bad enough to justify divorce.  I really struggled to keep my heart in the marriage.  I constantly wondered if there was someone else that I had dated that I was meant to be with.  Or someone who was waiting for me.  My heart was never fully committed to the relationship.   I went through a period of time when I prayed and fasted to love David more.  I would write positive things about him in my journal every day.  He was my best friend, but I just never felt settled in my marriage, I never felt at peace.  At one point I went to some counseling to see if I could work through my issues with our marriage, but it didn't help.  The counselor asked me one time, "when you get to heaven, will you choose to stay married ...

When I was growing up, I had my life planned out.  I was going to graduate from high school, go on a mission, graduate from college, get married and have a family.  Everything was going as planned, except for the last part.  Infertility took me by surprise.  After not getting pregnant for 4 years we decided it was time to consult a fertility specialist.  We started out with lots of tests which showed that there was no reason why I couldn't get pregnant.  David's sperm motility was low, but not so low that we wouldn't be able to get pregnant.  We decided to try some treatments.  During the first year we did 3 rounds of intrauterine insemination without success.   At that point I was getting kind of bored at home, so I went back to work.  I took a contract position selling Allegra with the same team I worked with previously.  The contract was just for a year and I was hoping I would be able to get pregnant through invitro fertili...

When I returned home from Costa Rica, I started interviewing for real jobs.  I had met some pharmaceutical sales reps while working for my dad who wanted me to work with them, so I applied.  The pharma industry was in high demand at the time, but somehow, without any real sales experience and before I was officially graduated from college, I landed a job.  For training I flew to Kansas City, MO for 2 weeks.  When I got back I did some in field training and then started working in my territory.  My base salary was 36k plus bonus, I was given 4 weeks of vacation plus 4 flex days, good health insurance, a 401k and a company car.  I thought I had hit the jackpot.   This was my training group.  I'm center, blue shirt The goal of my job was to convince doctors that my drugs were superior to others in the same classification so that they would prescribe my drugs for their patients.  I was selling Allegra and Amaryl in the beginning and was very...