Hi! My name is Angi Davis, and I hail from P-town--the one in the Midwest vs. Provincetown on the East Coast--Peoria, Illinois, to be exact. It's where I was born and grew up, as well as my mother, Gloria, who began her journey in the Warner Home Project after the Great Depression, followed by a small house in Creve Coeur, Illinois. My late father, Howard (Jack to his Northern Illinois friends...how it was derived from Howard, I'm not quite certain), was "raised up" in a little town in Southeastern Illinois--I believe he might have been born in Bone Gap, an even tinier farming community West of his hometown: Mt. Carmel, Illinois. Many members of dad's family are still there. Both of my siblings, Valerie and Joe, still live in the Peoria area; Valerie in Pekin with my nephew, Cody, and niece, Cali Jo, and Joe in East Peoria with mom.

Now, Bill (my hubby) was born in P-town (Peoria vs. Provincetown), but only spent the first 2-3 years of his life there before returning to the place where his late father, Alvin, grew up: Greenview, Illinois. Of course, Alvin wasn't born there; he started out in a little "po-dunk" place called Horse Cave, Kentucky, before his family migrated North. Bill's mother, Sharon, was born and raised in Springfield, Illinois (Grandview, to be exact), as well as her mom and siblings. Bill's older brother, Craig, lives in Chicago with his partner, Joel, when they aren't traveling to their retirement home in the Puna Palisades near Pahoa, Hawaii. Younger brother, Spencer, still resides in Greenview with his wife, Bonnie, as well as sons, Landon and Carson.

As many romantic tales go, Bill and I found ourselves in many of the same places at the same times throughout our twenties--concerts, sporting events, etc. However, our first face-to-face meeting was in June 1997 at LEXIS-NEXIS subsidiary, LDS, in Springfield, Illinois, when Bill arrived there as a programming consultant. After about 4-5 months, we decided to date exclusively, moving into our first place together and announcing our engagement in 1998. Our wedding was on October 2, 1999, shortly after relocating to the Twin Cities for my transfer to ISU.

So here we are...eight years, two kitties, a mortgage, two dogs, one son, and one daughter later! Life has been good to us thus far; we have a happy marriage (minus the occasional discussion about clutter or money--lol) and beautiful children. And in the infamous words of Ferris Bueller, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once and awhile, you could miss it." I heed that advice, as well as Oprah's, "Live in the moment." If I didn't, I could turn around tomorrow and be 'Mother of the Groom' and/or 'Mother of the Bride'!