Jake DaBell

It’s great to hear that everyone is doing so well. Here’s my last 10 years in a nutshell. After high school, I went to Ricks for a year. I spent the next two years on a mission in the Ural Mountain region of Russia. While I was gone my parents moved to Bozeman, Montana, so I came “home” to Montana after my mission.

I decided to head down to BYU to continue school and ended up living with Shad Kidd and Steve Hunt for a year in the tiniest, most inadequately furnished basement apartment you’ve ever seen. I started majoring in Chemical Engineering, but after a couple of semesters I decided that wasn’t for me. A friend of mine suggested that I look into dentistry, and I’ve been pursuing a dental career ever since.

The summer after my first year at the Y, while visiting friends in Rexburg, I met my future wife, Abby Johnson. Abby is a Skyline grad from Idaho Falls. She graduated from BYU-I with a degree in Nursing. We were married in December 2002.

I finished up at BYU in 2004 and shortly after graduation Abby and I were blessed with a baby boy. We named him Connor. That summer we moved out to North Carolina, and I started dental school in Chapel Hill. We loved North Carolina and had an amazing four years there. Our little girl, Brielle (“Ellie”), was born in 2006. I graduated from dental school this last May.

During dental school I realized that I really enjoy orthodontics, so I applied to several orthodontic residency programs and was accepted at the University of Washington in Seattle. My residency actually just started and unfortunately I can’t get time off to come down to the reunion. I’ve been looking forward to this reunion for a long time and I’m pretty bummed that I won’t be able to make it. Abby and I are hoping to end up in Idaho Falls when we finish in Seattle, and it sounds like there are a lot of us still in the area, so hopefully we can get together before another 10 years goes by. We should keep this blog thing going. It’s fun to hear what people are up to.

If anyone wants more details or to see some really cute pictures of my kids, go to jakeandabby.blogspot.com.