Our Ohana

And who is everyone?

Starting at the back left, in the green shirt, is Steve Strebel, father of five of the people in the picture – he was my husband – twice – 1969-1981 and 2014-2016! He is always invited to special family gatherings. He is now retired and lives in Salt Lake and is a talented artist and model maker.  You can see videos of his model train layout on YouTube in the Toy Man Television channel.

I am standing between Steve and our daughter, Norah

Joshua (9 of 9), the tall guy in the white shirt at the back,  was born in Soda Springs, ID in 1978 and is married to Sally and lives in Tucson, AZ.  For 20 years, he was the owner and CEO of Page.ly – the host of this site, which was acquired by GoDaddy,com.  He and Sally are now retired. Romantic note: Josh bought the Sal.ly domain as a gift for his wife. Josh and Sally had sons, Ethan, in 2012 and Evan, in  2013.

Norah (8 of 9), the redhead in the yellow dress, was born in Soda Springs, ID in 1976 (my bicentennial baby). She lives in Salt Lake City with her father and is the devoted doggy mom of  Cider – a talented, titled and ribboned, agility, barn hunt and obedience champion. She also owns barkoutlouddecals.com and works for the United States Post Office.

Jeremy (Jay – 5 of 9) was born at Fort Sill, OK in 1971, and is a Chief Operating Officer and Head DyeMaster at Jammin on Vegas  and manages the Jammin production facility in Las Vegas, NV.  He frequently visits Salt Lake to see his son, Alex, and daughter Ashley, and to snowboard at Snowbird.

Krystal (6 of 9) was born in Cedar City, UT in 1973 and is the Senior Solar Consultant for RobCo’s Solar Division in Las Vegas. She lives with her daughter, Holly and mother. She is a talented designer and an enthusiastic and talented quilter.

In the front row:

Benjamin (7 of 9) was born in Cedar City, UT in 1974 and is DyeMaster and Creative Director at JamminOn.com  and tuxedelix.com and the most talented tie-dye master in the country.  He lives, mostly, in Las Vegas. His daughter, SaraNova, is jewelry designer and maker.

In June, 2012, BenJamin and Jeremy and other members  of the Jammin Ohana opened Jammin on Haight at 1400 Haight Street in San Francisco – can you think of a better address from which to sell our tie-dyes? Over five years, thanks to the combined efforts of the Jammin Ohana, this turned into a multi-million dollar business that has revitalized a whole neighborhood!  The store changed hands in January, 2017 and the brothers opened a store on Main Street in the Arts District in Las Vegas. They outgrew that space and now are at 2687 Sammy Davis Jr Drive, which is behind the CircusCircus casino. This has allowed them to bring the Jammin store, dye studio, fabric printers and cut-and-sew under one roof with lots of room for impromptu music events. You can see their work on Otiel Burbidge and Billy Kreutzmann of Dead and Company, Papa Mali, and George Porter, Jr. 

Norah Marie Collins (1915 – 2013) was and is mother and grandmother and great-grandmother of the clan.  She was born in England and raised in South Africa, and lived with her daughter SarahE in Las Vegas. She and her late husband, Thomas William Robert Collins (1919 – 2001) met and they married in East London, South Africa. After living 14 years in England (1948-1962), they moved to Spain and then on to Puerto Rico, Belgium, and the United States, as he moved with his job in international construction.  They moved to the United States on his retirement and eventually to Las Vegas.

Sarah P (3 of 9) was born in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada in 1963, and is marketing director for Ameritas and lives and works in Las Vegas and is the devoted mom of a bundle of fur called “Bond. James Bond”.

Absent from this picture are:

Kim (2 of 9) was born in Bournemouth, England in 1962 and is owner of OverallBeauty.com, She lives in Sacramento, CA with her husband, Mike. They have two sons, Derek and Sean, one born in Las Vegas, the other in Germany.  Sean, and his wife Amanda have one son, Artemis, born in January, 2015.

Paul Simon Thomas Waghorn (4 of 9). was born in Port Hope, Ontario in 1976 and is another of the talented DyeMasters at Jamminon.com. For many years he split his time between his home in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada – where he has two daughters, Samantha and Ciera – and the San Francisco Dye studio. He now lives and works in Las Vegas.

Douglas David Collins (1 of 9), born at 11 St. Alban’s Avenue in Bournemouth, England on June 24, 1960 was adopted out when he was 2 months old – I was 16 years old and unmarried.  His father is David Robert Stuart, now deceased.  In August 2017, at the urging of his wife, Jenny,  and daughter Alice, he sat down to find his birth mother. He typed his birth name, date and place into Google, and, before his coffee cooled, he had found this page and that he had four brothers and four sisters, a sprawling family and a designation (1 of 9). Read his side of the story here. Clive Nicholas England brings his wife, Jenny, and grand-daughter Iris, daughter of Alice and Mike Martin, and a bonus sister and brother in law, to the family. He and Alice have visited the family in Las Vegas twice, and Krystal went to England for Alice’s wedding. Krys and Sarah visited in January, 2023; Josh met Clive when he was in Portugal for a conference in 2022, and Norah is planning a visit in Fall 2023.

The Collins sisters:

Sparrow Joe (christened Carol Ann), was born 1947 in Christchurch, (then Hampshire) England. She now lives in Texas with her husband and close to her daughter, Nichole and grand-daughter, Ivy.  She has three grandchildren: Ivy, Marilyn, and Duran, and became a great-grandmother when Elliott, daughter of Ivy and Kody Kittrell was born.

Marie Patricia – also known as Mauri – was born in 1944 in Cape Town, South Africa, was raised in Bournemouth, England, lived six years in Canada and has lived in eight US states.  She also spent 6 months teaching in Saudi Arabia (Dec 2010 – June 2011). She is now retired to Las Vegas and can finally make inroads on the piles of quilts awaiting her attention. Mauri also spends a lot of time on her genealogy and welcomes cousins!

Sarah Elizabeth, named for both her grandmothers, was born 1959 in Boscombe, Bournemouth, then Hants, England.  She lives in Las Vegas with her husband, Luis and son, Tommy. She is the managing partner at Main Street Peddlers Antique Mall at 1400 S. Main Street in Las Vegas.

Now here’s a bigger picture – taken at Nana Collins’ 90th birthday in 2005.  Eight of my children are in this picture, plus my sisters and their children and grandchildren, but this picture didn’t include wives, husbands nor all the cousins!!

Nichole, Samia, Norah, Krystal, SarahP, Steve Strebel, Josh

Ivy, Kim, Mauri, Holly, Norah Collins, Sparrow, Marilyn, SarahE, Tommy

Jay , Ben, Paul

Ashley, Alex

(Holly, of course, is now taller than both her mother and I!!)

August 29, 2014

On what would have been our 45th Wedding Anniversary (Friday evening of a Labor Day weekend) – had we not been divorced for 33 years – Steve Strebel and I were remarried in the presence of children and grandchildren. In the picture below are my daughter Sarah P, our children Jeremy, BenJammin, Krystal and Norah; Jammin’s daughter Sara Nova and Krystal’s daughter, Holly.  Son Joshua, daughter-in-law Sally and grandchildren Ethan and Evan attended the ceremony from Tuscon via  iPhone FaceTime.

We were divorced again, by mutual agreement, in May 2016.

 

Mauri has survived multiple insults to her health in the past several years including viral meningitis, which has left her partially deaf and with aphasia, but she entirely missed COVID 19, thanks to promptly getting vaccinated. Krystal and Mauri now live in a 2600 sq. ft. house in the Lone Mountain area of Las Vegas, NV. It has a 480 square foot Sewing Studio, solar arrays all around, and a Tesla Model S in the garage.