Our Ohana

At Nana Collins’ 95th Birthday, June 2010

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, and developed the concept of Managed WordPress Hosting. Page.ly was acquired by GoDaddy.com in 2023.  He and Sally are now retired and Josh spends time with his growing collection of cars and houses. He and his team, Los Pollos Diablos, finished the Baja 1000 in 2023. More people have summited Everest than have finished the race. Romantic note: Josh bought the Sal.ly domain as a gift for his wife. Josh and Sally have 2 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 and Hallepenyo – talented, titled and ribboned, agility, barn hunt and obedience champions. She also owns barkoutlouddecals.com and works for the United States Post Office. In past lives. Norah is a Veteran of 6 years in the National Guard, many years as a dog groomer and trainer and a graphic designer. She is now a certified mechanic, charged with keeping the postal sorting machines running.

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 is known as “the get shit done brother.” He frequently visits Salt Lake to see his son, Alex, daughter in law Kerah, and daughter Ashley, and to snowboard at the Snowbird Resort. He supplies tie-dyed shirts to the Resort and also to Camp High.  Jeremy has developed methods of mass producing tie-dyes while tieing and dyeing each garment individually. He supplies merchandise to bands and individual artists like Otiel Burbidge.

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. In other lives, she was a free-lance graphic designer and a graphic artist for the Imperial Palace and MGM casinos. She lives with her daughter, Holly and her mother. She is a talented designer and an enthusiastic and talented quilter.

Ben and SaraNova

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 the most talented tie-dye master in the country.  He lives, mostly, in the Bay area. His daughter, SaraNova, is jewelry designer and maker and is currently spending 6 months in New Zealand.

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 moved to 2687 Sammy Davis Jr Drive, which is behind the CircusCircus casino. This 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 joined their daughters in Las Vegas.

Sarah P (3 of 9) was born in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada in 1963, and is a s Senior Sales Representative for SunLife Insurance. In other lives, she is a graduate of UNLV. She has held various positions in Insurance sales and marketing for Ameritas, WellTrac, LifeSigns and Delta Dental in the Las Vegas market. She lives and works in Las Vegas and is the devoted mom of a bundle of doggy fur called “Bond, James Bond”.

Absent from this picture are:

Kim (2 of 9) was born in Bournemouth, England in 1962 and lived in Port Hope, Ontario before coming the the States with her mother in 1969. She is owner of OverallBeauty.com and develops and markets hypo-allergenic eye shadow powders. She lives in Sacramento, CA with her husband, Mike Snyder, an Air Force veteran, now retired from air traffic control for the San Francisco area. 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, Canada in 1976 and was 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 had two daughters, Samantha and Ciera – and the San Francisco Dye studio. He “crossed the Rainbow Bridge” on Sunday, March 9, 2025 in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, where he was staying with his step-brother, Brad Waghorn and wife, Cheryl. His sisters, Krystal and SarahP, scattered his ashes in his favorite fishing hole in Port Hope in the summer of 2025.

Clive Nicholas England (1 of 9)

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.  He was adopted by Mr and Mrs Norman England. 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-daughters Iris and Daphne, daughters of Alice and Mike Martin, and a bonus adopted 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 visited in Fall 2023. Krystal and SarahP plan another visit in Summer 2026.

The Collins Sisters

The Collins sisters, daughters of Thomas W R Collins and Norah Marie Pedersen Collins:

Sparrow Joe (christened Carol Ann), was born in 1947 in Christchurch, (then Hampshire) England and has lived in England, Spain, Puerto Rico and the United States. When living in Las Vegas, she worked for Greyhound Exposition Services at the Las Vegas Convention Center. She now lives in Texas, 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 Dr. Mauri Collins – 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 living and teaching in Saudi Arabia (Dec 2010 – June 2011). Mauri holds a BA and MA from UNLV and a Doctorate in Adult Education from the Penn State University. She became a pioneer in online education and is a published author and editor in the field. You can read her vita here.  After working as an instructional designer for over 20 years, she is now retired to Las Vegas and can finally make inroads on the piles of quilts awaiting her attention. Mauri is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and spends a lot of time on her genealogy and welcomes cousins! They are found in England, Scotland, Denmark, Canada, the United States, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. You can contact her at familyhistory@killymoon.net

Sarah Elizabeth, named for both her grandmothers, was born in 1959 in Boscombe, Bournemouth, then Hants, England.  She was raised in Puerto Rico (and speaks Spanish as her first language) and graduated from the American School in Brussels, Belgium. 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 and a member of the 18B Las Vegas Art District Association.

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!!

Nana Collins’ 90th with her children, grandchildren and great grand children.

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 SarahP, 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.

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

Our house on Killymoon Ave

Mauri has survived multiple insults to her health in the past several years including viral meningitis, which has left her partly deaf and with aphasia. She only had COVID once thanks to promptly getting vaccinated. but it took the rest of her hearing. 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 that Krys and Mauri share,  solar arrays all around, and a Tesla Model S in the garage and a early Model 3 driven by Krystal’s daughter, Holly parked in the driveway. They bought their Teslas before Elon Musk’s unfortunate descent in Trumpian madness!

This page was originally created in 2010, prior to my leaving for 6 months in Saudi Arabia, and has been updated most recently in January, 2025