The Burr Family Adoption Adventure
Welcome to the band
Meet Mercedes
How Reed describes Mercedes:
"Mercedes is a very playful & talented person. She is smart & creative, and can pick up new skills quite easily. She is easy-going and friendly, but fiercely loyal and will defend those she loves until the end. She is nurturing and cares for others deeply."
Life in Technicolor
Hi there! I'm Mercedes - I consider myself to be an artist, or at least a very creative person. I can't go more than a few days without making something new for our home, working on a new song, or drawing the world around me. I especially love music. My favorite band is The Killers, and after I saw them in concert, that show was my whole personality for about a month.
When I'm not creating, I love hiking and being outside, especially with Reed and our daughter. I have loved stargazing since I was a kid, and I even own my own telescope. Being a mom and wife are the most important roles to me in my life right now, but I also enjoy chatting with my parents and sisters, jamming out with my brother, and sun-soaked play-dates with my 'mom' friends and their kids. I love to be around other people and drinking in all of the amazing life stories they have to offer, and I thrive in vibrant social settings.
I am the oldest sibling out of 4, 2 sisters and a brother, but I was an only child for 8.5 years. After my mom escaped from a bad marriage to my biological father, it was just her and I for a while - first in Teton, Idaho, and then Logan, Utah. While my biological father's absence in my life was a sore spot in my heart, I had no shortage of amazing adults in my life - my mom, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and my mom's best friend Imelda made sure that I was well loved and taken care of.
When I was 5, my mom met David Francis, who she later married. The summer after I turned 8, he was able to adopt me, so adoption is particularly close to my heart. That same summer, my first sibling was born, and I was delighted to be a big sister. Each subsequent sibling filled my life with joy - I remember one of my sisters inviting me to her birthday party, and I dressed up as a dragon so her and the other little princes and princesses in attendance could pelt me with water balloons, and I loved every second of it. In spite of our age gaps, I love being around my siblings.
Being of a mixed racial background (White, Black, & Puerto Rican) in a family of blondes was challenging at times, but not because anyone in my family ever made it a challenge - I just stood out, and people noticed and were curious. My parents always handled it with grace, and my siblings would be the first to tell anyone that I was their sister. There was no half measures or mincing words, I was just their big sister. I appreciate the example of advocacy that my entire family set for me in my life.
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My grandparents own and operate "The Haunted Mill" in Teton, Idaho, which became a huge part of my life growing up. I loved acting in the haunt every year, and some of my best memories are of building props with my mom, helping my grandpa get ready for the season, and late nights laughing by the fire, swapping "best scare" stories after we finished for the night with my cousins and siblings.
My love for the theatrical trickled out into my high school activities too. I joined show choir, theater, ballroom dance, and chemistry and French clubs. It was also during this time that I picked up playing piano, guitar, and ukulele, and tried to keep my flute skills from getting too rusty.
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I was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but high school is where the rubber started to meet the road for me when it came to religion. I had friends that followed many other faith practices, and I loved learning about their beliefs and sharing mine. This grew into a life-long respect for the people of other religious denominations and creeds, and deepened my determination to follow Jesus Christ's example of loving others.
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Since my dad is a math teacher and my mom is a writer, education was always a heavy focus. Whenever I would complain about drama happening at school, my dad would ask "did you do your math?" which really just meant "if you focus on school, this won't matter so much anymore" and he was usually right. It was this love for learning that inspired me to go to college.
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Keeping with the Francis Family tradition, I attended Utah State University. It took me a couple years to settle on a major, bouncing around between everything from music therapy to French to pre-law before finally settling on Landscape Design. I also became a licensed cosmetologist. Both programs were amazing that let me use my creative skills, but the best part of my experience at college was all of the people I met. I loved driving the canyon during crisp Cache Valley summers, country swing dancing, and throwing massive parties. I was well known for my annual Halloween party and spooky themed game nights in particular - no surprises there, right? Many of my friends today are people I met in college, and of course, that's also where Reed and I met. Now that we are married and on this journey together, I look back at my life so far and am amazed at how lucky I am that everything lined up the way it did. I can clearly see the hand of God orchestrating the soundtrack of my life.
