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I've posted a couple of things so make sure you scroll down! :)

New Look & Garden

When I was a teenager I used to dye my hair (usually brown) and end up with all different colors (green, orange, pink...).

I haven't done anything crazy like that for a while, but now that I'm older, my hair is turning an ugly dirty dishwater color. So I thought I'd do something crazy and fun. I have gained wisdom through the years so at least I won't have purple hair (or pink, or green...)!

I decided to go dark! I dyed my hair brown, got a haircut and put some highlights in it!

Here is the back!

Anyway, it's kind of fun to do somthing different!

This is a totally different subject... Right now is the time to plant gardens in Arizona. I am not a green thumb and usually kill everything I try to grow-- but I'm determined. I decided to start slow and just have a little plot. If that works out well, I'll expand.

I figured if I planted all healthy transplants, they will have a better chance to live (instead of seed planting). So I have a border of marigolds and pansies (I heard marigolds keep the insects away. I don't know if that is true or not, but I thought I'd give it a shot).

On the inside I have 3 tomato plants (they're the early bird variety so hopefully they will bear fruit before it gets too hot), a green, red and yellow pepper plant and 2 strawberry plants (one already had flowers on it. I hope that's a good start).

So... it's been a week and they are still thriving. I have to remind myself to water them-- but yesterday it rained a lot, which is good because I hadn't watered them for a couple of days.

Anyway, hopefully it will be a great thing and soon I'll have some yummy fruit and veggies from my own garden! :)

2010 Olympics

I changed my background and playlist in honor of the 2010 Winter Olympics!

I love the Olympics!!

The Summer ones are fun, but my favorite are the Winter Olympics!!

I love the underdog stories and the amazing moments! My favorite sport of course is Ice Skating. I've never been into Ice Dancing, but this year at the US Nationals, I watched the Ice Dancing and really enjoyed it!

Anyway, I have enjoyed all of the events, but my favorite things so far have been Ice Skating, Speed Skating and the Womens and Mens Moguls! I loved seeing the Canadian, Alexandre, win!! I really liked the stories they told of his older brother who had Cerebral Palsy. It's fun to see the families cheer on their athletes!!

Apollo Ohno made history and it was fun to watch JR Celski win the bronze in speed skating after his horrible accident. He had a great story too. And his older brother was back from Iraq (in between deployments) watching him compete for the first time. He was so excited!

And of course my absolute favorite was watching Evan Lysecek win the Gold in Figure Skating! WooHoo!! I was on the edge of my seat, biting my nails watching the scores come in! What a great thing!

Anyway, after next Sunday life can get back to normal! But until then...

GO TEAM USA!!!

Happy Birthday Hanna!

Hanna's birthday was this past week. She has waited for this birthday for a long time. She's kept on saying, "When I'm twelve..." or "Only 2 more years until I'm twelve...". So now the big day has come and Hanna is very excited to be grown up!!


In our church 12 is a very big birthday. You graduate from Primary (the class for children) into Young Women (the class for youth 12-18). She has been so excited to enter Young Women.

She got her Faith in God award (a program for the children to develop faith, talents and service). She's the first one in our ward to recieve it and we were very proud of her hard work.

Hanna loves the temple. She loves the peaceful feeling there and has waited several years to go inside. When you turn twelve, you can go into the temple and do baptisms for the dead. Hanna already has her recommend and is so excited to go!

This is the Salt Lake Temple. It's Hanna's favorite because it looks like a castle!

Another thing that happened this week is that Hanna started her period (I'm telling you this with permission from Hanna). She's a lot different than me-- I was embarrased, but she is very excited to start this stage of her life. As for me, I'm starting to feel "old". It doesn't seem that long ago that I was at this stage-- Hence the songs on my playlist reflet growing up. Because my little girl is growing up!

Hanna loves flowers! When she woke up in the morning of her birthday, she found a vase of fresh tulips.

She has been waiting to open her present from Grandma & Grandpa Wheeler for over a month (It's been sitting up on my book shelf).

She got a fairy watercolor art kit. She really liked it! She also got a lot of other presents, I just didn't take pictures of them. She got movies, books, a puzzle and craft projects.

She had an eclectic birthday dinner: crab, shrimp, lasagna, corn on the cob and watermelon

Part of having Autism, is that they will fixate on things. Hanna's fixations change. For a couple of months she'll have to get the mail every day and she'll write several (4 or so) letters to her relatives a week. That will stop and another fixation will start. Her fixations though almost always involve movies. She has to watch a movie every day or she gets upset. She'll watch the movie, print pictures from the movie off the internet, listen to the soundtrack and songs from the movie and paint the characters from the movie.

Her latest fixation-- The Incredible Hulk. So she wanted an Incredible Hulk cake. We found an edible picture to stick on the cake. She was very excited about that.

The cake

Lighting the candles

I was trying to get her blowing out the candles, but the flash kept delaying.

Cutting the cake

This is the piece Hanna cut for herself! One of The Hulk's face!

Hanna is a great artist and amazes everyone! It's her favorite activity! Here are some of her latest projects.

Hanna hard at work.

Snow White and Cinderella

I think this is Gingersnap from Strawberry Shortcake

And of course-- The Hulk. Which is hanging in her bedroom!

Now she's working on a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, but it's not done yet.

We are very happy that Hanna is in our family! She is a happy, delightful girl who loves the world around her. She is very gracious and loves to help others. She struggles with Epilepsy and Autism. She struggles with the side effects of medication and the social aspects of Autism, but is learning patience while still having a zest for life. She is growing spiritually and developing faith! It's really fun to watch. We love Hanna!!

Fun Facts:

Favorite Color: Red
Favorite Movie: The Incredible Hulk (for now)
Favorite Book: The Deltora Quest Series
Favorite Food: Seafood
Favorite Song: Disney Music
Favorite Activity: Painting
Other Fun Activities: Go to the Zoo, Gardening, Crafts, Travel, Sports, Puzzles
Favorite Scripture Story: The Birth of Jesus
When She Grows Up: She wants to be an Explorer and to Study Animals, collecting them for the zoo.
Other Talents: Art, writing in cursive, she's really good with animals (we call her our bee charmer), she has a kind heart, she really tries to make good choices and choose the right, she's very helpful, putting her testimony into words, and writing.

Happy Birthday Alyssa!

Arizona for almost 7 years! She was about 6 months old when we moved down here! That is the longest we have been in any one state!

Having a big family, I really try to make my kids feel special on their Birthday. It's not about spending a lot of money, but just giving them extra attention and really focusing on them that day. They don't have to do chores, they get to choose their birthday dinner and cake. We try to do special things and let them know we love them. The kids are great too because all day long they are nicer and really try to make the day special for their sibling. Little Lauren sang "Happy Birthday" to Alyssa many times throughout the day!

For Alyssa, I wanted to do something fun-- just the two of us! So we went to Cold Stone Creamery and I took her to see Princess and the Frog. The other girls were so jealous! And although I don't encourage jealousy-- it did make Alyssa feel extra special, knowing that they really wanted to go too.

Alyssa got chocolate ice cream with sprinkles.

While we ate our ice cream, we watched the fountain at the mall. Sometimes they do a fountain show to music. It's fun to watch.

Here we are together. It's like pulling teeth to get Alyssa to look at the camera!

We had a great time at the movie.

For dinner, Alyssa wanted Ramen Noodles. So we made a chicken soup out of it.

Alyssa wanted a store bought cake, which was fine with me because after having 4 birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Years, within 2 months-- I needed a break!

The only thing Alyssa cared about on her cake was that it had roses on it! I found this one for a great price and it was so pretty and yummy! The frosting was whip cream-- not the super sweet kind that gives me the shivers.

Instead of regular balloons- we got the big punching balloons for everyone.

I didn't realize they would start using them against each other!

Hanna found some interesting uses for them too!

Alyssa with her stash!

Dad was making Alyssa laugh! I love to hear her laugh-- it lights up the room.

She got a pretty pony playhouse from Grandma & Grandpa Smith (plus some cash- yeah)

All she asked for was a snowglobe! This one has Snow White in the middle with the 7 dwarfs around the bottom. She really liked it.

Grandma & Grandpa Wheeler gave her a Webkinz. She loved it and couldn't wait to get on the computer! She was in a silly mood when we took this picture.

We got candy necklaces for everyone to wear.

Blowing out the candles!

Fun Facts:

Alyssa is very easy going and content. She just goes with the flow. I tried to figure out her favorites, but she just likes everything-- here is what I could get.

Favorite Color: Purple (that was a definite)

Favorite Food: Ice Cream

Favorite Song: She likes whatever, but she really wanted Eternal Flame from the Bangles on her playlist

Favorite Movie: She watches whatever, but really enjoys animated movies

Favorite Book: She has just started getting into books. She doesn't have a favorite, but will stay up after bedtime with a pile of books.

Favorite Activity: Playing- Alyssa is so playful. She loves to tease and play with others. She's a great friend and gets along with others so well, no matter what their age. She is also a peacemaker.

Favorite Thing About School: PE- she's really good at sports

Nicknames: Sunshine girl, Poopy lou, Lyssa lou

Other Facts: Alyssa is a very special girl. I call her my sunshine girl because she is so happy. Her laugh lights up my world and I love when I get hugs from her. Like I said, she's a peacemaker and a great friend. She gets along with even the difficult personalities. She still sleeps with her purple blanket I made when she was born and when she cries, it breaks my heart.

We love Alyssa!

She truly makes our family brighter-- I don't know what we would do without her!!

A Glimpse into Kamary's mind.

This is just an example of Kamary's (9 yrs. old) train of thought. She is a very bright and creative girl. She thinks "outside" the box, which sometimes gets her in trouble at school (when she doesn't want to do her work), but it's really a gift.

Background: Hanna lost a black folder with a bunch of art she had done. This loss devistated her and she prayed to find it, but didn't. She was very discouraged and felt that maybe God didn't hear her prayers. I encouraged her to keep praying and that sometimes the answers are not when we want them or even what we want them to be. That was about 2 months ago.

Kamary and some girls in her class are getting together and making crafts & lemonade to sell for charity to help the people in Haiti. She was getting into a drawer full of notebooks to write down all the things she needs and there, sitting in the drawer-- Hanna's black notebook!!

Hanna was sooooo excited to have her notebook back. And we talked about how God did answer her prayers, but tried her faith first.

I was talking to Kamary, telling her that she had helped God answer Hanna's prayer and she said- "So that's why God let the bad things happen in Haiti!"

What?

"God let the earthquake come to Haiti, which made Kaitlyn M. and the girls in my class want to do a charity, and then they invited me and then I decided to join them, which made me look into my drawer and find Hanna's notebook and answer her prayer!"

Wow- that's quite a chain of events. Then she continued "So now I get it! That's why bad things happen. There might be cracks in the road and hard things, but it leads to a good road. So it's better to go down the road than not try at all."

What an amazing train of thought!

Both Kamary and Hanna wrote about their experiences in their journals tonight!!

Utah

After Christmas we went up to Utah to visit family.

Jason's sister Lynette and her family just moved to Utah from Georgia. We are very excited that now it only takes 1 day travel to visit instead of 4!!

Lynette's 2 oldest girls, Cathryn & Rachel with a lap full of kiddos!

Rachel & Brynlie. This is Brynlie's relaxing stance- she does it all the time!

Lynette & Brynlie

Brynlie is such a tease. She hold out her arm toward you as if she's going to be nice and then scratches. She likes the reaction. Here, Lynette is catching her "in the act".

For New Years Eve, we played games and had some rounds of arm wrestling.

Rachel & Cathryn watched the kids while the adults went out for dinner! It was so fun to be together!

Kohler and his cousin Curtis had so much fun together. They didn't fight at all and just played all day long! Both boys enjoyed doing "boy things", since they both only have sisters!!

Kamary and her cousin Marianne had a great time too~ connected at the hip!

While we were up in Logan, we took Hanna and Alyssa ice skating at Merlin Olsen Park. When I was a kid, I would always go ice skating there. It was strange but fun to take my kids there. I felt a little old. I love ice skating though and we haven't been in so long!

Trying to stay up.

Getting the hang of it.

Dad & Alyssa.

Fun times!

I'm doing it!

Hanna had a great time!

Alyssa fell a lot!

After skating we went back and took all the kids sledding!

Lauren going down the hill.

Woo Hoo!

I even went down the hill!

At the top of the hill.

Dad and Brynlie ready to go down the hill.

My kids love to dress up! My dad decided to get out some of the costumes and international clothing that they had. The kids had a fashion show and had a great time "dressing up".

Alyssa wore this outfit all day!

African Princess

Silly Kids!

My mom collects piano music boxes. Much to Jason's dismay, the kids loved this one and kept playing it over and over!

My parents have a balcony and Kamary got the idea to tie a basket to some rope and create a delivery service.

Brynlie getting a surprise.

It was FREEZING in Utah!

Whenever we go up to Logan, Kamary likes to stay in the upstairs guest room.

Playing Checkers with Grandma.

Thanks to Mom & Dad Smith we were able to take two days to travel home and went by Arches National Park.

Here we are at Balanced Rock. It surprised me how cold it was there. I had thought being a desert that it would be warmer.

This is the Delicate Arch viewpoint.

There was a beautiful sunset.

Double arch.

I had just read a book called "The Undaunted" about the Mormon Hole-in-the-rock pioneers. We stopped in Bluff, where they had finally settled. It was fun to see some of the countryside that I had read about.

We traveled through the reservation and stopped in Monument Valley.

We finally got home and the kids were excited to see all their Christmas presents waiting to play with. It was good to be home, but we really enjoyed seeing family.