February's FUN!

Now I remember why I haven't posted my spring pics yet.....because I have A.D.D. and when I put in the disks and immediately remember why I never posted Feb thru April. My camera had frozen, pics were lost :( and when I got the pics off the camera they were NOT in the order in which I took them. When I pulled up the 300 + pictures of 20 + different activities (slight exaggeration) they were all jumbled up and out of order. For someone with A.D.D. to have to sort through them, it is WAY overwhelming. Today I tried my hardest to keep my composure and work on some of the old pics. Here is the first stage, February. Slowly but surely I will have all the pics back in chronological order and posted on the blog so I can print my 2009 blog book without missing any of the months of the year. That's priceless...right? I can do it...anyone have some Adderall XR laying around?

Here is some pictures of Hunter's 14th birthday party. It was a little bitter sweet for me. I knew they were seriously considering moving back to AZ at the time so all I could think about was how much I was going to miss this family, and how many of Hunter's birthdays I would start missing again. I LOVE this kid!
For those of you who don't already know Hunter, he has autism. For those of you who don't know me....I have a special connection with cognitively challenged (what I like to call it) kids since I was little. I have worked with many of them in many different aspects of life. It is soooo rewarding and I miss not being able to be as involved as I was in the past. Anyway, Hunter holds a special place in my heart and I miss him. I talk to him every once in awhile on his cell phone. He just learned to text - THAT has been lots of fun!!

He chooses a "surprise" party every year - look how excited he is!!

Here he is eating some of his favorites...chicken strips, and Freschetta cheese pizza! He only eats about 10 different things.

He was just dying for some hula hoops this year. Here he is doing some tricks....TrIcKy!!

Two more of his "staples" cheese Dorritos and "red" Skittles

Valentines Day in AZ

We took a very spontaneous Trip to Arizona this year. We haven't been in years so it was a much needed trip. We miss AZ so much. We only wish we could've stayed longer so we could have a chance to see all our friends we left behind. Alas, it was just a quick visit for just a couple of days so the cousins could have a chance to see each other. Next time - and we hope it is sooner than two years - we can visit everyone!

The kids were soooo excited to head out on a road trip. We hadn't done a 12 hour drive in a long time! Actually, when we first broke the news to the kids that we were leaving the next day, Josh cried. He didn't want to mess up his perfect attendance record at school! Yeah, I didn't expect that from Josh either :) We gave him the choice to stay at grandma's because he was so devasted, but in the end he told me that he would have plenty of other years to get perfect attendance. Ha ha ha!

I looked back to check on the kids a couple hours in and this is what I saw...no shirt again. This was when he was going through the "no clothes" phase. It was February and COLD outside - he couldn't possibly have been sweating - just getting ready for the AZ sun I guess!

I am so sad that I lost most of my pics from this trip. Why does that always happen when the pictures you had taken mean so much? Here are just a couple.

Josh literally played basketball CONSTANTLY! Basketball is his first love and the Stones had just put in their new sport court just weeks before...he was in HEAVEN!

The weather was nice. I was hoping for sunny rays - a good change from winter weather here in UT. But unfortunately, AZ was experiencing a cold front so the weather was actually quite cool, we wore jackets while we were there....bummmmmer!!!! It did make for nice hiking weather so one of the days we hiked Thunderbird mountain. That was lots of fun and something we hadn't done before. We also got to take a peek at Cardinal stadium. When we moved it wasn't finished being built yet so it was fun to see the finished product! Too bad we couldn't take in a Cards game!

This is Josh, playing late into the night, he couldn't get enough. Jantz and Brady joined in on the fun. The big kids had to wear their jerseys, but Jantz was just fine being "skins"!

One day we saw a coyote in the wash so later that night the kids stood on the deck and made coyote sounds to try and get them to come out of the bushes. The neighbor dogs were going crazy barking, and I am sure the neighbors themselves were not thrilled with all the noise.

We couldn't get a suntan because it was too cool, but we did get to eat outside!
This pic is blurry but unfortunately it was one of the only pics I have been able to recover so I had to post it.

We had such a good time. Usually these cute cousins only see each other once a year but they just pick up like no time has been lasped in between visits and just immediately start running around finding things to do together. I love it!
Thanks for having us on such late notice Stones! Let's do it again!