Tucson ROCKS

Crazy busy Month here- it zoomed past! 
Since most of this is what we call "NORMAL"   we forget to share.
1. Brooke was deployed to South Sticky Hot Hell... I mean Rio Grande City (snicker) TEXAS for the past month. He left march 30 and will return the 30th of April.It's no fun for him being gone a month, but He's keeping our country safe from cartel, drug smugglers, human traffickers and weapons dealers.  Juggling all the kids stuff, family life and a business alone has been a challenge. Thankfully Gloria was able to come help  with our crazy life for a week.

2. Taryn is Pima County Outstanding Teen. she competes for the state title in June. She is helping raise money for Childrens Miracle Network as part of it- if you wan to donate, visit her FB page for the link

3. Haedyn fell off his bike on March 30.  Normally we ice & teat and he's all better by morning. Unfortunately, along with his hemophilia he has developed an Inhibitor. This means his body attacks and rejects the medication (recombinate) we give him intravenously that is supposed to replace clotting factor. Because he "kills it off" the majority of what he get, he has to have HUGE doses. Also since this is recent- we are just figuring out with each new injury what treatment will work best for him. Its a huge guessing game.  This time his body just wouldn't heal. On day 5 he got xrays because he couldn't bear any weight, on day 8 he was in a wheelchair, day 17 he had MRI on day 20 he had made progress and was in a leg stabilizer and now he's back to running around. It took 15 days of IV treatment- Sunshine managed to stick a vein 90% of the time, the first time. even when we started running out of veins.

4. Ffiona Joined Turkish club at school. She's learning turkish this semester, but is super excited about the Club field trip with all her friends to Las Vegas next weekend. They are competing at the International Turkish Cultural dance and Language Festival.  She practices 2 days a week after school and then has a friday night sleepover/practice at the Turkish Cultural center. Not only did she pick up the dancing fast, she's now got the only solo in their competition piece. 

 5 . Taryn is a member of the Ceili team that competed at the 2014 World Championship LONDON. Taryn and Sunshine went to London for a week for the competition. The team didn't place, but held their own and looked fantastic on that prestigious stage.

Worlds team and teachers

Harry Potter moment at King Cross Platform 9 3/4

6. Taegan had a bit of a struggle this month since having Dad gone all month to TX, Mom gone to London, Grandma coming to help out and Haedyn home all day for 2 weeks really threw off her schedule. With her ADHD and  other issues, she has a hard time when things are different. Hopefully her new routine, therapies and different meds will help her be able to get along better. She is very excited to be as tall as grandma now

7. Hyun is getting all geared up to Graduate this year - YAY class of 2014!!! He's still waiting to hear back from schools and still trying to decide the best course of action to implement his plan for world domination- we will keep you posted..... or maybe he will just surprise you- mwahahahahaha!!!

8. I got younger in London. apparently world  travel makes you younger. ;)  Business has continued to pick up, to the point that I need to start hiring staff.  Hopefully May will calm down a little???- NAHHHHH- I seriously doubt it.

Fruit of Braydens labor

Holly was nice enough to send Brayden some activities to do while sidelined due to his injury.  Here are some examples of the things he made out of duct tape and paper origami to sell at school for business day for Monopoly money to spend on treats at the school.

Happy Birthday to Me!

This year, my birthday is on a Sunday. So, I made evil sugar cupcakes to take to church with me.    I made 47 of them.

 ( it's a small fellowship). 

The chocolate frosting includes brewed coffee and the last of the Christmas Walnut Oil. Yummy. The flowers are made from paper baking cups. 

Caught

She/he finally took the bait on mom's birthday. Yippee.

Hamilton Happenings

Here is our rock-chuck who is living in our crawl space.  He is standing next to the hole he dug out of the crawlspace to the front yard.  We have a trapper trying to trap the little bugger.

I just made these thank you's for all those who donated items and money for our Seuss-ival carnival at Dylan's school.  We raised over $12,000 which we will use to purchase an ipad cart for the classrooms. I spent many  hours making the truffula trees (from the Lorax), but they were sure worth it.


 Better late than never is my motto, here are a few photos from Dylan's birthday party.

As you can see Dylan loved the Lego set we gave him for his birthday.

Dylan's friends loved doing silly face pictures for me....imagine that.

The kids loved making aliens out of gumdrops.  I made the eyes by dipping cheerios in white chocolate and stuffing them with mini chocolate chips, yum!

GREEN VALLEY UPDATE

 Blossoms cover my patio bush as we continue to enjoy  lovely 75-80 spring weather.  Getting about 2 miles per day as some of you know via phone calls
and helping me with my BBC.  Making good progress on my donation projects for three great charities who really appreciate them.  

My neighborhood friends went out for lunch at La Patio (Mexican restaurant) that has good chicken noodle soup for me and delicious yummy looking meals for them.  I gave them bottles of jam for dessert.  Jeri (on left with me) has already returned to Boise area as she is a real gardener and has to get plants started.  She still raises lots of good stuff to eat and can.  Of course she has Jack to do a lot of the work with her.  Will miss them.

Brook drove down to help remove that dead agave in middle of others - quite a prickly job with all the nasty thorns all over them.  He also did other items on my honey do list and then signed me up for Face Book.   And just to clarify to those of you who might have read the first entry, I did not refer to him as my middle brat, that was all his doing as he's been bugging me for years about getting on board.  He left for a month's vacation on Thur ,    --- er I mean TDY to Texas so I'm I got his help before he left.

I've already found a great recipe thanks to the link to a friend of Katie so we'll give it a chance and see if I can learn how to navigate through the Face Book process.

It was fun to watch Ffiona join Taryn and three other Irish dancers when they joined Joanne Madden and her Emmy winner Irish music ensemble on  the program with the famous Tucson Symphony's tribute to Irish music in AZ.  Here's a prize winning photo of our darling 12 year old - love her new dress  thanks to our professional family seamstress.

Holly has a great new look with a classy new haircut and I love it!!  Thanks for sending me a copy dear daughter for my fridge.   Heard it was snowing again in Providence last week, but Grandma Amy told me that Ryan's really doing a great job on the yard already and has felled dad's infamous "Red Bud" tree to the east of house that turned out to be an apple tree instead.   Guerney's make a big mistake when shipping that but we didn't discover it for three years.

Girls and I did our annual trip to the temple in Mesa this weekend.  We stayed in a nice hotel within walking distance to temple and still had to deal with light rail construction mess on Main street when we  went out to dinner Friday night after they swam in pool.  Gorgeous weather and good drive.  Nice time.



FYI to all of you.  If you want to prevent cavities in your teeth (especially you grandchildren) drink tap water which contains fluoride.  Studies have shown that ever since bottled water has become the rage in consuming water, people are getting 33% more cavities due to lack of the protective fluoride.  Stay away from ditch water and standing lakes where animals drink regularly, ha!  No joke, papa had some old stories about his days wit sheep, remember?    That's might good health message for today.

We are thinking of you Brayden!

Get well Brayden.  We love you!  Glad to see you are in such good spirits in the pictures that your dad posted.  Here's to healing!! xoxo Montana Howells

Guess you will be doing a lot more of this for a while.....

And less of this (you were dancing with Grandma Gloria and Aunt Hollysue)

You haven't changed much, have you?