You know you're craving chinese...

Join I Want a Bad Hair Day on Saturday April 30th at Panda Express in American Fork anytime between 11 am and 8 pm and support childhood cancer fighters. Print this flier out, and share extras with your neighbor, and bring it in to have 20% of your order donated to I Want a Bad Hair Day. Wear your Bad Hair Day t-shirt and get 10% off of your purchase! (You can buy a t-shirt there if you don't have one.) There will also be Kung Fu Panda there during the dinner hours. Come and get your picture taken! Thank you to Panda Express!

Worth Dancing for!

Took Odette in for her regular checkup.
Very brave as always and just said "owie" when getting blood.
Got some way cool prizes for bravery and cuteness.
Saw all of her awesome friends.
Ate her favorite chips - Cheetos.
Got her very own water bottle.
Had the cutest hair until "I not want piggies" occurred. I love the wild look!
Grew the teeniest bit taller.
Gained .2 kg.
Is still Cancer free!
Now that is all worth dancing for!

The song she is dancing to is What I am.
The most perfect song for Odette and me today from one of the most perfect friends I know!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyVzjoj96vs&feature=player_embedded

Odette's Wish

Many of you know that when kids are faced with a life threatening illness, they are allowed to participate in a make-a-wish program. Well, Odette was not ever old enough while in treatment to be able to participate. So, I decided to do my own wish for her and the other kids. Luckily for me, my brother moved to California last summer so we were able to have a place to stay.
For our wish, we went to California because sunshine always does the body good! (Sorry the pictures are all in reverse order of what we did and the one above is from the cheese factory that we stopped and ate ice cream on the way home.)

THE BEACH
We went three different times. It was so warm and nice. Odette was hard to keep out of the water. I thought she would be a little scared, but would keep running straight for the water. Forget building a sandcastle for her!

The bigger kids, along with Uncle Ty went in to brave the deeper water. They made it out so that Brandt was getting covered and they all loved it. The kids are not like their mother when it comes to water. I prefer the sand.

SEA WORLD
It was the perfect day for going to Sea World. Nice a sunny...I think this was the day it was snowing back home.
Hanging out on the cool Shamu Volkswagen.

The little kids enjoyed all the rides in Elmo Land while I took the older ones to ride Atlantis. Now that, was one way cool ride!

Odette at the Shamu show. She loved yelling Shamu with the audience and waving her hands like the tail of the whale.

Our favorite show was the dolphins. We sat in the splash zone, because that is cool when you are a kid and guess what? We got wet! Not just a little bit either! Of all the places the whale splashed, it was right in front of us!

MORMON BATTALION
Went to the newly renovated Mormon Battalion visitors center. It was very cool. The show they put on was very neat. Josselyn made a friend with the tour guide. We enjoyed panning for gold, "driving" in a wagon and checking out the canons. Brandt even got to be part of the show and dress up in what the men wore.

KIDS EXPLORATION MUSEUM
The kids enjoyed this day. We went to a museum that was all toys for the kids to learn and explore with. There was bubble things, one even that you could pull and you would be inside of the bubble! Building with all sorts of stuff. Lots of pretend play where the kids did puppet shows, played school and opened a fruit stand. There was even a room that you could paint on the walls! Josselyn loved this room.

MORE BEACH
Ok, so I might not like water, but some of my favorite pictures are on the beach. Kathleen spent most of her time collecting shells. She got some really cool ones. Josselyn thought that she had a shell and it ended up being a clam!

M&M WORLD
On the drive down, we stop in Las Vegas at the M&M factory. It was four floors of chocolate yumminess! There was even a 3D movie to watch there. The kids each picked out a color of candies. No matter the color, they were all tasty!

To many people, this might just be another vacation, however to me it was so much more. It was wonderful to see Odette doing things that just last year at this time she wasn't able to do and might not have ever been able to do. I absolutely adore and love my children and can't wait to go on another adventure with them!

A Dinosaur

When Odette finished her chemo treatment the doctors told me to be prepared.
She was going to get sick a lot.
Any kind of immunities that she had already had would most likely be gone and it would be like having a new born baby.
Do you know how many colds a new born is expected to get in the first year of life? Like 10 or more!
However, I had high hopes. I think if you didn't, you would drive yourself crazy with worry. Don't get me wrong, I worry my fair share.
Anyway, Odette has had her fair share of colds, which I think were causing her ear infections.
Once we got tubes I figured that some of our health issues would be resolved.
How very wrong that figuring was.
I thought that today would be the third ear infection. Nope, just super bad congestion which causes very low oxygen levels in the blood.
So, Odette got to be a dinosaur today and get a breathing treatment. The doctor said we would have to do these at home and asked about if I felt comfortable doing "doctor" stuff at home and if I knew what a home health company was. I about fell off the table from laughter! This, would be a cake walk.
Now we get to be a dinosaur at home, to which Josselyn is so very jealous! Maybe I will save the mask for Halloween for her!

Slideshow

This video was played at the ACCO Revival that spotlighted the cancer survivors.  It is amazing.  If you have tear ducts like mine, you will need a tissue.  The video might have been all about kids with cancer, but I think it relates to all people.  The quotes are wonderful.  Hold those little ones close and give them all your love all the time because they are the things that matter so very much in this life.

Survivor Story

We are in a different part of cancer fighting now.  When I first heard the word survivor-ship I wasn't sure that I understood what that meant.  I am on the board for the American Childhood Cancer Organization.  We were putting together an activity-a Revival of sorts.  They wanted to put together survivor-ship stories.  Then the light turned on.  Duh!  We aren't fighting cancer anymore, we, Odette, survived it!  There is a photographer that has put together a cancer photography project called For my Mama.  There is a group of photographers that do photo shoots of cancer patients and their families.  Kay volunteered to take the pictures of all the children we wanted to spotlight.  Odette was one of them.  Brought tears to my eyes when they talked about her as she stood up on stage.  Yes, she is a big girl and can stand there all by herself.  She is such a ray of sunshine in my life.