I am officially an old lady!

Well, I can pull out my white hairs as much as I want, but I am officially old now! I just was diagnosed with phase 2 osteoarthritis in my thoracic area of my spine. After 12 years of pain, hooray! for a chiropractor that finally took an x-ray and figured out what was really going on! I feel very blessed to be able to fix this problem before it becomes permanent. I have had two adjustments already and can already feel a big difference. Although, it will take approximately 4-6 months to get the joints working like they should, and then conditioning to strengthen the muscles correctly. So, I'm looking at about a year of therapy and then continued maintenance for the rest of my life. I am really excited to feel what it's like to have a normal back again!

This is what's going on in my back:

Valentine's Day!

We had a fun Valentine's Day party on Monday.

We made treats...

we made valentines for our friends...


and we made heart pizzas for lunch!

Here is Michelle's famous "pink feast". We dined on heart-shaped meat loaf, pink mashed potatoes, pink rolls, cherry punch, and heart-shaped jello jigglers.

For Valentine's Day, Brian made me a dvd of some of our best times as a family. It was really sweet. His biggest challenge was getting me out of the house long enough so he could finish it. He also texted me a sweet message every hour while he was at work.

I snuck into his office while he was in a meeting and hid hearts all over and left him some treats. Then, I gave him my real gift...20 pre-planned, mostly pre-paid dates for this year. (I was more excited for this than him, though, since I only let him open the first date). I know what's coming up, and I can't wait! If you want to do this, I got amazing date ideas for this from here and here!

Our Exploits in Space

Here are our latest science photos. We began our astronomy unit in January and we are well on our way to learning more about our amazing universe!

If the sun were only 1 inch in diameter, this is how far away the planets would be away from each other. Summer is standing by "the sun" and Megan is standing by "Pluto", 108 feet away. But, since the Sun is really 1,392,000 km in diameter, Pluto is really 7,375,927,931 km from the Sun!

This is a model that shows that the planets orbit the sun at different speeds. In the time it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun (twelve months), you can see how far the rest of the planets have gotten in their orbits. In fact, it takes Pluto 248 Earth years to orbit the Sun!
This is a timeline we made of some major events in space exploration. Summer came up with the great idea to make it 3-D!

Halley Christmas 2011!

Here it is! The long-awaited pictures of the stable that we and Grandma & Grandpa Kitty made for Summer for Christmas! Doesn't it look fabulous?!





Christmas morning! Waiting to go up the stairs!

Christmas!!!

The elves worked really hard this year! Look at the cute doll beds they made for Megan and Summer!

Santa came to visit Riley too!

Summer's New Doll

Riley's remote-control helicopter

Dad opening his box of favorite treats

The mini-quilt Grandma made for Megan's doll

Me playing Santa :)

Our Latest Family Pictures

Our Trip to Disneyland!

For Thanksgiving we were able to travel to California to visit Grandma and Grandpa Kitty! We had so much fun sharing the holiday with family. Afterwards, we went south to take the kids to spend three fun-filled days in Disneyland and California Adventure. We had so much fun. Everything about the trip was perfect...until I forgot to set my alarm and we slept in the morning we were supposed to go home and knew that we would miss Summer's final dress rehearsal for her big Nutcracker production. So, we did what any parent would do (not). We drove to the Anaheim airport and sent her home on a plane. Aunt Michelle was a lifesaver and picked her up and got her to her rehearsal. THANK YOU! She was able to be in two performances that weekend and she made a very cute sheep. Enjoy the pictures :)