Passion for Life

    What I have admired most about Haley the last 19 years has been her passion for life. She wants to try everything, she gets so much out of life and she wants to be good at everything she tries. She is not going to let life pass her by. Her passion all started in preschool when she told me she wanted to be a dancer like her best friend Lucy. Then she started elementary school and she wanted to be a cheerleader. Then she wanted badly to earn gold medals on field day every year in elementary school and she did. Then she wanted to be a soccer player. She also wanted to play basketball, ski and mountain bike. She loved sports and she was good at them. She also sang in mini minstrels and troubadours and played in the school band in elementary school. She won a lot of art awards, even on a county level. She also always got awards for all A's and she got citizenship awards every semester in school. This girl wanted to do it all and to excel in everything and she did. I never pushed her at all in any of these things. It was her that wanted it. She made me look at her and life and want to be like her and not be afraid to try new things and get the very most out of life. She wasn't going to waste a minute of her life and she was smiling and laughing through it all. I wanted to have her passion.

She loved dancing and wearing pretty costumes

Dancing was fun with her best friend Lucy

She loved being a cheerleader and she got to cheer at high school games a few times a year

She took field day very seriously

She loved soccer and it became one of her biggest passions

She ended up with a lot of soccer trophies

She was a natural on the ski slopes

She sang in Mini Minstrels

Skiing with the family

She also sang in Troubadours

She played in the school band

She got all A awards and citizenship awards every semester making 12 that she earned of each

She got a lot of art awards

She earned gold medals on field day, making her brothers upset if she got a higher medal than they did

She loved fun and adventure of every kind. You name it she wanted to try it

She played basketball

She loved playing hockey with her brothers and the neighbors

     Haley had to wear glasses at a young age because she was unfortunate to get her father's eyesight. She has the worst eyesight in the family and she is basically blind without her glasses. As she aged her eyesight got worse and her glasses got thicker. We also found out her mouth was too narrow and her teeth were going to be coming in on top of each other so at a very young age she had to have an arch expander put in her mouth to widen it. The poor girl had to spend over four years with hardware in her mouth. She had wires constantly digging holes in her gums, a sore mouth when her braces were tightened and she even had her braces accidentally ripped off by a boy in her fifth grade class in elementary school. I was impressed that she didn't let glasses and braces affect her self esteem. She was out-going, made friends easily, she was very well liked and she laughed and smiled all the time.

At least she had brothers and a sister to share bad eyesight with

You can see the arch-expander in her mouth in this picture

Then she got full braces

And she got to have pink rubber-bands. She had a positive outlook on life

    Then came her allergy problems. One year we decided to get a real Christmas tree. Haley broke out in hives and she was having so much trouble with her swollen eyes and a runny nose that we took our Christmas tree down before Christmas and just didn't have one on Christmas day. The doctor thought she may be allergic to whatever they sprayed the tree with to keep the needles on. We were hoping she would grow out of these allergies but instead they got worse. We went on vacation and stopped at an overview once. We got back in the car and her eyes started swelling shut and she was having trouble talking and breathing. We stopped and flushed her eyes out with water and washed off her skin. It was scary how fast it happened. She loved soccer and she had soccer posters hanging all over her room. She was obsessed with soccer. But she had to call me during quite a few practices to come and get her because her throat and eyes would start swelling up while she was playing. It started happening more and more often. But still she loved the game and wanted to keep playing. She once ran into a field to help one of her friends catch their dog and got in bad shape fast. 

Her eyes are starting to swell up in this picture

After 4 years in braces she sure was happy to finally get them off

We even made her a big happy treat to celebrate

    In middle school she kept playing soccer, played volleyball, ran cross country, played basketball, mountain biked, skied, sang in the school choir and acted and sang in a fun group called Player's Club. Life was good and she was having fun. She got her braces off and she got contacts. Everyone loved her. I would go on the band bus to help chaperon and I was in awe at how many friends she had and how well loved she was. She would have her friends laughing hysterically all the time. Her passion for life continued. Life was practically perfect.

Dressed up for a party

Band again in middle school

Haley wanted badly to give her hair to locks of love (to make wigs for children with cancer). She also ran in several runs for good causes. She loved knowing she was helping people.

Her middle school singing group

She loves life

She loves to try new things.

Water-skiing for the first time

Mountain biking with the boys

Full of fun. She always had these kids laughing

She got more competitive in soccer and she was the biggest scorer on her team

She could not get enough soccer

She got to sing on the radio with Player's Club

Skiing with the family

Climbing skills she acquired while a toddler

Paragliding in tandem

She also liked to do acting whenever she could

She got plenty of chances to act and sing in Player's Club

And sing in the middle school choir

Her birthday cake with 2 of her biggest passions

And she kept winning awards. This one is for making it into the National Honor Society

More awards

She got so many awards we could wallpaper the house with them. If she did things she wanted to do them well.

    I thought life would be just easy and fun for her with no glasses and braces to worry about and only her allergies to deal with. She was excited about going to high school. Life was going to be good. But you never really know what is coming next. We didn't know how hard the next two years were going to be. I learned a lot from Haley watching her passionately pursue life like all of it's endless possibilities were a fun game to play. I love her passion for life. I think it has made me strive to look at life like she does and try to love every minute of it. Next comes the hard times. I learned even more from her when she was faced with trials she did not expect. That is when you really see what a child is made of. I will write about her tough times in my next chapter.

My Foolish Decision Blessed My Life

    When I think of Haley I instantly think of what an adventure her life has been. I had no idea what a crazy ride it was going to be for her or for me as her mother. This is how it all started:

     I found out I was pregnant with my 5^th child and I was excited but I was also a little scared. My first 4 pregnancies were not much fun. I threw up constantly and only gained 4 to 5 pounds instead of the customary 30. I would end up very thin and I would pass out sometimes. I also had a tipped uterus so the weight of the baby put a lot of pain and pressure on my right leg. As my family can attest I was always fixing dinner with my right leg up on the counter. It was either that or no dinner. The pressure and pain got too bad when my leg was down. The blood vessels in my right leg swelled up. This time around I was sent to a vein specialist because I had some veins that were swollen up like balloons ready to pop. The vein specialist sat me down and told me he couldn't do anything for me while I was pregnant. He chewed me out for getting pregnant, telling me that four children should have been plenty with the problems that I have, that I was foolish to be having another baby. This doctor was brutal. I left his office and cried all the way home. It was a rough pregnancy but I delivered a healthy baby girl and we named her Haley. She was beautiful and I loved her instantly. I had several blood vessels rupture and I was doubled over in pain for a few weeks after delivery. The doctor wanted to do surgery. I had Winn give me a priesthood blessing and the pain went away. I looked at Haley and I knew she was well worth it. I knew she was meant to be a part of our family. This foolish decision the doctor said I made turned out to be one of my greatest blessings in life.

The whole family loved Haley

    Haley was my hardest baby out of my six children. She would cry all night and half the day. I finally discovered that rocking, car rides and the swing, which would put the other kids to sleep, made Haley feel sick. She had a lot of trouble with motion sickness. If we went on long car rides she would cry the whole trip and keep throwing up all over me, her and the car. We would always travel with our car and us smelling very bad. It was hard to deal with this on a 10 hour car ride. It got a little better as she got older when she could throw up in a bucket instead of without warning all over us and the car. I spent a lot of hours scrubbing throw up out of carpet, off walls and washing clothes and bedding with her. She threw up constantly when she was sick too. She would even count the times when she got older and tell us she had thrown up 12 times that day. She was well worth every sleepless night, and change of clothes. We all loved her and she was a lot of fun. The other kids loved her and always let her join in their fun.

Haley loved the hideout the kids made on the stairs and the kids loved her

     My other challenge with Haley was that she was a climber and would push chairs over and climb up onto places like the table and the counter. She loved to stand in the middle of the kitchen table and shake the light pretty violently. She was always getting into trouble. She once got into the refrigerator,  got the eggs and butter out and I found her breaking eggs and finger painting with the buttery gooey mess in the carpet. My biggest job became keeping a close eye on her and keeping her safe and out of trouble.

She was always climbing. I'm surprised she didn't become an avid mountain climber.

She loved to unload the dishwasher all over the floor

And empty all the cupboards

and put herself in the dishwasher

and climb in the cupboards and throw everything out

Cory was always telling her to get down and not to break the light.

Better to be on the table than in a chair, the higher the better

The last thing Haley needed was to learn how to light things on fire from Katie

She also played in the dryer a lot

She didn't even want to climb stairs in the conventional way.

When she got a little bigger all of her dolls ended up in the dryer with her. She loved playing in the dryer

    When Haley was a toddle she would also keep putting handfuls of dirt from the house plants into her mouth until it was packed so tight I could hardly get it out. Once I also found a caterpillar in her mouth. I had to give away all of my plants. I took her for a checkup at the doctor's office. I told the doctor she kept putting everything in her mouth and I was finding everything from newspaper to small objects in her diaper when I changed her. The doctor had me practice Heimlich for small children at the office. The very next day Haley found a ball of foil one of the kids had made and got it stuck in her throat. She turned blue pretty fast and couldn't breath. I grabbed her and did what the doctor had just showed me the day before and the foil ball popped out across the floor. Phew! What a blessing. Another time she pulled the whole Christmas tree down on her. We took the tree down early that year because she kept trying to climb it. She got hurt quite a bit being so adventurous and from playing too rough with her brothers, but nothing too serious. I had feared she would break a lot of bones and get a lot of stitches like Brett had done but she was lucky and she didn't. Maybe she was saving up because some big trials for her were yet to come.

She colored her hands and face with red magic marker. She looked in the mirror and thought she was bleeding and put band-aids on her face.

She cut her hair herself once and then she cried because she didn't have long hair anymore. She wore nightgowns and towels on her head for months so she would have long hair.

She even figured out how to get her own drinks of water. I was amazed at her method.

She was easy to love but hard to keep safe

She loved dolls and stuffed animals and spent hours taking care of them.

She also loved to dress up, smile and laugh

She always had us laughing

      She was so fast we also had a few scary times when we couldn't find her. Once the kids and I  were playing at a huge park. I told the older kids to watch her close while I nursed her little brother in the car. They were old enough to be good babysitters but when I came back to where they were playing Haley was nowhere to be found. This park was very big and surrounded by busy streets and she was just a toddler. I was very scared when none of us could find her. Then one of her big brothers suggested we kneel down and pray. We all knelt down in the grass and prayed for her. I stood up and I instantly had a vision of where she was in my head. I ran, what was a long way for a little girl to have gone, and found her with the pay phone in her hand in the center of the park. She didn't know how to call but she wanted to call for help because she knew she was lost. Another day she disappeared like a flash in a busy store when I turned to grab one of the other kids and again we couldn't find her. Scared again, I prayed again. I found her sitting under one of the unused cash registers unwrapping a pile of candy and gum. Both times I thanked my Heavenly Father for keeping her safe.

     Haley had four brothers and wanted to do what they did. She was always very competitive and often forgot she was younger than they were. She got hurt more times than I can count from striving to climb higher and play harder. She got a lot of bruises scraps and cuts. She cut open the back on her head once and bled all over and here are just a few pictures from playing with her brothers.

This happened playing with her baby brother

This happened compliments of her brother Cory and a stick he was playing with.

Haley didn't want to go to school because she thought she was too ugly.

Haley drew this picture of herself holding a washcloth on her eye to make it feel better

     The things I was most grateful for while Haley was growing up was that my prayers for her safety were so often answered. I was also thankful I had her in my life when doctors told me not to have any more children. She has brightened every day she has been in my life. At this point in her life I didn't know some of the big trials she would have to endure or just how deeply she would touch my heart with her amazing fighting spirit and her depth of character.

I love these girls!