My little mountain climber

This little girl has been climbing a mountain since she was born. She was born very prematurely at 23.5 weeks gestation and it's been a battle to keep her with us. Her pediatrician told me recently that she has the longest medical record at his office. I actually have some trouble believing that because there are a lot of children out there with a lot of medical problems. But it's pretty clear that her health is complicated.

Recently she's had some kind of respiratory virus that put her back on supplemental oxygen for the last few weeks. She seems completely recovered but she's still needing the extra oxygen. It's been so frustrating to me. Finally tonight I tested her blood oxygen saturation and it was good enough to take off her oxygen until bedtime. We'll test her again in the morning but I'm feeling hopeful that just maybe we can go somewhere without taking that heavy tank of oxygen with us.

I love this picture of her. It was taken on a camping trip last summer. It was a great summer with no illnesses! She loves to camp and was so cheerful sitting in her special chair with that baseball cap on backwards looking so cute. She was closing her eyes because she was feeling a little shy. We love her!

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Do Dots Family System

The original post was written in January of 2015. I wrote an update at the bottom of this post in March 2021. A few months ago, a friend of mine told me about something she was doing in her family to help her family function better. Her teenage autistic son had been struggling a lot so they had been working with behavior therapists to help him and this "Do Dots Family System" had been recommended. As she described it, I was greatly intrigued since it sounded like something I wanted to implement at my own house. I looked into it and decided to purchase it right after Thanksgiving. Here is my review of how it has worked for us over the last six weeks or so. The basic idea of the chart is that children need to take care of their responsibilities before they get any privileges. It strongly reinforces the concept of "Work Before Play" . The chart helps children see in a very visual way that, until they have completed their responsibilities, they are on Le...

Hansen Family Reunion 2024, Thursday afternoon

For lunch on Thursday, Lauren and Kurt made Cafe Rio which was delicious. On Thursday afternoon, we had free time at the lake. Heidi and Aaron rented a pontoon boat and took people out for rides. This was very popular. Some of us went on the kayaks and/or swimming or just hung out on the beach.

2024 Hansen Family Reunion, Wednesday

Recently we had another Hansen Family Reunion at Bear Lake. We've been having these destination reunions since 2008. There were about 70 of us in attendance. Bruce and Michelle organized the activities and did a good job. I enjoyed myself! Hopefully lots of other people did too. We showed up on Wednesday afternoon and enjoyed a taco salad dinner, served by Neil and Kristie's family. We also worked on two mixer games: a word search with the names of all 100 Hansen family members as well as a Bingo card that involved finding people with different attributes like recent high school graduation, birthdays in certain months, etc. The word search was definitely the most popular. Also popular was playing Nine-Square and Sandy Pickle (a cross between pickle ball and badminton). Thys and Katrina might have won! After dinner, we had an FHE activity/lesson. Liz had made a book with stories of the first ancestors to join the church. She had selected different stories for us to act out in g...

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