2013
January:
We rung in the New Year with this cute girl! And had LOTS of snow days! Aunt Lisa came to visit at the end of the month from Korea.
February:
Ava had her second set of tubes put in her ears and her adenoids removed the beginning of February.
March:
Miss Ava turned THREE! Ava and I went to Disney on Ice together, so much fun! Easter was also in March this year.
April:
Ava had her sedated hearing evaluation at Primary Childrens Hospital in April. They were wanting to check if her hearing was affecting her speech. After a long day we found out her hearing was 100% okay. Ava and I also went to the Zoo this month as well as the tulip festival and the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. 
May:
At the end of May Ava and I traveled to Arizona while Dan went to the Indy 500 :)
June:
We came back from Arizona and spent as much time as possible swimming! We attempted swim lessons. This was the straw the broke the camels back that made me finally take our pediatricians referral to the developmental pediatrician to get Ava checked out. She was not even functioning at the swim lesson class, it was like another child standing (or rather running and screaming) in front of me and she was the oldest in the group. This was the one picture of her in the water happy for 1 second. I turned 27 :)
July:
July 3rd we met with the Developmental Pediatrician in Salt Lake for Ava's first evaluation. This is when we were first told that Ava possibly had Autism. It came as a huge (not) surprise to me. I had suspected that much but hadn't said anything to anyone about it, including Dan. We began working with the school district to get her evaluated for preschool services.
August:
We found out that Ava was approved for Special Education Preschool services 3 days a week including Speech, Physical & Occupational therapy. She started school and the very last week of August we received her official mild-moderate Autism diagnosis.
September:
Ava had a hard first couple of weeks of school but she quickly started to fall into the routine and loving it! Made us so happy that she was loving school! Dan, Ava and I went to the Utah state fair and Dan turned 27!
October:
We did a lot of our favorite Fall activities, pumpkin patch, corn bellys, the thanksgiving point farm! Ava was going to be Tinkerbell for Halloween till she let me know the day before that she wanted to be Cinderella! It was such beauty to my ears to here my little girl express something she wanted that I couldn't resist making her request a reality!
November:
Ava had her pictures taken by Lubby Dubby Photography! I absolutely adore them! Ava's speech therapy continued to help her and make a HUGE difference in our little girl! We celebrated Thanksgiving with Mark and Kathy.
December:
Celebrated this little girls 4th Christmas! Our first Christmas opening presents just the 3 of us at our home!
This last year did not turn out how I had hoped or expected, it ended up
being one of the hardest years yet. It taught me that whats really
important is that our little family is together and happy. I'm forever grateful that I have my two favorite
people by my side still and pray we can continue to grow as a family, not in numbers alone but in strength, closeness and love.
I'm hoping we can make big changes in 2014, these hopes and dreams are almost identical to what I wrote last year but it still rings true. We are planning on making improvements in our health, losing weight, moving out of our condo, making more dents in our debt, and our continued goal of adding to our family.
As much as I LOVE my work, my honest goal this year is to focus more on our little family of 3 and enjoying the most of everyday with Ava and Dan. For me that means taking a break from work for a while!
