Leah is 17

Leah turned 17 yesterday.  We celebrated with Chicken Caesar Salad and opening presents on Thursday.  Don't mind the very short shorts, she had just gotten home from practice.  Leah randomly decided to take up softball last week.  So we had to buy all the gear.  Good thing we had a birthday excuse.  She is loving being part of a team again, and being there with girls that actually want to.  Her physics teachers had been asking her to play for two years.  And one day she just said yes.  First practice he asked her if she had every played before.  She answered that she had not and he said, 'You are not good'.  She laughed and thanked him for boosting her ego and he went on to tell her that she has a lot of potential and more determination and heart than anyone else.  He has confidence in her.  She is very frustrated with her batting, but practice, practice.  Leah did not get her #4 sadly.  But they did assign her #17, which we think is hilarious.

Friday she did a job shadow at the hospital in the x-ray and ultrasound department.  When she arrived she saw that she was in the job shadow with two friends of her's from another high school.  They had so much fun together.  They gave ultrasounds to each other and did x-rays.  They helped with some real patients and learned a ton.  Since Leah has had so many issues they pulled up a lot of her x-rays and then explained them to the other 8 kids that were there. They were fascinated by her cyst.  She also found out that yes her ribs and pinky were both broken during basketball.  They watched her food digest, saw many brain scans and learned about brain freeze and concussion, and got to ask a lot of questions.  She loved every minute of it.  After I took her to the mall to met Emily.  Leah had gotten a little money for her birthday and they did some shopping, laughed, talked, ate, and caught a movie.  Today during conference session she had her usual birthday dinner of spaghetti and cookie dough ice cream cake.

We are constantly amazed at the young women that Leah is becoming.  As a kids she was so into Disney princesses and fairytales that Dave used to comment that the sky was pink in her world.  I swear she lived in this la-la land.  She was stubborn and sassy and the cutest little thing.  Look at those beautiful big green eyes.  And she loves her scar.

She fell asleep everywhere.  Right in the middle of tasks or eating.  We lost her many times when she was asleep.

And she has turned into this stubborn, sassy, gorgeous young women, who has a hard time sleeping.

But her stubbornness is in a positive way.  She is so focused on doing well in school she spends hours every night doing homework.  No more la-la land.   Even if there is not an assignment, she bring things home to go over and study.  She has extremely high standards in everything she does.  The gospel, her schoolwork, her job, her closest friends, and how she interacts with others at school.  Everything except her room of course.  She has a huge group of friends and meets new people every where she goes. Leah is the type of kid that the teacher will assign her the group at school with the kids that are hard to get along with because they know she will be kind to them.  Her sasssy-ness, well she comes by that rightly and I am a little proud of it. :)   Dave and I are so proud of what she is becoming and who she is already.  We marvel at her drive and at how outgoing she is.  She has a very off beat humor that is hilarious if you get it.  She loves every sport she can watch and watching friends is her favorite thing to do.  Love this girl to bit and I can't wait to see where she goes.

 Happy Birthday beautiful girl.  I am glad it was an awesome day for you.