Alexis spent many hours at her home away from home, Children’s Hospital of LA, and once while there wrote the following: "Hello I’m Alexis I love to dance and sing, to dress-up, play games, go on walks, play with barbies, eat pistachios, ice cream and rice crispy treats. I love my dad, my mom, Natalie, Matthew, Lauren, Papa and Grandma. I like to draw and do stamps. I like to color. I love reading, to go to church and kisses and hugs. I love my friends and teacher. I love to balance, to swing, to pull my wagon, I love Christmas, presents from Santa, my uncles and aunts and cousins. I love piano and birthday parties. I love watching movies, the beach, flying kites, decorating, my jobs. I love my doctors and nurses, lucky charms cereal, I love snow and sunshine. I like feeding the birds. I like to roast marshmallows and snuggle. I love my back to be scratched. I love chocolate. I like to play at the park and go down the slide. I like dressing up my doll and playing hide and go seek. I like slurpies from 7-11 and dates with my dad. I like chocolate milk and the color pink, I love animals and my Heavenly Father." Alexis was diagnosed with a medullablastoma a rare type of brain tumor at the age of four and kept up her fight through radiation, chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, continued chemotherapy and stage I trials. As Alexis’s tumor reoccurred and after trying a host of treatments, we knew as parents that although we would continue trying every possible treatment, we could soon lose her. She was taken from us 8 years months ago at the age of nine. If Alexis were standing here today, we think she would be standing here in pink, thanking you for your kindness and generosity and for remembering her and others like her fighting for their lives. At her memorial, one of her Uncle's wrote, “Maybe that is it. Maybe God sends us someone like Alexis to help us to focus on what is really important in this life, this life that seems to pass before us like a dream. To help draw us out of ourselves and to reap the tremendous personal benefits of attempting to help others, the blessing of helping to lift someone else’s burden. Because of Alexis’ life, we were each called upon by the bonds of affection and human connection, summoned if you would, by our better angels to do things that were unambiguously good. What a rare blessing in this world! So perhaps that is how we make sense of it all. This great outpouring of love, extended over five years of hope, pain, faith, exhaustion, and prayer, would have been unlikely had Alexis had a normal and healthy childhood. And so many of us are deeper and more God-like because of it.” The second time Alexis tumor reoccurred we were walking the halls of the hospital together and we went by one little girls room that had been fighting leukemia. Her mother told us that she was doing much worse. Alexis stopped me right then and asked, "Mom, if you die while your little can you still grow up in heaven? " I said, "Oh, yes Alexis you will be able to grow to your full potential whether on earth or in heaven if you choose the right. She then said, "Mom, I think I would really like to grow up with Jesus." And of course I said that is wonderful, but you are just staying right here with us. She always knew what she wanted.