lepercon

mylee and derek were visited by a lepercon this year! they were so excited!!!! they showed all their cousins that came over. he left them some bubbles and a delicious plate of cookies! so fun....glad they have a fun aunt heidi!

random

obsessed with shoes!

mylee loves her stuff! she lined everything up here.

love day

happy love day! we got this for our dinner and had candlelight. the kids loved it and it was a fun and relaxing night.

run aways!!!

so since mylee saw annie, she decided one night that she wanted to run away. first it was just her. she was on the porch and decided she wanted to take derek with her cause she would miss him. she asked me to get him ready and i said if you want to run away you can do it all on your own. she got him ready and they hunted for a flashlight. they first were gonna use the little light on the remote that lights up when you push a button. they decided it wasn't gonna work so they found a small flashlight. they were off and on their way to shelleys. she wanted to live there. i was dying. layne snuck behind them. it was pitch black and they went across the street to the stop sign before layne stopped them from a car. they were holding hands and talking the entire time. i think they would have went the entire way if we wouldn't have stopped them. when they came back in and she realized we weren't gonna let her run away she had a melt down! it was SO funny!

annie

a bunch of the nieces and nephews did annie this year. it was so cute! all of them did so good. mylee LOVED it! she didn't move. i left derek home with his dad. didn't want to risk bringing either of them!

miami

K this is a funny story! i saw this hot life guard when layne and i were sitting on the beach. i was trying to get a picture of him to send to some girls and give them a laugh for the day. i missed my chance. layne dared that i wouldn't dare go up to his stand and ask him for his picture and tell him he was hot. well....i had to prove him wrong for once! i walked up there, shaking, and told him i thought he was hot and wanted his picture. i was a complete idiot but we were laughing our heads off!

We decided to do a snorkling trip down in the keys. it was so fun. we saw a shark, sting ray, octupus and tons of other fish.

this was at the keys. it was the BEST restraunt ever!!! they had the best keylime pie that i've ever tasted! we had so much fun that day!

out in the keys.

this is our room. it was UNREAL! the best room i've ever stayed in! after the first night, layne went down and complained about a couple things and asked how much it would be to upgrade and change rooms. they said not to worry about it but would hook us up. they gave us a room on the very top floor over looking the ocean. it was amazing. the doors opened up wide and the ocean sounds would come in. i have never stayed in a room that was this amazing. it was so relaxing. we were either up here or out at the pool and beach. they gave us a 500.00 room for 80! just what we needed! after a crazy few months some much needed relaxing.

looking down from our room.

can you see why we loved it so much?! i LOVE vacations with just layne. i swear you reconnect and i think we need it yearly. if i could afford more it would be more. they are probably my favorite trips! we had so much fun and tons of crazy stories and good memories together. i love him!!!

sleeping!!!!

Can you tell what we are obbsessed by?! We love their sleeping pictures. Layne takes a million with his phone and he just emailed me them. Here are some I love. I just don't want to forget what they are like EVER!!!

my hospital

WOW!!! is all I can say. This seemed to be one of the hardest times I've had since miscarrying our invetro baby. This post will be alittle personal but I don't want to forget it. This was such a hard time. It all started the first of December. Poor little Mylee started throwing up and diarrhea. It started out randomly. We thought she had the flu but it was so weird cause she would get sick and when I was going to take her to the dr it would go away. Didn't think much of it until around Christmas time. She stopped eating and drinking and lost 3 pounds so quick. On alittle 4yr old, who is little to begin with, it's alot. We took her into the the dr on the 23rd of dec and he admitted her to get her hydrated again. He kept her over night to make sure that we wouldn't be back in the next day. She got nice and hydrated but was SO worn out! Christmas wasn't the same this year at our house. She was so excited but just had no energy. All during that, we found out we were pregnant and SO excited but SO nervous cause we had had a tubal in Jan. Well a couple weeks later I started to bleed and ended up passing it on Christmas Eve. I was able to stay overnight at the hospital with Mylee and I just kept asking for ibprofen and lorna dune cookies, along with my 20 cokes! It was a really hard miscarriage but it was so crazy with the holidays so I didn't really have alot of time to think about it. Well in Jan. My hadn't gotten over whatever she had so I took her back to the dr. He told me to wait another week and then he would start doing testing on her. I just didn't feel right about it so I took her to another dr office and they admitted her right away. This new dr just looked at her and when I said she looked ok compared to how she had looked he was shocked cause he didn't think she looked good at all. Well we went back to utah valley hospital and all through the night they did tons of testing on her. They tested her blood, stool, and ordered ultrasounds at 1 in the morning. I will say, I have never been so nervous in my life. Layne went back home to be with Derek and I couldn't sleep at all that night. The blood work came back with way elevated white blood cells and the nurses and drs kept everything this time, more to themselves. They didn't really know what was going on. I started to think of the worst. It's always been my fear of having a child with cancer and it was in the back of my mind. Everything on the ultrasound looked good so that was good there wasn't anything there. The next morning they still had no idea what was going on. Later that morning her stool sample came back and they found giarrdia. I was completely relieved! They all were in shock that that is what it was. Grandpa Banks came by to see Mylee after his dr appt for his leukemia and as I was walking him to the elevator there was a sweet little girl with her mom coming on our floor that was bald from cancer. I said goodbye to grandpa and just broke down crying from seeing that sweet girl. I had such a flood of emotions. I was so grateful that My only had giarrdia! It broke my heart to see such a young little girl fighting that. I immediately started thanking my heavenly Father for blessing us with all our blessings. I can't imagine how hard it would be to watch your sweet child fight through something like that. It killed Layne and I watching My go through what she did! We both realized how much more patience we need with our kids and made us never want to take them for granted. How lucky we are to have overall healthy little kids! I thank my heavenly Father for the lessons we learned through her being sick and I never want to forget how blessed we are!

Sledding

Jessie took Derek in the big sled with her. I think he liked it but this picture you sure can't tell.

Kory sent Trey down the hill like this.

Dad and Mylee sledding!

Layne running to get a path for sledding. He was so excited! haha

Mylee, Kendra, Kynzlee and Derek all getting hauled over for the sledding day. We had so much fun going with some of Layne's family sledding and snowmobilling. I love doing these kinds of things in the winter but we've all been so sick this winter that it was our first time sledding. We had a blast!!!