Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!

HE DID IT!!! Derek is officially a graduated and I couldn't be more proud! It was a very fun day with family and friends. Pictures to come soon.

Surgery

Just after Valentines day, our work had a big basketball tournament. Derek played with some friends from his branch. During the first game he jumped and some kid kicked his knee in a way it was not suppose to bend! He went down! He couldn't stand on it. Every time he tried to go back in it would give out on him. So for the next week he limped around thinking he had twisted it. Finally nearly a week later when the swelling wasn't going away I convinced him to go see a doctor. Her first reaction as soon as she came in the room was "Wow! That looks painful! What'd you do?" Not a good sign. Anyway an MRI later and we found out he had a complete tear to his ACL and needed surgery. All went well and he's in physical therapy a couple times a week but recovering well.

The battle wounds...

(a week or 2 after the surgery)

Where's your kneecap?

And then a couple weeks ago I woke up with pink eye! In both eyes, and then I managed to scratch my left eye so it wasn't getting better. I looked like those cartoon red evil eyes for a couple weeks.

We were quite the pair, him limping around and me with red eyes.

This was after a week of drops when it was supposed to be better. It had been worse...

I know, I know, he wins the pitty party .

Welcome to the family!

We would like to introduce all of you to the newest member of our family! Balloo! He is our blue beta fish. He's the happiest fish ever. He will even dance for his food when you go to feed him. We are such proud parents.

Once there was a snowman!

Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman....

Once there was a snowman...

Tall, Tall, Tall!

In the sun he melted, melted, melted, in the sun he melted....

Small, small, small!

Seriously we made this awesome snowman and less than 3 hours later he had already fallen over and started to melt. :(

St. George trip

For conference weekend we went with the family to St. George. It was great break from school and work and we got some MUCH needed sun! I seriously believe my Vitamin D levels were depleted. Thanks Allen and Heather for letting us all come use your home.

So we didn't even coordinate this, but when we got there my Uncle Mark and Aunt Jeanette were in town. And Uncle David, Aunt Rebecca, and Rachel were driving through on their way to drop Rachel in SLC. So we saw lots of out of state cousins as well.

This is the beautiful sunset that greeted us on our way down....I could already tell it was going to be a fabulous trip.

See how excited we were?

Colby and Brody got some Grandma lovin'

Porter and Brody sure love each other, I have the cutest nephews.

Brody and me goofing around in the car, that kid seriously cracks me up!

We headed to the St. George Temple to take some photos

And we got to go see Uncle Marks GIANT horse. Seriously that thing is massive. Looks huge in the photos (compare it to the 6ft tall men in the photo)but is even larger in real life.

Uncle Mark's pride and joy.

You see the hat in the back? Barely peeking over the horses back? Allen is 6' tall and he barely came to the horses back.