Christmas: A little late

I just wanted to share a few pictures from Christmas quick and give a little recap of what happened after all the drama.
Before we went down to Vegas, I did my traditional baking that I do every Christmas, but this year was a little bit more elaborate. Jaron needed to take some goodie plates to about 20 different places so that added to the amount we needed for friends and family. So all in all, we put together 38 plates. It was a crazy amount and we had plates of goodies everywhere. I didn’t get to even deliver all that I wanted to my friends since we left for Vegas on the 12th. Sorry if you didn’t get one.
Christmas this year was so much fun because all of my siblings were together. My mom wanted to start some new traditions so we all came up with one. Christmas Eve was busy but we had a great time. Christmas morning we did things a little different and cooked and ate breakfast before we opened presents. After that, Mindy’s son, Austin got sick and threw up on my dad, which made things a little different. He was able to open his presents but then his dad had to take him home. Lexi loved all the wrapping paper to play with and loved all the new toys. I surprised Jaron with a Wii and a Wii Fit and he was pretty excited.
The day after Christmas my whole family went to the temple. My brothers were going through for the first time so it was great to be together. We ended up staying down in Vegas until January 5th because my cousin Alex went through the temple for the first time on January 3rd so I wanted to be there for that. It was crazy coming back to Utah with mountains of snow, freezing temperatures, and unemployed. Jaron was unfortunately laid off from his job the day we left to go down to Vegas, which was why we were able to stay in Vegas for as long as we did. Overall Christmas was a great break and fun to be with family!

Only a few of the 38 plates we made for Christmas
An up close view of the 10 different kinds of goodies
All the girls in their pjs
All the guys in their pjs
Jaron's funny reaction when opening his gift from Santa
Austin trying to hold Lexi

Hawaii didn't exactly happen!

Well, Hawaii didn't turn out exactly as we had planned. We arrived in Hawaii long enough to eat breakfast and lunch, and drive back to the airport. Let me explain:  I had gotten the flu on the way down to Vegas and was throwing up the entire way down. Lexi had diarrhea but seemed to be getting better. Jaron and I flew out on Sunday the 14th and I still wasn't feeling great but I figured I would be better soon since it had been two days since I had thrown up. Lexi stayed behind with my mom in Henderson. We had a 5 hour layover at LAX and about an hour before we got on the plane to fly to Hawaii, my mom called and said Lexi was throwing up and she wouldn't eat anything. My mom called her home teacher, Jim Cavalieri, which is a long-time family friend, retired paramedic and fire chief to come and give her a blessing. He told my mom too she wasn't dehydrated but to keep checking her. Once Jaron and I got to Hawaii and were driving to our hotel, my sister Mindy called and said my mom took Lexi to the emergency room. I was a wreck of course and when I got a hold of my mom, things weren't good. The doctors tried to get an IV into her and were unsuccessful after trying multiple times. She had been poked in both hands, arms, wrists, ankles and then they tired to go into her bone in both her legs. They warned my mom that that was going to hurt her a lot so my mom and Thomas left the room. They were still unsuccessful so they put a feeding tube in her. You can only imagine how I must have felt hearing all of this and I was thousands of miles away. We tried to sleep that night but it didn't work so well. We got up early and called to see how she was doing. Lexi was sleeping a lot and would just cry when she was awake. I felt like a terrible mother being in Hawaii so Jaron and I decided to take the next flight home. The airlines of course charged us $300 to change our flight and it wasn't until 6pm that night that we left. We were having a hard time even enjoying the scenery, but we did go down and walk along the beach. Once we got on the plane we actually flew to Dallas and had a 3 hour layover and then flew to Vegas. So needless to say we had been on 4 airplanes for a total of 15 hours over two days time. All flights in and out of Hawaii are over night too so we had had hardly any sleep. Because of that I couldn't really recover from the flu so I threw up on the plane flying home. Finally, what seemed like an eternity, we got to the hospital and I was able to comfort and hold my little girl. My mom said Lexi’s whole attitude changed when we got there and she finally did start eating again. It was a very slow process and the doctor wanted to keep her over night so overall she was in the hospital from Sunday night to Wednesday. Lexi is doing great now and she recovered well. She had multiple bruises and cigarette lighter looking burns on her legs, but overall she is doing fine. She is very close to crawling and has almost 5 teeth. Jaron and I were sad to leave Hawaii but we were so happy to be with our little girl!

Our one Hawaii picture eating breakfast trying to be happy. Look at my enourmous pancakes that I hardly made a dent in!
Lexi in the hospital crib
Her cigarette lighter like burns 
A small example of her bruises