2011

I have a few more hours until 2012 and I can't help but reminisce a little about this past year. 2011 was probably the best year of our lives, and also probably the hardest year. It has been full of changes, challenges and lots of happy memories. Here are a few favorites from the year:

January 4, 2011

The best day of the year and my favorite memory:

holding my sweet little miracle for the first time.

Oh how he has changed our world!

January was full of first memories that I will always treasure- watching my husband cuddle with his newborn son, holding my baby in the middle of the night when everything else was dark and quiet, Chase's first bath, first doctors appointment, first visitors, Ben and I sitting for hours holding this sweet baby and admiring him.

February

Chase's blessing

Our romantic candlelight Valentine's dinner at home that Chase cooperated and slept through

Our romantic date night out of Ben's birthday sans baby

March

Our trip to Washington DC for Kevin and Jessi's wedding- Chase's first time on a plane

Visiting the DC temple and attending Kevin and Jessi's beautiful sealing

Our sleepover with Andrew and Chana- nothing like staying up super late with old friends:)

April

We had such a beautiful Easter this year, church was wonderful and we had a delicious dinner with my family and the Caldwells

Right after Easter we said good-bye, packed up and started our journey to Dominica

Traveling to Dominica was scary, stressful and exciting- we didn't truly know then what we an adventure we were in for! Chase was a champ even though the trip did not go nearly as smoothly as we'd planned. I was so glad when we finally got to Dominica after two long, exhausting days of travel.

May

Ben started medical school. It was such a great feeling to know he was finally able to officially start down the path of fulfilling his dream of becoming a doctor.

Ben and Chase eating lunch on the first day of school

Shortly after arriving in Dominica Chase became a pretty happy, easy going kid. We hit this groove right around 4-5 months where I really felt like I'd gotten the hang of being a mom. He started giggling all the time, which I still think is one of the best sounds in the world.

June

Chase sat up on his own for the first time on my birthday

July

I took Chase swimming for the first time on the 4th of July.

My absolute favorite memory of July was my mom's visit-

it was something I was looking forward to and I loved having her here and getting

to share this beautiful island with her.

August

Ben successfully finished his first semester of medical school- finally getting his grades and knowing he passed was one of the happiest memories of the year!

We did some fun exploring together as a family, visiting Batibou Bay and Emerald Pool.

September

Ben started his second semester of medical school- pretty much the only eventful part of September.

October

I took a last minute trip to visit Utah! Chase and I had a blast there, loving being with family, the comforts of the USA and loved the beautiful fall leaves and weather in Utah.

Chase was the cutest pumpkin ever for Halloween

And just the sense of accomplishment that I survived a 30 hour international journey with a ten month old by myself without losing it.

November

Our Island Thanksgiving

December

Will came to Dominica for a week!

Ben finished second semester- another happy memory at seeing his grades and knowing he'd passed.

Our spontaneous (thanks to American Airlines and the Dominican Airport) sleepover weekend with our friends the Warners after we'd already said good-bye

Moving away from our first Dominica home to our new place

Our first Christmas on our own and our first Christmas with Chase

Seeing Chase open his presents and have so much fun playing with new toys

As I said before, this year has been full of changes: a new little member of our family, moving to a new country, starting a new and challenging education program for Ben, starting life as a stay at home mom for me, making new friends and meeting new people, the list goes on and on. There have been so many challenges this year from learning to live on no sleep and how to be parents to Ben's highly stressful and time intensive study program, along with the lack of resources, medical care, technology support, and many normal grocery items living here in Dominica. All of these have given us an opportunity to grow- and grow we did! Ben and I have grown closer to each other and closer to our Savior. We've learned many life changing lessons and had our perspective broadened. This year has been happy and wonderful and hard and challenging, and now looking back, I wouldn't change it for the world!

Christmas

Our first Christmas with our sweet baby Chase was fabulous! Chase was so excited to see what Santa brought him that he got up at 5 (either that, or the poor kids teeth were bothering him, one of the two) so we did our Christmas morning nice and early! Chase was so cute looking at his new toys. I didn't realize it would take so long to open his presents because he wanted to play and thoroughly explore each item and we had to coax him to open another present.

Chase's main present from Santa was this little push toy (that I bought for 8 dollars second hand a few months ago). He also got some fun little cars I brought back from Utah last October. This kid always plays with the little cars at other kids houses, now he finally has his own! We got him a few new books, he got some darling blocks from my parents and an Elmo movie from Ben's parents. He had a ball all day playing with the new toys!





Since we obviously don't have a lot of extra money these days with no income and paying for medical school, Ben and I decided not to give each other anything under the tree this year (although right now a new apartment and finishing the first year of medical school is much better than any present we could buy each other) but it really didn't matter because it was so fun to watch our baby have his first Christmas! We did have some gifts to unwrap from my mom- which we loved- Ben has been really missing beef down here and my mom and dad sent him some beef rolls (is that what they are called? They come in those gift baskets people get at Christmas time)- which we got a kick out of. We also owe a BIG THANK-YOU to my mom and dad for our big Christmas gift this year, my new laptop! My old one died back in November, which was so frustrating down here with no way to replace or fix it, so my parents bought us a new one and sent it down with Will. We have been very blessed this year!

We had one hour of church on Christmas morning with a really nice program. Our primary kids sang so sweetly- I was so proud of them! We came home and got working on our Christmas dinner. We bought a turkey and cooked it in our oven (for the first time ever) and I made rolls. We made a black forest cake on Christmas Eve together, which tasted even better than it looked. We invited a cute family from our branch, the van Ormans over with their three kids and the missionaries. Van Ormans brought the potatoes, carrots, salad and drinks. It was a fabulous feast!



Chase was pretty ornery and would only eat rolls. Ben said it was Christmas and we should let him have what he wanted, so we fed him like 2 1/2 rolls and then let him go play. He found his way over to the missionaries and started begging for their food- mostly their rolls. They got such a kick out of him. They wanted him to eat more than just rolls, so they'd lure him in with a bite of a roll, the give him huge bites of turkey, carrots and potatoes. I think Chase ended up eating 4 rolls, along with a whole bunch of other food. The kid was STUFFED. His little tummy was a little distended. Once all that food was done and we served up dessert he went right over and started begging more. He did get a few bites of cake out of Elder Stout before we had to call it a night. Chase threw up a little and went to bed!

We had a very Merry Christmas here in Dominica! It was a more simple Christmas, but it was our first together as a family and it was wonderful. We are counting our blessings this year and are so grateful for our Savior. Christmas is such a wonderful time to appreciate the life of Christ, and we found we didn't need snow, hot chocolate or Christmas lights to make it Christmas. I love this quote from Elder Uchtdorf from the Christmas devotional-

If we are only willing to open our hearts and minds to the spirit of Christmas, we will recognize wonderful things happening around us that will direct or redirect our attention to the sublime. It is usually something small—we read a verse of scripture; we hear a sacred carol and really listen, perhaps for the first time, to its words; or we witness a sincere expression of love. In one way or another, the Spirit touches our hearts, and we see that Christmas, in its essence, is much more sturdy and enduring than the many minor things of life we too often use to adorn it.

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!

Love,

The Hugo Family

Christmas Eve- Island Style

Growing up Christmas Eve was always one of my favorite days of the year, even more than Christmas day. Ben and I wanted to start some new traditions for our little family, especially now that we have our little guy. We also wanted to take advantage of living on this beautiful island at Christmas. Yesterday afternoon we started off our celebrating with some time at the pool. Chase loves playing in the water now, especially when he has two adults there to play with him.As we were leaving to go to the pool Chase crawled to the closet and pulled out his little shoes and handed them to me. Apparently he wanted to be in style for the pool. I think he looks just adorable!
My family's Christmas Eve tradition is to eat soup in bread bowls on the fancy dishes by candlelight. I made bread bowls from scratch (I was super proud of myself) and butternut squash soup. We ate by our one candle light (it is actually a citronella candle- no mosquitos at our Christmas Eve dinner) and we used one of our lanterns because the one candle wasn't quite light enough for the baby to be able to see his food.
After dinner we let Chase open one present, his Christmas jammies! He was adorable trying to unwrap his presents. I showed him what to do by tearing off a piece. He was more concerned with trying to put the torn piece back on the present. Eventually we got the whole thing unwrapped and he looked just darling in these little jammies.
We tried to read Luke 2 and show Chase the story with his little Nativity finger puppets my mom sent. Mostly he grabbed two of the wiseman and took off for the trash can. He often feels like the wisemen need a time out. Hopefully by next year Chase will get the Christmas story a little better:)
After we put Chase to bed we watched The Muppet Christmas Carol (thanks Mom!), one of my favorite Christmas movies ever! It was a lovely Christmas Eve- our first as a family of three!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my wonderful mother's birthday! I'm so sad that I'm not there in Utah to celebrate with her, so I figured that a blog post would be the next best thing:)

When I was thinking of a way to convey how great she is, I thought of a care package she sent us back in October. We love getting packages here, it feels like Christmas every time we open one. After we picked it up at the post office I was so excited to take it home and go through it. There were several items we asked her to send that we were needing and as I started going through the package I found every one of them, exactly what we needed. I had to smile a little bit to see that the package was packed to the brim, not one bit of space wasted. This woman is organized, creative and efficient. There were several items in the package that we didn't ask for, but she had picked up from some of our conversations that we might be needing/wanting them. She is intuitive and she perceptive. She has always had an ability to just pick up on what others might be needing and she always steps forward to serve them. Then there were some other items that we really didn't need, but were just for fun and made me happy. We can't get a lot of "extras" down here, so their inclusion seemed like such a luxury to us. She spreads happiness wherever she goes.

Happy Birthday Mom! We love you!

WE MOVED! We love our new place! We started packing up on Monday afternoon. Chase wanted to help. We stuck him in the barrel we were packing at the time and he had a blast pulling out all the clothes we had just packed. It was adorable.


After that he climbed into the suitcase I had just finished packing. Apparently I didn't get it quite right, so he helped me out by pulling all the stuff out of it so I could try again.

Tuesday morning we moved into our new apartment. Our friends Broc and Crystal came to help us move. Crystal watched Chase while Broc helped load and unload stuff- they saved us! We got everything into our new place in about an hour and spent the rest of the day getting everything organized. We love the new digs- it's bigger, cleaner, nicer and so close to everything! Here are a few pictures of the new spot. We are loving the comfy couches, having a kitchen table, a normal size oven, a study space for Ben. The only downside is our bedroom, which we are now sharing with Chase, who is teething and no longer sleeping through the night. I guess we'll just need to adjust:)




Now that we have the move over with and the semester done, we can fully enjoy our Christmas break! We've been playing Christmas music all day, baking cookies and Ben and I finally got around to watching the First Presidency Christmas devotional. It's helped me stay focused on what is really important this season- celebrating and honoring our Savior and spending time with my little family, instead of focusing on what we are missing back in Utah (although we do miss our family back in the states dearly!) My mom did send us a few Christmas decorations and a stocking for Chase, and I've loved having them out! A friend in our branch brought back crafting supplies from the states and we made these JOY decorations a few weeks ago. I LOVE this time of year!

HALF WAY

Yesterday we had a great day. We are moving today to our new place and amidst all the packing we got the email. THE EMAIL! The email that reports Ben's grades for the semester. We were both filled with relief, happiness and gratitude to see that he passed 2nd semester. This semester was hard. Ben studied long, long hours. We were stressed out of our minds several times. We said lots of prayers. He has officially and successfully completed year 1 of medical school! We are now on the downhill stretch of our time on the island, 2 semesters down 2 to go. We just couldn't be more thrilled.

Today we are moving. Every other time I've moved to a new place there has been this small twinge of sadness in me (or big twinge, depending on the move) at leaving the old place with all it's memories and neighbors we loved. This time I feel none of that, for a few reasons. The only regret I have about this move is that we didn't do it sooner. The new place is much nicer, newer, cheaper, closer to campus, more spacious, has American electrical outlets and a full size oven. It's a dream here in Dominica. It's not too far away from where we used to live, so I can still see my neighbor all the time. Basically there is no downside. (Besides that it is a one bedroom apartment, not quite sure yet how that is going to go) We are ecstatic about the move- I'll post pictures once we are in the new place!

A week of emotions

This last week has been full of every emotion possible. Here is the short list:

ANXIETY: Last Tuesday Ben took his final. For a little explanation, this final makes up 45% of his final grade and it is comprehensive. Ben felt like it was hard, but he'd done all he could possibly do and studied as hard and long as he possibly could.

RELIEF: Once the final was over I got my husband back! Chase is able to enjoy all the time in the world with his dad. We have had time to relax and just enjoy being together as a family. We haven't been able to do that since August. It has been lovely.

SADNESS: I hate saying good bye. Really, really dislike it. My dear friend Ann and her little family have completed their time here on the island. Ann has been my saving grace here many times and I've been dreading her leaving. On Friday I said good bye to this amazing woman and her cute little family. I was so sad.

SURPRISE: Later Friday night Ann's husband showed up at our door during dinner. They missed their flight- which is sad and frustrating for them- but so exciting for us! They needed a place to stay, so we put them up at our little place. It was a blast. We had a weekend long party! I think Heavenly Father knew that I just needed a little more time with my friend:) It was a nice little early Christmas present.

MORE ANXIETY: Still waiting for grades to come out.

PEACE: I love the Christmas season! I've had a few opportunities to study about the Savior during this season and it fills me with peace, hope and love for my Savior.

Here are some darling pictures of Chase with Ann's little one Alise. Alise is two months younger than Chase and they are such great buddies. They crawl around after each other, have to eat whenever the other one is eating, steal each other's food (well, mostly just Chase steals Alise's food- we're working on his manners) and sometimes will just sit and smile at each other. I think they might be soul mates.