Christmas

 We had a wonderful date night with the siblings! My parents watched all the kiddos and we went out for Sushi. It was a wonderful night full of laughs and awesome conversation with these people we love so much!

Sadly, we got hit with some serious sickness the weekend before Christmas. Davis had it earlier in the week, then Hudson came down with it and the next day Chase did. We had to cancel a bunch of our plans and just cleaned up a lot of gross throw up messes and comforted our poor, fevering boys. As Hudson was laying on the couch totally exhausted and feeling so crummy, I pulled out Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone to read to him. He immediately perked up and loved listening while he rest. It was fun to add a little magic, even though he was miserable. Having sick kids around Christmas is so sad, especially when there were fun parties we had to miss. But this is partly why we start celebrating Christmas early in the month and continue all month long, so it's not too big of a deal when something like this throws a kink in our plans.

 I wasn't able to get the classic "family around the Christmas tree on Sunday" picture since Chase was still so sick and Ben stayed home with him. Hudson was better so the two of us went to church since I had to lead the music in Sacrament meeting. It was a beautiful meeting with messages of Christ and pretty music.

 We had a cousins dinner at Amanda's house that Heidi and I went to. It was so fun to see Kelly and Ella (and everyone else). It was a really relaxed, low-key affair. After three days of cleaning up puke it was nice to get out.

 Christmas Eve brought us a few gifts- 3 healthy kids (finally!) and some snow! After a birthday brunch at my parents house we came home to let the boys play in the snow. They made snow-mice since Davis is obsessed with Mickey. I was glad these boys were finally able to get a little fresh air.

We had a great Christmas Eve celebration at my parents house! We did a talent show for the little guys. Davis jumped. Hudson did light-saber skills. And Chase played the piano. We played some fun games and chatted and enjoyed each other's company. Everyone's favorite part is the candlelight dinner. It's always so delicious and peaceful and just full of Christmas spirit, love and family. 

We did the nativity puppet show and then opened gifts. Our very favorite moment was when Heidi gave Hudson his "force has chosen you" Lightsaber! (It changes from blue to red, so you can be either Anakin or Darth Vadar, also Hudson made up that name for it, although he's sure that's what it's called). He screamed and shook with delight and then almost tackled Heidi with the most sincere hug of excitement and appreciation. It was the cutest little moment! 

 We got our boys to bed and finished up Christmas stuff. We always wrap the top of the stairs so that the boys can't see down there to see their toys. It was so fun to see them tear down the wrapping and run down to the tree Christmas morning. They were so excited to get the nerf guns they asked Santa for!

After the excitement of presents we had Ben's parents over for a lovely brunch. I didn't take one picture. Overall, I was disappointed with my lack of beautiful Christmas pictures. But I was also trying to just enjoy the moment with my family, so not every thing got documented well.

At some point on Christmas day, Hudson fell asleep just like this on the ottoman. It had been a lot of excitement!

 We had a beautiful Christmas dinner up at my parents house and played Chase's new Harry Potter Clue board game. It was a really beautiful Christmas. I feel so lucky that this year everyone was healthy and happy and that we were together!

December

We kicked off the Christmas season as soon as we got home from Florida with our annual kick off party. I love this night so much! We listen to Christmas music while we decorate the tree. The kids love putting on all their special ornaments. They are still ecstatic to open their new Christmas jammies and then we curled up together and watched "Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas"- which was a huge hit with Davis.

We visited Santa early in the month (got to get those orders in!). Hudson and Chase asked for nerf guns. Davis happily sat right on Santa's lap and was super excited about it- even though I'm pretty sure he didn't know what was going on?! Hudson told Santa that Davis would like a new carseat for Christmas.

 I love how my house looks and feels decorated for Christmas! It's just magical. We keep the lights going on the tree and banister all day (and evening) long and I love the pretty glow it gives off. It just makes everything feel peaceful. We also have Christmas music playing most of the day.

 We've been doing our daily service activities and I love it. It brings such a great focus of love, service, and Christ to our month! One activity in particular was crazy and awesome at the same time! I got this idea that I wanted to do a gingerbread house party with a whole bunch of neighborhood kids. I wanted the kids to have fun making them, but also wanted their moms to get a break. Luckily, my friend Megan is always down when I come up with stuff like this, so she easily agreed to help me. We sent out a text to 6 of our neighbors (some of our closest friends, and a few that we don't know quite as well but thought they could really use the break) and invited their kids (ALL their kids, babies included) to come make gingerbread houses on Wednesday afternoon for 2 hours. We told them we wanted to give them a break and it would be a fun afternoon with their kids. Within minutes, all 6 responded with so much love and gratitude.

 We had 23 kids over (my three and Megan's three included in that)- ages 5 months to 12 years old! It actually wasn't as nuts as I thought it would be. Everyone brought some candy to share to help decorate. Megan and I glue-gunned the houses together the night before. We had two groups (the younger kids went first, and then older kids, since we could only fit about 9 kids at a time around my table). The babies all played in the family room- we had 6 baby boys, all 2 and under and they were all great!

 At some point Davis got into a bag of M&Ms- so this happened :)

 Mostly it was so awesome! My boys had so much fun and loved doing a gingerbread house and having all their little buddies over. I was happy we were able to give all these tired, hard working mamas a little break. And really an hour after everyone left I had my house totally clean and put together. I think we'll make it a tradition!

 Ben was out of town 3 weeks in a row, which made for a more intense month for me. The boys were honestly really good though. One day, during the hustle of the morning, I walked by Chase's room to see him reading sweetly to Davis! Such a sweet little moment.

We got a little snow and Davis was so excited to use the tiny shovel to help his brothers! Ben was of course out of town this day and the boys did the whole driveway and sidewalks for me!

We spent a crazy night at Christmas village. Davis was nuts, but we still had fun. Nana and Papa came with us. I love this magical little gem at Christmas time!

December was full of Christmas parties, which mostly went unphotographed. We did take a picture of all the Bennett, Hugo and Virgin kids are our annual BYU friends Christmas party. This night is always the best and this year was no exception. The kids all played beautifully, great conversation for the adults and just a lot of Christmas cheer. I can't believe we have ten kids between us (soon to be 11!)

Chase's Christmas piano recital was a real highlight for us! Chase has taken to the piano so well. He gets up at 6:30 every morning on his own and goes downstairs to practice for 30 minutes. He doesn't complain about it and he works really hard. His teacher, Jodi Newbold, who is my good friend, has told me many times how fun it has been to teach Chase because he really gets it and is so motivated. He played "The First Noel" and "Jingle Bells" and he played both perfectly! He learned about 12 different Christmas carols and I loved listening to him practice all month long!

The stuff photographed and documented here is probably only half of the stuff we did during December.  It was a BUSY month. A lot of the time I felt exhausted. There were so many nights while Ben was out of town that I put the kids to bed after reading Christmas books to them and I felt the most peaceful contentment. I'd sit by the light of the Christmas tree and breath in the sweetness of the season. And there were also a few nights that I was in tears with frustration and exhaustion. 

One silver lining to Ben going out of town at this particular time of year was that all my friends and neighbors were also trying to serve in the spirit of Christmas and "light the world". So I had sweet friends invite us to dinner at their homes, bring us dinner, offer to watch kids, drop off little Christmas gifts, I even got a beautiful poinsettia delivered from an out of state friend. I definitely felt loved and supported. I'm surrounded by angels for sure.

Our Amazing Florida Trip

We spent an amazing week in Florida over Thanksgiving with the whole Smith family and the trip was AMAZING! Seriously, it could not have gone better. Our itinerary was diverse and awesome and so kid friendly and we all had such a wonderful time. I had a hard time even choosing which pictures to post, because there are SO MANY. This is really a short version of this wonderful trip!

We spent our first day at Kennedy Space Center. My dad was so excited to take the boys here, and they were so excited to go. It did not disappoint! I hadn't been here in 20 years and I was pleasantly surprised by how informative, entertaining, and vast it was! We spent five hours there and could have stayed longer if the baby was in a better mood. 

 Chase wanted to read everything, learn everything and explore everything. Hudson had some pretending going on in his mind, and especially in interactive displays was pretending to "hack into the network" and "stop viruses". He had Aunt Heidi join in his imagination, it was darling!

 We did three days at Disney parks- all of which were so fun and unique! We did Magic Kingdom our first day, and despite the crowds still had a great time! Davis got to ride a few kiddie rides with Nana and Papa (Winnie the Pooh and the carousel) while the rest of us went on Splash Mountain. We got lucky with fastpasses and got to go twice, which was great since it was Chase and Hudson's very favorite ride!

 Heidi was a real life saver. She's amazing with all the kids, but Hudson especially feels very bonded to her and spent 90% of the trip holding her hand. It was great to know he was happy and having one less kid to keep track of.

 Hudson rode almost all of splash mountain with his hands in the air! He loves the drop- which is surprising for a kid who doesn't generally like slides!

 We hit up Peter Pan, Pirates, Haunted Mansion, Small World, Buzz Lightyeard, Little Mermaid, Monsters Inc Laugh floor, and saw the parade. It was a long day, but so much fun! The kids were real troopers, I knew they'd be, and weren't scared of anything and were game for everything!

 Our next day was Animal Kingdom, and I was actually blown away by how cool it was. I didn't have super high expectations for it and is was awesome. We started out by riding Everest, which is a fairly intense ride. We all got so sick, except Hudson who thought it was the best thing ever! And then we rode Kali Rapids and got completely soaked. It was nice that while we rode things Davis couldn't do, Papa would take him to go see animals and everyone was happy!

 Davis did get to ride this little ride in Dinoland twice while his brothers went on the big Dinosaur ride twice (so cool!). We figured out the rider swap thing and used it to our advantage so the boys could ride really cool rides twice, which made the longer wait times much easier to manage.

 Davis and the girls got to meet Donald Duck. Davis is so into Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and I wasn't sure how he'd react to seeing the characters up close. Sometimes those big characters throw kids off. Not Davis, he was so thrilled he could hardly contain himself. He wouldn't even look at the camera for pictures because he couldn't take his eyes off Donald.

 I left him with Papa for a few minutes and this is what happened. It's chocolate ice cream.

 The Safari was awesome. The Lion King show was awesome. Davis went nuts for it. Pandora world is so so cool. We did the river cruise and we all loved it. Overall, the atmosphere at animal kingdom was so unique and so cool. It might have been everyone's favorite day of the trip!

 Also, our hotel was just amazing. We had two condos next door to each other. They were comfortable, beautiful and spacious. It was the perfect place to congregate and relax, eat and play games. So much fun family bonding going on there! The resort had beautiful grounds and so much to do. There were little parks to play on, mini golf, basketball, shuffle board, and life size chess set, a fun game room and arcade, pools and hot tubs, a ferry boat to ride. We could have just stayed there all week and never left and been happy! Also, the sun was shining and the weather couldn't have been more pleasant. It was so nice to see the sun!

 These little cousins had so much fun together. Hudson and Nora would get one of their imaginary games going and be immersed in it for hours.

 This was Thanksgiving Day, right before dinner. We bought it mostly at Costco and just warmed and assembled- it was delicious. My heart felt so full, especially in the spirit of the holiday, to be enjoying such a wonderful trip with all my favorite people that I love so much.

 Our last day we went with Heidi and my mom to Hollywood studios. Atmosphere there isn't quite so cool, but they did have Toy Story Land which was darling and the boys loved it! The slinky dog coaster (which they got to ride twice, thanks to rider swap) was a major highlight for them. Hollywood Studios also has the Star Wars attractions, and since Hudson is majorly obsessed with Star Wars that alone made it worth it to go! He met Chewbacca, BB8 and Kylo Ren (who asked him to join the Dark Side and Hudson agreed, but later told me he didn't really mean it).

The highlight of the whole day, possibly the whole trip, was when Davis got to meet Mickey Mouse. This was the best place to do it. The line was short and he got to meet Minnie as well (also darling). Mickey is Davis's favorite person ever and Davis kept exclaiming "Dat's MICKEY!" and pointing to him.  All his dreams came true and it was the most darling thing I've ever seen. 

 Davis loved these glasses that we used for Toy Story Mania (such a cool ride)- and he threw a huge fit when we had to give them back!

 Davis was a huge fan of vacation, even with all the naps on the go and trouble sleeping at night (which was probably harder on me and Ben) he was a happy camper. He just loved being out and about and being part of everything.

 Our flight home was a little exhausting- this photo is during the very short nap Davis took. But we made it! The big kids are big fans of flying and they were perfect on the flights.

Traveling with kids (mostly with the littlest one) is definitely exhausting, but also so rewarding and so worth it. I'm so glad we got to go with the whole big family, it was so fun to share the experience together and form all those new memories. I love seeing my kids bond more with their aunts and uncles and cousins. I loved having a whole week to just focus on my people, and leave the rest of the stresses of life and home and work behind. I loved having Ben with us for the whole week. I loved how often Davis napped in my (very tired) arms. I loved seeing my boys faces light up on the cool rides or when they met a character they love. I loved seeing them learn new things and explore a new state. It was all just so wonderful and filled my heart with so much peace, happiness, contentment and love for all these people (and mostly for my parents for making it all happen!).