December is our month of parties! With having three kids now, and my goal to be fully present and enjoy the people I am with, I didn't take many pictures (or any!) at most of these parties!
We had a fun ward party and parties with both the Smith and White extended families. We had our traditional party with our BYU friends down at Virgin's new home and it was just lovely. Wonderful food and even better company. The only picture I have is of the three babies. Sophie is 6 months older than Brooks and Davis, who are two weeks apart. Davis is a good 10 pounds smaller than Brooks!
We did our traditional service activities each day during December. We made lots of Christmas treats to deliver to various people. The boys took them to the police and fire station, to a few different widows and widowers, the mailman, primary and school teachers, and neighbors. We made dinner for a family with a new baby and fed the missionaries. We opened doors for people, gave lots of hugs and back rubs, made each other's beds, sent Christmas cards to missionaries, focused on kind words and donated food to the food bank. I love doing this. Some days it goes better than others, but I feel like it puts such a good focus on service and love during the month. It helps us be a little less selfish and I love seeing the boy's enthusiasm for serving others, and learning that it can be fun!
Davis turned 9 months old! He's 17 pounds 2 oz (10th percentile) and 26 inches (not even on the chart) and super healthy and just perfect and darling! He loved ripping the paper in the doctors office while we waited. He's been hit or miss on sleep, spent most of December cutting his two bottom teeth (that finally came through on Christmas Eve) and has been making our spirits bright every day since he was born! We reminisced a lot all month long about what a wonderful, perfect addition Davis is to our family and how thankful we are to have him with us this Christmas.
We spent a lovely evening at Christmas Village with the Smith family! We all love that place. The boys love seeing every little house and it snowed that night, which made it extra magical.
Both boys had darling Christmas programs at school this month! I've loved hearing all their cute songs all month long. At Chase's program, he got chosen to lead his class in their cute poem about Christmas surprises. Davis watched both programs like a perfect little brother- entranced and entertained the whole time. Ben and I gushed in the audience both times at how cute and darling our boys are!
We had cookie wars with the Smith family. It was so fun! We had teams and each team picked a theme. We had Santa's workshop (Heidi, Will, Nora and Nana), Christmas Lights (Chase, Ben, Papa and Halie) and 12 days of Christmas (Me, Katie, Hudson and Nate). It was a blast, and Santa's workshop clearly won, although I think we were all impressed with the creativity all around. Any team that has Heidi clearly has a solid advantage :)
One of my parent's Christmas surprises for the kids was a ride on the Polar Express (Heber Creeper)! They were so excited and had so much fun. Chase said his favorite part was learning about the history of the train and Hudson's was the long conversation he had with an elf. Sounds about right! It was a magical afternoon for them!
Then it was finally Christmas! Christmas Eve fell on Sunday, which was just lovely. We have 1:00 church, so we spent a relaxing morning at home watching Christmas movies together. We loved attending church and listening to the beautiful music and messages about Christ.
Then it was time for our traditional Smith family party! We played minute-to-win-it (so hilarious!) and charades (equally funny) and had a beautiful candlelight dinner. My boys talk about this dinner all year and think that eating my candlelight is the best. I have to agree. I look forward to it all year. We did the nativity with puppets and then did our gift exchange. The boys were completely spoiled by their cousins, grandparents and aunt Heidi. I seriously wondered why we even bothered to buy them Christmas presents! Heidi got them watches and they were a huge hit. Chase has been telling us what time it is every five minutes and has thanked Heidi profusely for them. They also got some darling books, cute outfits and some fun games!
We packed up to head home and it was snowing! We haven't had much snow, so seeing beautiful snowfall on Christmas Eve was just magical! To make things even better, we got home and started getting the boys towards bed. Chase stopped to write Santa a note. I was trying to rush him to bed, but once I saw the note, my heart melted. Hudson is always kind of a mischievous and temper-prone child (along with a LOT of sweetness and darling, good characteristics too). Hudson had been threatened repeatedly that he could be on the naughty list. Chase's note read "Dear Santa. I know Hudson has been hitting, kicking and punching. But mostly he's been good. love, Chase A. Hugo" and then he drew a picture of our house. How sweet is that! He was looking out for his little brother!
Luckily we had all the kids in bed, fast asleep by like 9:30 and Ben and I were in bed by 10:30! It was a peaceful, beautiful Christmas Eve! Everyone slept through the night (a rarity in our house in 2017, thanks mostly to Davis), but they were up early (again, thank you Davis). We had a lovely morning opening presents and the boys were delighted with every single thing they opened! I made them new aprons, which they loved, and shutterfly books of their toddler years (since they love their baby books so much), which were a hit. Of course, they were delighted that Santa delivered what they'd hoped for and then we spent all day long playing our new games, assembling legos (Chase's little heart could have burst with happiness) and relaxing.
We finished the day up at my parents house with a delicious turkey dinner and a rousing round of trivial pursuit (in which the girls team won!). It was really a perfect, lovely Christmas!
