Feburary

Hudson continued to explore his creativity with his new 3D pen. I love seeing him create!

Groundhog Day!

Davis and his kindergarten BFF- Luke R.! We hear about Luke R. All the time and he likes all the same things Davis does- although his a slightly more chill personality. 

Davis makes his own lunch sometimes- mayo and pickle (and nothing else) sandwiches are his favorite. When I asked him about it, his response is “because I love it!”

The night before Valentines Day- I love having something set up for my people in the morning. I hope someday my kids will look back on these memories and just feel that their mom loved them so much. 

I did ZERO work to help the boys get valentines boxes ready. So Hudson spent over an hour creating a box he thought would be funny. And Chase glued two hearts on a shoe box that morning of Valentine’s Day. Very “on brand” for both of them. 

Another one of Hudson’s creations- a license plate for Lila’s “tesla”. He modeled it after the Utah plate with delicate arch (it says her name).

I picked my parents up from the airport one very snowy day, taking the littles along for the ride. I was white-knuckle driving to the airport and thought it was a little too quiet (although I enjoyed not having screaming or loud kids complicating our ride). Once we got there I turned around to see this.

We worked all month on getting Lila’s big girl room ready- this is the night we got her bed set up. She was so proud of it!

Hudson’s 4th grade program! I loved this program so much. The songs were mostly so nostalgic for me, as they were written for the centennial when I was in 2nd grade and I learned them as a kid. Hudson was so into getting ready for it and even got the honor of welcoming all the parents and introducing the program. I love this kid!

Davis got the “giggle gas” (as he calls feeling sick). This was just the start…I would go on through several members of our family over the next few weeks. 

We got to attend our buddy Will’s baptism. Will plays with all three of the kids all the time- like he’s always at our house! We laughed looking around because among quite a few little boys there at the baptism, Lila was the ONLY little girl there! (He has lots of boy cousins too!)

Chase and his robotics team competed in a 3rd tournament, their last chance to qualify for STATE. As some background, his team this year has been very frustrating. Both of the other boys are new to robotics and have very little interest in building or coding (basically any of the work) and just want to be able to “play” with the robot. This means Chase has single-handedly carrying the whole team all season. Ben has helped him a lot and the two of them have spent hours and hours building and problem solving and coding and strategizing. The challenge this year was HARD and COMPLEX and Chase kept working!

At his 2nd competition their robot didn’t pass inspection- it was outside the size limits, contrary to the info he got from his coaches. He was so frustrated and had to make last minute changes. He rallied enough to compete, but it didn’t work nearly as well as it could have/should have because of it. It was such a bummer. 

So they entered one last tournament and they totally rocked it! They got 2nd place in the teamwork competition, 2 place in skills, the JUDGES award and an invite to the STATE tournament! We were so proud of him. Chase was elated! 

Through all this, Chase has stayed really positive. Praising his teammates for the tiny amount of effort they have put in and just picking up all the slack in the meantime. This boy is going places!

 

January

 Man, January was busy! Besides our two birthday boys, we still had lots of fun this month! We had Chase’s first robotics tournament. Ben and Chase have spent hours and hours building this robot and they did so well at the competition! And somehow, the only pictures I took were of Lila and Megan.

January was so cold, we couldn’t play outside hardly at all. And although we felt a little stir crazy at times, we found a lot of ways to be creative inside.

I argued with Davis every single day about if he could wear shorts. He had to wear long pants to school, but promptly came home and changed into shorts every day. One day he even snuck shorts to school and changed in the bathroom! It was actively snowing that day and my kindergartener came home in shorts- super proud of himself for finding a loophole!

We babysat Buddy one weekend and then Buddy started coming back regularly during the day. The kids all love him so much!

Poor Davis got super sick- high fever and he was just miserable. He loved having Buddy sit next to him. Every time we’d take Buddy outside Davis was respond “hey! Bring my buddy back!” Even when he was his sickest, he’d keep one hand stretched out to pet Buddy.

Hudson is just so handsome and so stylish! Nate and Halie gave him this jacket for Christmas and he looks so cute sporting it to church each Sunday. 

Chase got to go on his first Young Men’s camp out! It was a winter camp out in cabins with lots of sledding and he had the time of his life! He has been so excited to join this program and loved bonding with all the older boys!

We had the Smith girls sleepover! We did a babysitting swap and took their girls one night earlier in the month and then they took ours later. Putting Lila and Rose to sleep in the same room felt like a huge accomplishment! I didn’t take any other pictures all weekend- it was busy and crazy and the kids all had so much fun! 

Davis’s little kindergarten class made snowmen in a directed drawing art project. The wall was full of big, white snowmen with blue sky backgrounds. Then here was Davis’s drawing. It was so cute and he was SO SO proud of it! I wrote down his commentary explaining his project because it was just the cutest!

Early in the month we embarked on a little refresh for the office/gym. We painted the whole thing, moved furniture around, fixed some drywall from the flood last year and hung up the new paintings Halie made for Ben for Christmas. I love the feel in here now! 

Just our cute, spunky girl all ready for church!

We hosted a dinner for our BYU friends. We usually get together at Christmas time, but December was so busy we moved it to January which was actually an awesome move. Between the Bennetts and the Virgins we have 13 kids between us and we love seeing these friends so much! The only picture I took was this one of Lila and Lucy. They look so much alike! 

“G major scale is the worst!”

The Birthday Boys!

January means birthday season at our house! It’s such a fun way to start a new year, celebrating the best boys! Chase’s birthday is January 4th- he turned 12! It was such a big milestone. He’s been so excited to be ordained a deacon and get to enter the Young Men’s program at church. Right at the first of the year Ben ordained him a deacon. Both sets of grandparents were able to come and both grandpas stood in the circle to be part of having their first grandson ordained to the Priesthood. He got to pass the sacrament that day and took it very seriously. He bore his testimony that day about how he really felt the spirit when he was ordained. The kids has a heart of gold- we love him so much!

He has requested since last April that I make this specific coconut cream cake for his birthday. It’s a very time intensive cake between the cakes, filling and frosting, so I did it over three days and he loved it so it was all worth it! 

I make it a tradition to take my kids out to lunch for their birthdays. I also took Chase to Barnes and Noble  and let him pick any book he wanted (he knew which one he wanted right away!). As we were packing up to go, Lila started to beg to come along. She had been sick the 5 days before and was so sick of being stuck at home. Sweet Chase immediately suggested we bring her along and she was delighted to come. He’s the sweetest big brother. He even switched his lunch choice because he thought Zupas would be something Lila liked more than his original idea. It was a fun afternoon with my biggest and littlest. 

We did a family birthday at our Smith family Sunday dinner. Mom had a Sacher Torte flown in from Vienna (her friend Elli in Vienna sends her one- or this year three- every Christmas). The boys were thrilled to use it for their birthday celebration- fancy Austrian cake! 

 To celebrate Hudson’s big 10th birthday we took his two best buddies- Hyrum and Richie- plus his younger sibs to the trampoline park and then out to dinner. His friends are the absolute cutest. Richie ended up taking Lila down the slides at the park over and over and over on his lap! They were all so cute to include Davis in their fun. These boys are the sweetest and Hudson is so lucky to have them!

Somehow Lila got to tag along on Hudson’s birthday lunch too! He chooses Old Grist Mill every year. I truly love hanging out with Hudson so much! 

Hudson had very specific ideas for his birthday cake. He wanted brownies- double thick- with whipped cream- cream cheese frosting with Oreos mixed in. It was delicious and he loved it! 

He really wanted this bungee chair for months and months and was so excited to get it! 

Ending 2022

 Right after Christmas we had an appointment to do family pictures- our gift to my mom and dad this year! And although we didn’t go with Will’s repeated request for head to toe denim, I think they turned out pretty good! 

The kids played with their new Christmas toys a lot! I snuck out one day to have lunch with my mom and Heidi and Reta, our old neighbor whom we all adore. We watched a bunch of movies. Lila got Hand Foot and Mouth disease- luckily pretty mild case but we still had to stay home for several days. We threw a little casual birthday party for Chase. Ben continued to heal and apparently we took almost no pictures!

On New Years Eve we did our traditional Chinese food (which I got from Costco and heated up at home which worked out just great!) and toasted with sparkling cider, thanks to our neighbors. We talked about our favorite memories of the year, and despite Davis’s initial response of “all the TV I got to watch!” The kids all agreed that their favorite memories of this year happened at Disneyland and Jackson Hole/Yellowstone. I had to agree, those were my favorites too!

As I reflected on the end of the year, I was full of so much gratitude. So much of the year was spent in such a feeling of peace and blessings for me. Everything was just going so well. Ben loved his job. We were all healthy. We got to travel. Covid was mostly over. Of course there were little bumps in the road, but overall, life was just so good. 

Then in October we found out Ben was going to be laid off from Stock X, which happened a few weeks later. Luckily, he found a new job, with a pretty big raise, and started a week before his severance ran out. It was so stressful, but also we felt so blessed to have things work out so wonderfully even though it was hard. I knew God was looking out for us. And during this time especially, our lovely friends and family who are the best support network, were there for us and gave us so much love and support. Life in 2022 was pretty grand!