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! 

 

Lila Fashion Show

 It’s no secret that I have loved getting my girl all dolled up from the day she was born, so keeping with tradition I might as well post all my favorite outfits from the year. Let it be known, this was the year she started having opinions of her own!

The bunny dress! This was arguably Lila’s favorite outfit of the year. This picture was taken on Easter, maybe the third or fourth time she wore it. She wore it a LOT more throughout the summer and fall and that poor dress had many stains and looked so well loved by August. It was a birthday gift from Nana, a fact she repeated often, and she loved it so much!

There is so much to love about this outfit. This little pinafore was a birthday gift from Heidi and Lila loved it and looked so dang cute in it. The sparkle boots are still going strong and are Lila’s favorite footwear. And that little denim jacket was so dang cute and I’m still sad she’s outgrown it. 

Her Easter dress- I searched high and low for the cutest, sweetest little Easter dress and this one really fit the bill. I absolutely loved dressing her in it!

Back when she would wear shorts, before she demanded exclusively wearing dresses, I loved these little shorts. Her style this particular day was just too cute for me. 

“My romper!” She would call this. I think when she wore it she usually acted a little more “animal like”. But it was dang cute. It was a birthday gift from Heidi as well and lasted well into winter. 

This was the “back up” Easter dress I bought her, but then it was so cute I kept it instead of returning it. It was Lila’s preferred dress for church. I love her in purple!

Her Fourth of July romper was so darling and I never really got a good photo of it. Between this one and the chambray one below, I loved dressing her in these cute rompers during the summer! 

A friend was selling a bunch of her little girls clothing, so I went and scored a bunch of cute dresses for $3 each. This dress was by far her favorite and she wore it every single time it was clean. This was her first time trying it on and you can tell by her face that she loved it. I’m glad I got so many dresses there (5 I think?) because this was the start of the dresses only policy she developed and there were lots of cute ones!

I don’t have a lot of good photos of this cute dress from her birthday, but it was so darling and fun for summer. 

Sadly this is the best picture I got of her in this dress- I’ll get another one in the spring. My mom made this for me as a little girl and I’ve had it hanging in my closet. She had been begging me to let her wear it- and I finally let her one Sunday even though it was still a little big. She loved wearing it, but absolutely refused to be photographed. 

This chambray dress was just way too cute and so fun to dress up with all her different bows. I love that she loves a good chambray :)

I think we decided to call this one the princess fairy dress. My mom found this at target just before thanksgiving and had to get it because it just screamed Lila. It certainly does! And she wore it pretty much every time it was clean and always got a lot of compliments on it. 

Our Christmas

 Our Christmas celebrating took a sharp turn when Ben got his tonsils out on December 22nd. We decided just a few days beforehand, after he finally saw an ENT about his never ending sore throat, to just do it. We’d met our deductible and he had some days off work for the holiday. So even though it greatly complicated our holiday plans, in the long term it made sense to just go ahead and do it. We were warned that the recovery would be terribly painful and slow, and that was absolutely true. So Ben really missed every Christmas activity that weekend and instead was in bed and terrible pain!

But we forged ahead without him. It was a little more chaotic and stressful and exhausting for me, but I think the kids all had a wonderful Christmas, which is what really matters anyway! We had a lovely Christmas Eve celebration with the Smiths, complete with the talent show, games, charcuterie dinner, so many presents for the kids, a heart-warming Christmas story from Papa and lots of hugs. The kids all had a blast and it was possibly our most chaotic Christmas Eve to date. So much noise and excitement from this crew! 

Once we got home and I checked on Ben and got him dosed with more meds and stuff, I quickly got Lila down and asked the boys to set out milk and cookies for Santa. I came downstairs to find them setting out cookies, carrots for the reindeer, and they made Santa hot chocolate, complete with whipped cream! What sweet boys! I read them a few Christmas stories around our tree before tucking them into bed. They all sleep together in Davis’s room on Christmas Eve and they were all asleep in a matter of minutes! 

 

Ben came downstairs to finish setting up Christmas with me. Luckily we didn’t have much to do because he was mostly just sitting on a chair in great amounts of pain. But we did enjoy a few peaceful moments by our lit tree- my favorite place to be in December! 

The boys were up really early, but sweetly stayed in their room and waiting until 7:00 for me to wake up Lila to go downstairs. 

The present opening was cute and fun and so chaotic. Ben sat in a chair and tried to enjoy himself watching the kids open all their gifts, but this surgery was no joke and he was in so much pain! I felt like I was torn in a million directions (mom! Open this one! Can you help me put batteries in! Help me cut this plastic!) Once everything was open I made up some gravy for our traditional Christmas breakfast. Ben made the biscuits before his surgery and we froze them, so that part was easy. After a delicious Christmas breakfast we all got ready and headed to church. 

I loved attending church on Christmas morning. The spirit was so sweet. The kids got to sing the songs they’d worked on in Primary, including Davis’s favorite, “Prince of Peace”. During the closing hymn the choir and accompanying violin and piano were singing Silent Night and had the whole congregation join on the third verse. It was so beautiful and I felt so much peace, gratitude and the true Christmas spirit. Our morning had been chaotic (and the rest of the day would be crazy as well) but for those few minutes, it all stood still.

My dad was speaking in his ward, so I dropped the boys off at home and just took Lila for another round of church. She sat sweetly with Rosie while we got to listen to my dad deliver a beautiful Christmas message- also of peace. I’m glad we got to be there. 

Then we headed off to dinner with the Hugo’s. Ben still stayed home. The turkey took a really long time to cook (like 3 hours longer than they thought it would) and I ended up running Lila home to bed at 7:00 before dinner was even served. I got her down, got Ben all settled again and was back to pick up the kids around 8:00. Once they were home and settled I finally got to eat a little Christmas dinner around 9:00 pm. What a crazy Christmas! It’s not necessarily one I’d like to repeat- neither would Ben- but the kids had a magical day and I was thankful for all the good, even if it was one really crazy, exhausting, painful Christmas!