Luke's Birthday

Our sweet and lively Christmas boy had his birthday on a Sunday so we had a nice lazy morning, afternoon church, and then headed over to my parents' house for a huge Smith family Christmas party (sorry Luke — holiday parties will fall on your birthday often...)

Luke got a Frozen play-doh set and these festive wooden cookies for his birthday.

 

 I tried to get a good picture of the birthday boy at the family party but he was just a little overwhelmed with attention and started acting all awkward — so funny!

Only got video of us singing happy birthday so I took this screen shot of the video. I sure love that tough little body!

 Ethan and Bean wanted to pose for a picture so that's how these silly boys roll

 Bentley was also eager to talk to Kelly Bills (my cousin's hubby) about his brother Craig. Craig is by far Bean's favorite BYU football player and made sure Kelly knew to pass on the praise!

Cute kiddos just a little excited about a special guest coming to visit!

SANTA! I only got good pictures of Cares and Luke with him — all the others were somehow too blurry.

I adore this December baby!

Luke is 3

Dearest, darling Luke —

Oh you happy, scrumptious, silly, naughty, rascally boy! Three years with you and I wonder how we ever lived without you :) You have always been and continue to be the #1 attraction in our house and we all love it when you sing and play and make us laugh with your cute phrases and sweet little voice. Daddy and I are convinced you will end up singing on Broadway or something because 1) you have an awesome voice and memorize words so well and sing in our home all the time! And 2) you are such a dress-up addict right now. It wears this mom out to keep up with all the outfits (skirts, dresses, capes, shawls, catsuit, wands and shoes —you are drawn to the most of the girls stuff these days) you wear in just an hour of playtime. You really love to play pretend!

You are learning about pushing the limits and testing the rules (a hard part of being 3 I think) and you do not like it when we tell you you are doing something wrong or disobedient. Mostly you like to screech at us or try to freeze us with Elsa ice sounds when we tell you what you are doing wrong and it makes the big kids laugh hysterically (doesn't help things!) Daddy and I hope you will come to understand that we are here to help you figure out how to be good and how to obey and how to help make our home a happy place. Your sweet laugh and silly nature do help with that every day and it makes all of us adore you and want to snuggle and cuddle you.

I have the extreme pleasure of laying you down for your naps every day and it is a glorious part of my day. You are always very willing and quite calm and ready to snuggle in your bed and sing a song before we both close our eyes —usually with your little head resting sweetly against mine. I soak up this quiet time with you as much as I can. I'm so grateful you're my little buddy and that you really love to be with me too.

Some very cute things you say as a newly minted 3 year old boy:
lemalade (lemonade)
covereds (cupboards)
unbrella (umbrella)
Also, the other day you were asking about one of your friends and you couldn't remember his name but knew his mom's name so you said to me "who's Miki's little guy again?" We all loved this!

Luke, you are energy unhinged, happiness untapped and laughter unleashed! We are thrilled you are ours and hope you enjoy this exciting new year.

All my love,

Mommy

First Days of Advent

I like to document these here so I can remember what we did as I plan for the next year. Some of our activities during the first part of the month :

Choosing out a live tree:

 Here's our winning tree: I wanted something sparse and unique to show off our ornaments and I think these trees are really pretty (we think it's a Norwegian pine...but maybe a balsam fir? It smelled incredible at any rate!)

 Paper-strip Christmas trees. We did these last year and they are easy and fun with all different kinds of papers. We had 3 Horsleys here while their parents were in Chicago. We only kept Maddie for the day and returned her to the babysitters for b-ball practice that night but we kept Brigg and Connor for a holiday sleepover! They were such good boys for me :)

 The "tree of life" over in Draper City Park with Tom and Jess:

And a visit to Temple Square on a lovely but unusually warm December night:

Flori's Surprise Visit

 When we heard Mary and Bob would be in town right after Thanksgiving we got a girl's night planned and hoped Maggie and Flori would join us. For Maggie it was an easy sell —Justin had a work convention in SLC which he needed to be here for anyway so we knew she could join us. Somehow Mary Braun had talked to Flori about her Thanksgiving schedule and was sure Flori had plans the weekend after so we didn't try to convince her to come join us. It turns out Flori didn't have plans and when she heard about a girls weekend she bought a ticket to come join us and then didn't tell anyone (ok she told Joseph and me to find out details and make sure she had a place to stay while she was here). It was super duper sneaky because all the siblings called her and tried to convince her to come at some point. Mary Braun felt bad she hadn't told her about it in the first place and begged her to come join because we love her so much. Then Maggie called to ask her to come and then Johnny did too since he and Krista decided to bless Finn while Bob and Maggie were in town. Flori totally lied and said she just couldn't do it all while having her ticket and surprise plans in place — such a LeBaron move! Too fun.

Anyway, Flori showed up at Mary Braun's house having her SIL Amy drop her off and Mary was completely surprised. Flori had the cute idea to record all the surprises too. Her family back home loved seeing those! For our girls' night we met up for dinner at The Dodo and Flori made sure everyone was inside before she came in to join us. Above is our shoddy picture with bad restaurant lighting but we were all so excited to have her there. After dinner we drove up to the cabin and Maggie met us up there after driving up from SG. Flori surprised Maggie up there too and it was really funny and pretty sweet to see all the reactions. No one had any idea so it was awesome!

Timer picture!

We had a lovely night just snacking and chatting until after midnight when we actually made a responsible choice and went to bed. In the morning we made a yummy breakfast and then got to work on a 12 Days of Christmas package for Nanny and Grandpa Neil. Mary and Seth and their kiddos were headed to Houston the week before Christmas and took all our gifts with them and got them started on their daily gifts for the 12 days.

 Maggie and Mary Rubow had to get back to their families but the rest of us went for a good hike on the hills around the cabin and enjoyed the fresh air and quiet mountains while getting pretty sweaty. (Jess had only joined us for dinner since it was Porter's birthday and she had lots to prepare for).

Once we came down from the cabin the 5 of us grabbed a huge and delicious lunch at an Italian place in Kimball Junction and then we came back to our kids and husbands. I kept Flori with me so she could stay with us that night. The extended LeBaron family planned their annual holiday party for this same weekend (everyone in town —might as well!) so we drove to Orem for more LeBaron fun at Aunt Gail's house. Neil's kids make up the huge majority of those relatives so it was more playtime with lots of people we love.

Sunday morning we drove up to Suncrest for baby Finn's blessing and joined Krista's siblings and parents. Such a huge group there for sweet Finn!

 All the LeBaron siblings together. I can't believe these people have been my people too for more than 15 years. I love them so much and feel so blessed to have them in my life.

We tried again for a picture of all the sisters but Luci had an important family call from Brazil about her mother's health and had stayed home to make sure her mom was ok. These girls! They are the best extra sisters. I seriously love hanging out with them and think they are such beautiful, kind hearted friends and mothers. Plus, we're so lucky to have cute Mary Rubow added into this mix.

After the blessing we had Tom and Jess and Flori come eat chicken enchiladas at our house and then Flori headed over to Tommy's house to stay with his little family for the night. It was our "super-duper LeBaron weekend" which was fine with us. I feel like we have to work extra hard to make sure we connect as a family while Ruth Ann is gone and not here to rally us all together herself. Gosh, I feel pretty ready for Nanny and Neil to be done with their mission :)

Fotofly Family Pictures