December was a busy (so busy) and fun month for our family. We spent a lot of time doing Christmas activities together leading up to Christmas, had a wonderful time celebreating with family, and then loved releaxing at the end of the year.
During the month, my brother also came out to visit to see the girls' Tavaci concert and stayed the night, so we got to watch a Christmas episode of Doctor Who with the girls with him after the younger kids were in bed. Ben and I also did a dinner date (plus our third wheel Leah, who thought eating at a restaurant was the best thing ever) with his parents.
I love them so much.
We got snow a grand total of one time in December (even in January, we've only gotten a tiny bit of snow once more). The kids were on it, though, and made snowmen and played outside for hours.
Ashtyn's video of their snowmen.
They were so excited!
There's an app we get every year to countdown for Christmas that I love. On the app, they have different games and activities like making snowflakes, decorating cookies, decorating Christmas trees. This is one of the snowflakes Parker made, she saved it to my phone.
Some of the different pictures the kids did in December 🩷
My Christmas card wall. I love sending and recieving Christmas cards 🩷
The girls had their Christmas piano concert and did a great job!
Rylee just started piano this year and is loving it.
After their concert, we stopped at Bee's with cousins for ice cream cones!
in December, we also had stake conference. I stayed home with the younger three and watched it on Zoom and Ben took the older two to attend in person. I couldn't help get this picture when Oliver was sitting and watching.
Our Christmas decorations! It took me a bit to get them all up this year (on December 1, we were helping my sister-in-law clean her apartment all day and had 12+ kids in the house that weekend as people were helping her move, so I was gone and then putting the house back together, besides the fact that my vacuum broke and we had to borrow one to decorate). Once they were up, though, we all loved it.
One of my favorite parts of Christmas is getting up early and sitting in front of the tree working on my writing while everyone else is asleep.
I am not a "put the house to bed" person normally. I like to go to bed, because I get so tired (Ben loads the dishwasher at night so I don't have to worry about it). At Christmas, though, I always reset the house once the kids are in bed because I love that clean-house, Christmas feel, both at night after they are in bed and in the morning when I wake up.
I love this ornament. My Grandma Pat made these for all the grandkids the year she died of cancer (I was 3). I loved my Grandma Pat and have always felt her near. Each year, when we pull the ornaments out, the first thing the kids do is check to see if this still plays Frosty the Snowman, knowing the story behind the onrnament. This year, 30 years later, it still played! I loved watching Rylee share it with Leah. 🩷
A cereal and romcom in front of the tree kind of afternoon 😅
December was also a month of sickness for us, especially little Leah. I am convinced it is because we see so many more people (who are also seeing so many more people) in December, because we always get sick leading up to Christmas and then as soon as Christmas is over and we're always at home again, we don't get sick, even when our eating and sleep haven't changed yet.
One thing I love about nursing is being able to nurse when they're sick 🩷
Leah is always a snuggly baby, but I know she's sick if she sits and
snuggles me instead of playing for too long.
Sucking her thumb in her crib 🩷
We've never had a thumb sucker and it is so cute to me.
Poor Leah.
Even while sick, her siblings can make her laugh.
She also slept so much while she was sick. Her body must have needed the rest.
While everyone was sick, we had rest days.
That meant Christmas movies and crafting.
We were wearing Oliver out!
Leah laughing!
When Leah wasn't sick, she loved Christmas (for the most part).
Playing with candles that Parker gave her.
The kids got little bubbles at the ward party and Ashtyn was very proud of catching one on her nose.
Then the kids were blowing bubbles for Leah.
The kids (especially Oliver) spent a lot of the month building with blocks.
🩷🩷
We continued our no-screens activity with the kids each week and they all picked painting for their activity. The top is a painting Ben finished (I think in one week), the bottom is a painting he is still working on whenever they pick painting (they've been picking it often still).
Leah loves our homemade ice cream!
Making presents and writing letters to London (the girlfriend of Ben's cousin).
Her eyes are closed, but she wanted a picture of the braid she made.
She had made one for the Rumi mask she made Rylee for Christmas and then made a pink one for herself. Rylee asked for one and I think that made Ashtyn happy (since she'd already made the one for Rylee for Christmas).
Is there a better version of Christmas Carol than the Muppets?
No.
Ashtyn spent all of November and December working on Christmas gifts.
This is a perler bead chess set she made for her uncle, who often plays chess with her. She spent hours and hours on it and it turned out really cute.
Little Leah.
Ashtyn's selfies in her makeup, pink clothes, and jewelry 🩷
It's hard when you're just learning to crawl.
Leah did start crawling before Christmas, but she was so slow and showed no interest in the tree or the presents, it didn't cause any problems for us.
I love seeing her crawl around. I love how deliberate and slow each little step is.
She crawled over to this, tipped it over, and went inside it to play.
I love watching kids grow and learn.
Late night with cousins!
When cousins were moving out of their apartment, they were originally going to stay with us. When Melissa realized it was going to be much longer until they were in the house, they ended up staying in Grandma Leah's house where they could have their own space. We told all the kids that instead, they could do a spend the night with cousins later, but then it was just too much for Melissa and her kids, with everything going on. Instead, we did a late night with them. They went caroling, did an elf wedding with our boy and new girl Elf on the Shelf, watched Bluey, and delivered a Ninja Elf present. They also just played together, even playing outside some.
Visiting Grandma Netta! The kids had little cards for her, played their piano songs, and sang a song we learned as a family called Little Baby Jesus. We always love visiting Grandma.
And Grandpa Ray!
The Saturday before Christmas, the girls and I went to the local live theater's performance of Annie together. Leah took a nap and Oliver got a special video games date with Dad.
It was a great performance and we had a lot of fun! They got to sit with Navy (who had gotten us the tickets).
I usually have the kids do some extra activities on their snow day leading up to Christmas (this year, we just did paper snowflakes), but we were just too busy this year. We got out marshmallows and toothpicks for them to build snowflakes (or whatever they wanted) out of between Christmas and New Years.
They had a lot of fun with it.
New Years Eve, we had cheeseball, pink lemonade, chocolates from one of my friends, and gingerbread from my ministering sisters. We played madlibs, a Mario game on the Switch, and exploding kittens (Oliver went to bed around 9:30 or 10) and let the kids stay up until midnight.
It was a great night, relaxing but also fun!
And we finished up the year with our regular end-of-year activities--looking back at our year with Goodreads, setting new goals for the coming year, setting up 2026 calendars, celebrating my birthday (this year I relaxed during the day and went to dinner with Ben that night), and just enjoying being home after Christmas. We had such a great year in 2025 and are looking forward to all 2026 will bring.
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