A New Favorite Pastime

on a windy day in December, the kids discovered the thrill of watching the leaves race by our house while remaining in the comfort of our home.  Does life get more entertaining then that?

The Grass is Always Greener...

Katelyn's first official Christmas break had a bit of a rough start, she spent the first 3 days laying on the couch drifting in and out of consciousness.  Ear infections. when at last we took her to the doctor to get some antibiotics her first comment upon stepping outdoors was, mom, why did our grass turn to hay?

an eye opener for someone who has spent a lot of time in Florida, where the grass never turn brown, or yellow for that matter.

Mischief

When a  two year old lives in your house and you find yourself with time to sit down and read without urgent   tugging accompanied by a jumble of incohearent words, you know something is afoot. and even if you would like to embrace those quite moments of solitude something in the back of your mind is flashing red warning lights and it's usually best to go check on said two-year-old...

 before flour is spread throughout the entire house and beyond.

It could have been worse... much, much worse.

Clearly he is feeling the remorse.

Dallin's many identies

Dallin has become quite the chameleon he is constantly changing into some kind of costume depending on his mood.  his current favorite...

Black G.I. Joe guy meets Safety hat Construction Man.

But he's also content to be a "inga" turtle, or a fire fighter. as long as it involves head gear...

a photo opt

Why is it that I don't have better pictures of my kids...  oh wait now I remember...

This was the result of a planned photo opportunity.  yes even the thought of taking pictures after church on Sunday can cause meltdowns.

were we suppose to take the pictures before or after lunch?  I can never remember...

Why?

now you might be asking yourself, "why did she take a picture of her trash can, or perhaps its a picture of her neighbors car, a rake? maybe the flag hiding behind the tree?"

it's the trash can, and I'll show you why,

I'm not sure how this all started but I think it involves raking the yard and piles of leaves, and turned into some kind of "less then appealing" game of peek-a-boo.

brr it's g g g gold!

It's gotten cold here in Texas it's been all the way down in the 60's which for Dallin our native Floridan, is basically freezing

 the other day Dallin said "Brrr mom it's gold"  g g g Cold starts with G that's why I don't like the cold.

makes perfect sense....

Christmas Card 2009

For those of you who are wondering What happened to our Christmas Card this year, wonder no more.  This year the problem was our picture, I know there's always an excuse right?  we were running out of time before Christmas so we dressed everyone in red, green, white and pink (of course) to take our family Christmas card picture... this was the best one we got and I wanted something a little better so we took this one...

Which was at least outside but I was planning to get a professional one soon and now I realize that it's just not going to happen,  so here's our letter, sorry to all of you who didn't get a personal one, they are actually all typed out and waiting for the perfect picture.... it may be a while so enjoy this in the mean time.

We had a few snow flurries in Temple, Texas the other day so we decided to get in the spirit and write a christmas card.  There have been a lot of changes in the Smith family this year:

Cameron graduated from medical school in May.  He was matched in Radiology at Scott and White Hospital in Temple and we moved in June. It's December now and he hasn't actually done any radiology but he can order Tylenol with the best of them.  He is doing his intern year which will follow with 4 years of radiology.

We bought our first home and planted our first garden.  Cameron is amassing an arsenal of yard tools and equipment.  Elisabeth was able to get painting the house out of her system quickly, and the kids are able to jump, run and play the keyboard as loud as they can without having the big black guy from downstairs pound on the ceiling.  Can you beat that?

We also bought our first used van this year.  It worked great.....for about 23 hours.  It died while driving to church on Sunday.  That was a great day... hot, sunny, everyone dressed up, and a distressed 4 year old Katelyn and two boys that couldn't walk all of a sudden.  We got the van fixed real quick..... unfortunately it broke down the following week, and the week after that and a few more times for good measure.   I'm not sure we're supposed to know the town tow truck driver so well.  The good news is we haven't had problems for a while as long as you ignore the check engine light.

Elisabeth is cancer free and discovering all the great things she can do with curly hair.  She loves it…all 6 inches of it.  For a few weeks it was competing with some serious fros, but it was no match for Cameron’s hair cutting/styling abilities.  Other than hair, Elisabeth has been doing well… sewing, blogging (cameronandelisabeth.blogspot.com) , cooking, cleaning, exercising, hazardous waste disposaling (thank you Grant)...

Grant is 2 and dang cute.  As not to make the other kids look bad he occasionally leaves poop lying about.  Apart from the bathroom issues he is a joy. He enjoys mimicking everything he hears and he gets louder each time he repeats it. He believes he can have anything he wants if he attaches “peas” to the end of his request with a tummy rub.(his own personal sign language for the word please) At times he is a bit mischievous and Elisabeth can always tell he’s up to something when he says, “shoo mommy, shoo shoo,” as he waves his hand to shoo her away.

Dallin has become a rambunctious 3 year old who is the self designated class clown of the preschool Elisabeth teaches with a few other moms.  He prefers to end every sentence with “bob” and especially likes “ju ju bo bob” and then he and every young child within earshot bursts into hysterics. It’s very charming.  At the same time he has become very contemplative.  When is he thinking of something he taps his temple with his fore finger and says, “Hmm, hmmm, I’m thinking” then he rubs his chin and hmms a little more.  We’re trying to decide if he has ever told us what he is thinking of.

Katelyn is 5 and has started an official preschool and is doing very well.  She loves learning and being in the school environment.  She has only recently stopped waking up at 5am every morning in anticipation of riding the bus.  Katelyn now eats the meatballs in spaghettios, wants to marry Dallin, is beginning to pray to Santa Claus, and continues to cry if  you so much as look at her while holding a hair brush.

We hope all is well with you and wish you a Merry Christmas!

Love,

Cameron, Elisabeth, Katelyn, Dallin, and Grant Smith

gearing up for Christmas

This is the first time we have been on our own for Christmas.  Cameron was scheduled to work Christmas morning  and we didn't figure that would go over well for traveling across the country.

we had fun as we prepared for Christmas.

We wrote letters to Santa,

put up the Christmas lights, 

 Katelyn was most excited about this and insisted on having everyone come outside and admire the lights every single night until they came down.

 that's dedication.

we decorated the tree.

katelyn had a great time hanging the ornaments as hight as she could, in fact  it was hard to convince her that it was ok to hang them low too.

hung the stockings with care,

 and then tried them on, that's what your suppose to do right?  just to make sure they qualify as real stockings... right?

and finally in honer of our friends the Patricks we made a ginger bread house,

this was their "house" last year. it's actually the school most of the kids go to.

ours came pretty close to that....

if you close one eye and squint the other... it is made of ginger bread and held together with frosting...  and that's where the similarities end...

we had a great time making it and that's what counts,  this was actually the very first gingerbread house I have ever made unless you count the ones you make with graham crackers... which we don't, because that would be a graham cracker house... of course.

RiverWalk

my sister Amy came out to visit this past week and while she was here we took a trip to San Antonio we spent the morning at the Alamo and the afternoon walking down the Riverwalk. it was beautiful!

Grant was  basically freezing the entire day.  We, meaning I, forgot his jacket...  it's more like a hooded sweatshirt, much like my hooded sweathirt but at least it's something.  We are not prepared for the fridged Texas winters where the temptures drop to a freezing 40 degrees.  Maybe Cameron will get me a sweater for Christmas....

The boys did their best to panic all the other adults along the river by running ahead of us around the corner making everyone think they were on their own.  whenever we did catch up we usually got the "look"  to let us know that these children were being neglected, I usually tried to make it look like they were Amy's kids.

Amy has some mad picture taking skills and was able to get a shot of everyone actually looking at the camera, a feet I have yet to accomplish.

We ate lunch at a cute mexical restraunt where we were seranaded by a mariachi band.  Grant chowed down on the chips and HOT salsa.  it was especailly nice to come in from the cold.

We had a great time with Aunt Amy,  Everyone kept commenting on how much we look alike and I have to agree especailly now that my hair is dark and curly but when we were in high school and at BYU no one would believe that we were sisters, we had to show them our school IDs to prove that we had the same unusual last name before they would believe us... funny how things change.

my little helper

Grant is always the first to volenteer when I ask, "who wants to vacuum the van?"  We got this small vacuum for Cameron's birthday.... not one of the greatest birthday presents known to man but I wanted a vaccuum and his birthday was coming up so...  in my defence the van, kitchen and carpet has never been more vacuumed.

Fall Festival

Yesterday was our Fall Festival.  we had a Chili cookoff and a carnival of sorts with a cake walk, bean bag toss, fishing, coloring, and cookie decorating.  my kids loved it. 

Some of the kids dressed up, these were two of my favorite. Kaleb the Mummy and Grace the butterfly.

Grant has decided that he is attached to me. He wanted me to hold him and tried to hide from anyone who wasn't family.  he hasn't ever done that before.

Can you guess who Katelyn is?  I made Katelyn's Wendy costume, it was an easy pattern, creating the matching bear costume on the other hand wasn't so easy.  but it meant a lot to her, and it turned out pertty cute,  hopefully I can get some better pictures at Halloween.

Waiting for the Bus

These days we spend a lot of time waiting for the bus.  In the morning the bus picks Katelyn up at 6:40am.  You might be asking yourself, Why do you hurry to catch the bus at 6:40am when school doesn't even start until 7:45 and it's only a 12 minute drive?  I'll tell you why, Because Katelyn LOVES riding the bus,  if ever I tell her that I'm going to drive her to school the next day, she begs and pleads with me to let her ride the bus, and then she wakes up 2 or 3 times throughout the night to reconfirm that I really am giong to let her ride the bus in the morning, then just to be sure she wakes up at 5:30ish as Cameron is leaving for work and comes into my room and once again begs me to let her ride the bus... how can I say no to that? 

so if you ever happen to come by my house at 6:39am you'll probably watch as Katelyn, Dallin and Grant have races down the sidewalk as we wait for the bus.

The boys are equally excited for the bus but they usually sleep in until 6 or 6:30am and have not usually changed their clothes before we head out the door to wait. 

I'm not sure why I don't have a picture of Dallin.

Pumpkin Patch

The McKernen's invited us to go to a pumpkin patch with them.  It was free to get in but you had to have tickets to do any of the activities. Each ticket was a dollar and each activity cost anywhere between 2 and 5 tickets.  It turned out to be a little expensive but it was fun.

The kids had to most fun playing in the hay stack,  they took turns sliding down the"hill" and trowing hay at the adults careless enough to stand within reach.

They got to go on a train, pulled by a lawn mower.

paint their own pumpkins.

feed the lammas in the petting zoo

Enjoy a pony ride

Dallin and Grant had the best time playing on some rocks while the daddies waited in line for the pony ride.

Everyone had a great time.

a Garden

It was bound to happen, now that we have our very own house, with our very own yard we have planted our very own garden.  We went to Lowes this weekend and bought some plants... mostly lettuce, peas and pumpkin but we also got some straberries, bell peppers, and some other pepper.  It should make for an interesting crop. 

The kids got really into it.  Katelyn and Dallin both put in their muscles to spread the soil. Thankfully Grant was content to play inside during this whole ordeal.

Here's to fall gardening.

We also planted a tangerine tree.  it should start producing in about 5 years, right about the time we'll be moving... but hey it was 50% off. 

A new bed

Some friends of ours upgraded to a bunk bed and offered us their toddler bed... we couldn't say no.  Grant was so excited to sleep in his new bed that he had are hard time... aah.... sleeping.  

He tried to show us that he really would stay in his bed but every time we left the room he would start giggling and "sneaking" out of bed.  He's not the quietest sneak I've ever heard. He likes to open and close doors then run back to bed laughing.  We gave him a few trys but ultimately he ended up sleeping in his crib that first night. 

Dallin insisterd on sleeping on the floor next to the bed. 

We've had the bed for a few weeks now and Gramt's slept in it maybe 3 times, the other nights we try, he just gets too excited to stay in bed.  Dallin and Katelyn don't mind because if he has to sleep in his crib they get to alternate sleeping in the new bed. 

Who knew a bed could be so much fun?

A pet preview

We haven't ventured into the world of pets yet, unless you count Katelyn's pet tadpole named Rosie who we saved from the gutter near out apartment in Tampa after a bad rain storm.  Katelyn insisted we find Rosie's parents so she wouldn't be lonely.  we not only found Rosie some parents but we found her a dozen brothers and sisters too. then we left them for a week while we went to visit family. They all died... except for one who lived until we changed the water and then she died too.  and that was the end of our pets until yesterday,  Katelyn found a tiny white snail climbing up our house, she captured it and put it in a plastic cup with a leaf.  That  of course wouldn't do, nameless snail needs a sister... and of course a brother.

This morning Katelyn put on her pouty face and begged, "can I just have 5 snails, please mom, just 5?"  I didn't see the big deal in having 5 snails, hey at least their out of our garden right?  so now we are proud carers of 5 snails.  can't wait to see what's comes next or for the day she realizes that we could have real pets like dogs or cats...

since this was posted we have collected over 60 snails which have been moved into half a milk carton, Katelyn checks them every morning, night and after school and shakes down the ones who try to escape... most of them have stopped trying...

If you were a 5 year old with $20 what would you buy?  Princess socks?  I thought so.  Grandma and Grandpa Smith sent Katelyn some money for her birthday.  It was probably the best birthday present ever.  She was so excited to go to Target and pick out something for her birthday,  she chose a Beauty and the Beast tea set for herself and she was generious enough to let Dallin and Grant choose something too. Dallin got Playdoh and Grant wanted a cute cuddly puppy.  I tried to convince Katelyn to get a polly pocket size doll house but she really really wanted that tea set, even though we already own 2 other tea sets. She loves that tea set, she is a funny girl.  and lets not forget the princess socks, those too were a must have.