Happy 20th Anniversary!

In case you are someone who reads blogs ... but not facebook ... here are a few pictures from our recent 20 year anniversary "date"!






Addison surprised me with a very cool dinner cruise on puget sound! I had no idea where we were going, and the girls were NOT going to give me any hints! Glad I dressed up for a change!

Nothing New ...

Nothing new is happing ... but I think I now have the most obnoxious looking blog around. I thought that since I changed the look, that I should at least write a new entry. Let's see ... hmmmmm ... what HAVE we been up to?

Musical practice has started up, so that has kept Camryn and I busy. This year's title is Chitty Chatty Bang Bang and it opens Feb 6 and 7 and continues the 13 and 14. Camryn was first to get a solo, and now is in a small dance group (3 ballerinas) and actually has a speaking part/okay, one line (totally unheard of for a 4th grader). She is thrilled as you can guess. I spend all weekend at rehearsals, and all week updating stage charts. It's an exhausting time, but it really is a lot of fun! Jillian will be onstage for 2 songs with the K-2nd grade and Mikaela is a youth staff so will be onstage with them also. I still have to get two costumes made for Camryn and one for Jillian. Better get busy! Gymnastics team ends this week for Mikaela, so that will help our lives a lot! I get my live-in-sitter back.

Guess that's about it. We hit Joanne's today and cleaned out the on-sale fleece, so I get to make up some cool looking and very warm blankies for everyone this week! How fun! Maybe the musical costumes can wait 'till next week ...

Laminin! You've Gotta Watch This!

More Snow Pictures

Here are a few more snow pictures - at the request of Sharla. For you in Denver, they are not very exciting, for you see snow regularly. For us who don't - they are quite fun. We are on day 10 of snow here in Seattle ... and it sounds like we will have a white Christmas after all!

After snowing all night, Sadie had a hard time finding a place to potty yesterday morning.Mikaela put Zoey out in the snow - she didn't like it much. Here she is trying to get back in the door!

After being stuck in the house for four solid days, we decided to take our new toy out to play. Yesterday we drove to Westfield Mall in the deepest snow of the week! Fortunately, there were not many drivers out, we got some fun pictures, the mall was pretty deserted, and our new toy did great! We all had a wonderful time!

This is the Benson ... .
Yes, I took pictures of stuck drivers - there were plenty of them!

The Blizzard Hits Seattle

Here are a couple of pictures of our blizzard in Seattle. We are only about 2 hours into it - snow, wind, cold ... who knows what we will wake up to tomorrow morning!

The wind is suppose to get bad tonight, so we are all braced for power outages. The snow is suppose to fall all night, so it looks like no one is going anywhere tomorrow. And then if we still have power after all that, the freezing rain comes in, and will knock out all remaining power. Glad Santa has flying reindeer and a sleigh! He will love it here!

A new blog!

Our family writer, Camryn, has started her own blog! Feel free to visit as often as you like. I'm sure she will be updating frequently (if her e-mail activity is any indication). Her blog address is thewaterdolphin.blogspot.com. Your positive comments would be greatly appreciated! :)

Let it snow

Day 5 of snow in Seattle ... and all is well!

Poppa's Leaves

Every year we take the girls to Nana and Poppa's house to jump in their leaves. Mikaela wasn't as thrilled with the dirty smelly leaves this year as in years past, but we had to have the traditional "picture in the pretty fall leaves" anyway.

Texans sit in weeds, we sit in moldy leaves. Who knows why...

For Your Entertainment...

Old House ... New House

After four painting-filled weekends, here is the end result ... (sorry the first picture is a bit shaded - but there is no way to retake it now) ...

And if you don't like the new color, please don't tell us. It's here to stay for many years! We've already heard all the complaints from the girls and ALL their friends - they prefer the purple house to the boring brown. Personally, I think it looks very updated (at least for this area of the US). And yes, the door is still eggplant purple (to keep some peace in the house)! Oh, and since we did it ourselves (and saved thou$ands over having it done for us), we splurged and bought new lights! Gone are the old rusty brass and now we have updated bronze! Oh, the little things!

Two people have already gotten lost trying to find our house - it looks so different now! But it is fun being the only "non white/shade of white" house on the block! What rebels we are.

We're seein' spots in Seattle

Well, life here never gets boring - that's for sure. Last Friday, I "got" to work/volunteer at the school all day helping with school pictures. It was a LONG day for me - running back and forth to get classes, listening to complaining teachers, combing hair, etc. Jillian had a bit of a cold, but being the non-panicking mom that I now am, I went ahead and let her attend school. "Hey, it's just a cold! All the other kids go to school with a cold!" Anyway, when we got home, poor Jillian sat curled up on the couch complaining that she was so cold. So, being the good mom that I am, I finally took her temperature...104! Wow! And it was 104 ON motrin! Because, being the good mom that I am, I did give her medicine all day since I was at the school with her all day! Needless to say, I was now a bit panicked - 104 is no little fever! Anyway, we had a nice calm weekend and everyone just sat around and relaxed. Jillian's temp would fluxuate, but no more 104's. So yesterday, being the good mom that I am, I kept her home for one more day. She was feverless, but had still had a 100 temp on Sunday. I am a strong believer of the "24 hour rule" - keep the kid home from school until they are fever-free for 24 hours. But yesterday, once again, her temperature started to spike - I caught it at 102.5. At that point, we finally made a trip to the doctor. No child should run a fever for 4 days! The doctor started to do the exam, and then said, "have you seen this rash all over her body?". Well, being the "good mom that I am", I had not seen the rash. "Roseola", said the doctor, "late onset".



So, I guess God knew I couldn't handle Roseola along with febrile seizures when J was a baby. Thank you God! And now she gets a week off school!

(I can't post without a picture - here is a picture of Sadie with her new bone!)

First Day of School (Two Weeks Late)

Okay, so things have been a bit crazy. Here are pictures of the first day of school - two weeks after the fact.I don't know how to put in writing what the past two weeks have been like. M leaves for school at 8:00, and the other two leave at 9:00. Except for Monday, Tuesday, and Friday when M has to leave at 7:30 for Jazz Band. And now C will start Choir on Tuesday and Friday at 8:15. That means three trips to two different schools for me on those two days! Fun! Then I go pick up M at 3:00, and run home, drop her off, and walk up to the Elem school to pick up the other two at 3:40. And between 10:00 and 2:30 I get to sit around and eat bonbons and watch my soaps! Yeah right!And here are two pictures that make me so very sad. The middle school girls ... Mikaela and her two closest neighbor friends, Haley and Amy. One picture is this year going off to middle school, and the other one is just a few years ago starting 2nd grade. I can't belive how time flies...

Ready or not, here we come!

Well, there's no turning back now - today was middle school orientation. My baby is actually going to grow up and leave me behind. I'm not sure that I'm ready for it - but I'm pretty sure she is. I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture (it was taken at 8:30 last night - not the best picture-taking time of day), but she has CHANGED this summer! Since I had such a miserable time with junior high (think nerdy, big nosed, zit faced), I decided to treat her to a bit of pamering this summer. She is now allowed to wear makeup (okay, just mascara and a bit of eye shadow), she got a new stylish hair cut (notice the side bangs?), and last week I even took her into my "face lady" for a teen facial with "brows"(lose the unibrow)!

I know it is all external, but my work seemed to pay off today at orientation. Mikaela stepped right up in the foreign world of middle school choas and got her picture taken, received her ASB card, requested her new PE uniform, and took me on a tour of the school enough times that she can now find all of her classes without a map! Lets hope the confidence lasts her through the first week of school!

And lets also hope I can drop her and her two friends off on the first day of school before I melt into a giant blubbering mess ...

Choices...

Here is a picture of our summer ...

Painting a house can be such a difficult thing to do ... but even more difficult is the task of choosing a color! Our summer project was suppose to be painting the house, but reality has finally struck, and the actual summer project has been choosing the color. I think the fall project has now become painting the house. Unfortunately, the girls want to stay with the "purple" house, and Addison and I want to go more modern with a warm brown and white trim. Who knew there were so many shades of brown? No, we don't want green-brown, grey-brown or yellow-brown! We just want a nice mocha brown! After weeks of buying testers (see lovely picture above), we have finally reached the point of driving around, stopping at "pretty" houses, and going to the doors to ask the owners what color their house is! Sounds desperate (but much easier), but still hasn't worked as planned. Although most people have been flattered that we would choose their house color to copy, we have received many false leads. Some home owners have not spoken english, some just don't know their color, and some, who have willingly given us the color name, have ended up giving us the incorrect name! Yes, we get very excited to finally get a color name, only to buy it, place it on the house, and realize that it is not the actual color of the house we were admiring! Ugh!

So, thus is our summer...

And we are beginning to like the lovely look of the back of our house ... hope our neighbors are getting a good laugh out of it.

Our NEW Mall!

For all those who come home to visit and look forward to visiting their favorite old mall, well, it is no more. Southcenter has officially become Westfield, and you can tell by the two pictures above, it has been completely redone!

We took the girls to the new mall last night after hearing rave reviews of it's remodel. It's gone from being an old and dumpy mall, to the biggest mall in the Pacific Northwest. Grand Opening was Friday, and it now boasts 75 new stores, a 3 story window next to the new food court, parking garages, second story covered walkways from the garages, two levels of stores and a third level housing a new AMC theatre! I'm thinking, "yeah, right - I've seen the cool malls down south and dumpy old Southcenter could never look anything like those!". Well, we were pleasantly surprised!

The girls REALLY wanted to be able to "walk the whole mall". Okay, no biggie, we can easily get that done. After 3 1/2 hours, we FINALLY made it through the entire NEW section of the mall - we never even went through the old part! You need to come up here and see for yourself - you will not believe your old mall! If I was an elequent writer like the Green Duo, I could use my writing to paint a picture for you of the sophisticated shopping atmosphere, the relaxing seating that includes TV's for the husbands to watch while the girls shop, the stores that are more like entering a Disney ride than a mall store, roomy food courts and parking garages that remind the girls of the airport ... but writing is not my "thing". Here is my summary: the place was packed, there was no parking, the food was great, and we needed several more hours to truly enjoy the place. I also learned that taking three girls, who are all now concerned about "style", to the mall together is a mom's nightmare! This year we will be doing all school shopping one-at-a-time with mom! They each have their own "style" and each want to go into their own stores! I felt like I was being ripped apart the entire time! Oh, the fun is just beginning around the Smith household ...

http://thesledgehammer.wordpress.com/2008/07/27/what-240-million-gets-you-these-days-a-look-at-the-westfield-southcenter-expansion/

Some one needs to tell me how to post a video to my blog! I'm so blog illiterate!

Watch this ...

http://simplyamusingblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/cat-on-hot-tiner-treadmill.html

MEGA Sports Camp

Last week was our VBS - it was great but totally exhausting! Our church decided to leave the "traditional" VBS behind, and try something new - a week long sports camp! We also decided to combine our usual two sessions (AM and PM) into one big evening session. It was a huge experiment that ended up being a huge success. We had 300 kids and 150 volunteers who all went non-stop for three hours straight every night. The kids (and their leaders) got to participate in soccer, basketball, cheer/baseball and crafts each night. There wasn't a dull moment the entire time! Addison and I both led groups of about 25 kids each - Addison had J's group (Preschool-First Grade), and I had C's group (4-6th grade). M was able to serve as a youth staff and helped with Addison's group. Taking 25 little 4-6 year olds around to different stations every half hour just about put him over the edge at times! Every time I saw him, he was busy counting kids to make sure he didn't lose anyone! Here are just a few pictures of the week.

Our New Car!

After much saving, comparing, and stressing, we have finally taken the plunge! Our poor "old" cars seem to both be on their last legs this past year. I have been wanting to take a family vacation/road trip this summer, but we just don't trust our poor old van anymore. It's great that it's paid off, but always has little things going wrong.

Addison's Saturn is having even bigger issues, but is a great gas-saver/commuter car. You just have to remember to bring an extra key along when you drive it since the key gets stuck in the ignition when it is parked.

So, when we got our wonderful stumulus present from the gov't, we knew it must be the time to splurge and invest in a new and reliable car. It was a tough decision deciding, first, which clunker to replace, and second, what to buy! It's also hard to go from no car payments to a new payment every month.

So, our new investments have been great! We feel like we are in a spaceship with all the new digital technology - and they run sooooo smoothly - you hardly feel anything. It was hard to take the plunge and buy "top of the line" - but we got a great 30% off deal, and they are something we will be using every day! I feel so spoiled! So, here our our wonderful new toys ...












Okay, life isn't always what you expect. Our 15 year old dryer died last week and I have been drying our laundry outside for the past week ("crunchy" clothes - yuck). We did get a great deal on top-of-the-line, spaceship-like purchases - they just aren't exactly what we wanted to spend our money on. I am probably the only one who is thrilled that I can fit 16 pairs of jeans in my super-sized washer, and have a steam option on my dryer so I no longer need to own an iron - but it is the most exciting thing I have bought in a long time! Laundry for a family of 5 will no longer haunt me DAILY - maybe now I only need to wash every other day or so!

Happy 4th

Here are a few pictures from our evening with Nana and Poppa ...