Family Pictures

My good friend Chelsea took some family pictures for us last weekend. It was a cold 45 degree morning but we were quick and the sun was shining beautifully so we got some good shots in.

Here's my favorite.

We took a few of the girls alone. Avery and Camryn did ok. I love Lily's.

 And isn't this one of Merrick and me pretty snazzy? My brother saw it and called me immediately to tell me that we both look 10 years younger. Haha, I'm not sure if that's a complement or not! ;)

These were fun. I'm sure you'll be seeing them in a Christmas card coming your way sometime soon! :)

Minions Assemble!

Halloween is here at the Smith house!

Fall arrived late in Tennessee but it felt a lot colder than I remembered, so I'm kind of grateful our September was hot!

This summer we went to see Despicable Me 2 in the theaters and we also bought the Despicable Me (#1) on DVD. At some point in our craze for minions we decided to be the Despicable Me family for Halloween. 

I started by making minion buckets for the girls to use as their treat pails for trick or treating. 

Then I used this picture as a guide to assemble the girls costumes. 

I got everything at Good Will, ebay, Once Upon a Child, and also our own closets. Here's what we came up with:

Pretty cool right? I sewed Avery's skirt out of a size 14 skirt I found at Good Will. And I sewed her shirt a little too. Camryn's hat was a pink snow hat we already had and I just got glued on some pink felt stripes. 

I got Merrick a black and white stripe scarf so he could be Gru. He refused to shave his head!! :) And after tonsss of deliberating I decided to be Agent Lucy Wilde (from the second movie. "Lipstick Taser!!"). I was tempted to cut bangs just for the costume but Merrick talked me out of it. 

Here we are at our neighborhood Halloween Party. 

Pretty cool right? I was pleased with our costumes. We entered the costume contest and won First Place in the Group/Family Costume category!! Oh yeah! {Insert Vector's victory dance here}

Here we are minus Merrick after we won. 

If you haven't seen Despicable Me, I highly recommend it! It is fun for kids and adults. And the second movie was also very good. It comes out on DVD in December!!

Happy Halloween! 

Brownies and Soccer

Avery joined Girl Scouts a couple weeks ago! She is now a Brownie. It seems like it will be fun and a nice way for her to make some friends. 

We also signed her up for a soccer team with the County Rec Dept. She is having a great time and has learned a lot. She has played three games already and is getting better every time.

Lily and Cam have been good sports, hanging out with me during her practices and games. :)

Wedding #6 in 3.5 years

In the past three and a half years we have gone to six weddings for our siblings. It's crazy! Every wedding I have gotten a different bridesmaid dress and of course I needed new shoes every time. And the girls have gotten matching flower girl dresses and they need matching shoes every time too. We probably have "27 dresses" if you add those all up. Merrick, well, he's worn the same suit or two and just gets a new tie. :) 

But anyways, that makes us wedding pros right?! This most recent wedding was for my baby sister, Katie. She met a guy at BYU-ID (the ID apparently stands for "I Do", haha) and 3 months later they were married. We flew to Salt Lake for the wedding.

I was in charge of her bridal shower the night we flew in. My cousin Aubrey took the pictures for me so when I get them from her I'll do a post on the shower. Here is the only one I got- it's a pic of the sign in art that we made. 

Pretty sweet, right? The shower theme was "Around the House" so I thought the "Up" house was pretty cool.

Anyways the next day we spent with Merrick's mom at This is the Place Park. It was super fun! She has been wanting us to go there forever and I'm glad we finally did. It's a must-do for kids in SLC. 

So many fun crafts to do, historical information, a free train that takes you around, etc. We had a great time.

The next day was the wedding day for Katie and Zach! They looked great and so happy. Their photographers did great work- I can't wait to see the photos!

We gathered at the Joseph Smith a Memorial Building for pictures. Those little white dresses are so sweet! Might be my favorites of all the flower girl dresses.

Zach became a husband AND an uncle. :) 

The reception was great and the French macarons were a highlight! Yum! 

And then they were off! The next couple days we spent at a nice rental house up in Draper that fit most of our growing family. Lily adored her two youngest cousins Rose and Lucy. She loves babies, can you tell? :)

Of course there were a few stops at JDawgs and In-n-Out Burger. 

Then it was Labor Day and everyone left except us. We stayed an extra day and went swimming at a pool with Merrick's family and then went to the dollar theater. Man, I haven't been to a dollar theater in so long. No wonder it's only $1!! 😁 So dirty and noisy and packed and no stadium seating.😊

Anyways we had fun and the next day we had to leave. We were supposed to fly through LAX and arrive home at 11:00pm but we begged for a better flight and ended up flying through Detroit and getting home at 10:21pm. Hey, with three kids it was worth that extra 40 minutes! Especially since I had two kiddos who somehow had to go to school the next day! (They had missed 4 days already. They did great though.)

It was a fun trip! Thanks, Katie for getting married and giving us a good excuse to go "home" to Utah. I was thinking on this trip about how many "homes" I'm accumulating now. Going to Utah feels like home, Wisconsin still feels like home to me, and Nashville is becoming our new home. I suppose every place you live you leave a little piece of yourself there and then when you go back that piece is still there. :) 

Kindergarten!

Camryn is officially a kindergartner! She is loving it! It's full day so she is gone 8am-3:50pm. Long day! But she is doing awesome. Her school is top notch and her teacher is the sweetest, most loving teacher. Avery's kindergarten teacher was very nurturing like that too so I feel like we have been blessed. 

She started school 10 days after Avery so that helped smooth the transition.

And just like that I've got two kids I school all day.

Lily thinks she's ready too.

Not quite, little one! We have been having fun and I'm loving that when she takes her nap I get two hours of alone time! Every day! It's awesome.

But I do miss my girls. And oh man, the amount of paperwork they bring home every day is overwhelming. That 4:00 time when they get home and they both have so much to tell me and there's backpacks and shoes and lunch boxes everywhere and they need a snack right.now... Oh boy! :) But it's good and we enjoy our time together more, especially the weekends. And I'm trying to get really involved in their classes so that keeps me busy too.

The First Day of Second Grade

School started August 9th this year! So early, right? Well the Kindergarten kids don't start until the 19th so Avery was the only one who went so far but can you believe I have a second grader? It sounds so much more grown up than a first grader!

She was pretty excited and had a nice first day. I drove her so I could go see her class and meet her teacher.

She did great. We had her ride the bus home but of course they are always late the first few days. Cam, Lil, and I were pretty hot by the time she got here! 

The best news is our bus stop has been moved to right next to our house! Last year it was a quarter mile away. This will be so nice to just sit on my deck and watch them wait for the bus.

After school we did our swim lessons and in the evening we went to Member's night at the Zoo. Merrick had been in Seattle all week so we needed something fun to do to celebrate school being in session. 

It was a fun night with free carousel rides and a nice animal show. I enjoyed the keeper talks where they told about the animals. The girls were so bored by those though! :) They just wanted to go play on the playground. 

It was soooo humid and sweaty that we definitely needed McDonalds ice cream cones afterwards. As we drove home Avery announced that it had been the best day ever and that I was a great mom. Made it all worth it!