Photos by Merrick

Sometimes we don’t have our camera with us. Luckily, most phones have cameras on them and Merrick’s iPhone is no exception. I thought I’d go through his pictures to see if I could find anything good. Here are a few of the gems I found…

Hahaha… this one is great. Merrick had fun with the girls hair in the bath one day, probably about a year ago. Love that ‘do and your sweet smile too, Cam!

A couple of pictures from Merrick’s several business trips to NYC this past year:

Silly girls hiding from the camera (last winter)…

A rare picture of me… (Shocking, I know. I don’t like pictures of myself!) On my last birthday in May I was about 7 months pregnant here. Merrick made me strawberry cheesecake bars for my birthday dessert. Yum!

And while we’re at it, here’s another picture of me, right after I gave birth to Lily. She’s so cute and pink and tiny! Did I really have her with no epidural?

This is a cute little photo of Avery with her summer soccer team. She’s the one on the left in the pink shorts.

Merrick got to take two weeks of paternity leave and so he took his first week right after I had the baby and the second week he took mid August, before Avery went back to school. He had some fun with the girls and I had fun staying home alone with the baby. So this is when Merrick took the girls to the Zoo A La Carte day during his second week of paternity leave. Cuties.

So those are some of the keepers I found on his phone. I hope you enjoyed!

The beginning of the end…

Merrick turned 29 today! He’s beginning the final year in his twenties! Crazy how time flies. We realized the other day that we’re only a few weeks away from the 10 year anniversary of our meeting. What young crazy kids we were back then. We’ve come a long way!

Well, as is tradition in the Smith household, we set up a nice party display. We went with a sports theme for our MVP Dad this year.

The girls LOOOOOVED helping me. Camryn got out, played with, and re-hid Merrick’s wrapped presents every day all week. I let them help me with the decorating and the cake, which was a lovely soccer ball in a grassy field.

I found the idea online and I just made a chocolate cherry cake with chocolate icing. Then I used food coloring to dye some coconut green. For the soccer ball I baked up half of a cake mix in a pyrex glass bowl and flipped it over, frosted it white, added 100 Calorie Oreo Crisps and piped on some chocolate frosting. Easy peasy. I told Merrick I’m using his birthdays to practice making boy cakes. Maybe someday I’ll have a boy and then I’ll have a whole repertoire of cake ideas to draw from! :)

We spent the morning having a yummy breakfast, hanging out for a little while, then finally going over to the new Costco in Pewaukee. It opened up a couple weeks ago and we’ve been so busy we haven’t made it over there yet. I think Avery was most excited about the SAMPLES! They had a ton out and she was starving so she couldn’t get them in her mouth fast enough. Quite a nice way for the kiddos to try new things, I must say. We didn’t get much but it was fun to check it out for future shopping trips.

Thanks to everyone who sent a card and well wishes. I’ll finish off the post with a funny story:

We bought him some new dress shoes online for his present from me today and he asked me if he should get the cool hip slip ons or the more classic lace ups. I told him maybe since he’s turning 30 next year he should get the lace ups since they’re more grown up shoes. He said he thought maybe he should get the slip ons so because he might not be able to bend over and tie his shoes in his old age! Bahaha!

Happy Birthday, Merr. We sure love you!

Hehehe…

Don’t tell Avery and Camryn (because I know they’d want to do it all the time too), but last night after they went to bed I put Lily in the baby doll stroller. Hehe… She’s so cute!

She barely fit but I couldn’t resist snapping a few pics!

Avery’s 4K Graduation

I went through some of my old photos from earlier this year and found some pictures of Avery’s graduation from 4K at Willow Springs Elementary. Our school district is unique because they send all the 4 year old Kindergarten students to Willow Springs and then for 5K and up they go to four different elementary schools. So her graduation was a parting of sorts. A lot of her friends went to other elementary schools. Nevertheless she’s done well making new friends again this year.

So here are some pictures of their graduation. Most of the AM kids:

There you can see her in the back under the Maple sign with the brown shirt on:

Receiving her leaf to put on the Maple Elementary tree from her principal, Dr. T. They started out the program sitting with their Willow Springs classes and then they ended the program sitting with the kids who were going to go to their elementary school the next year.

Her teacher, Mrs. Forrester announcing her class’ names.

The end of the program here she is with her friends who go to her elementary school now. She was biting her nails a lot in these pictures for some reason. (Note to self: Next time there’s a school program, cut her nails first!)

It was a cute little program and we had fun watching the kids. Camryn and I got to ride a bus together for the first time this day. We were shuttled to the high school auditorium from her school parking lot. She loved it!!

First snow…

Of course, the day after I post about our beautiful fall in Wisconsin we finally get our first snow of the season. It’s not sticking yet (thank goodness!) but this picture is in front of my house. You can kind of see the snow coming down.

It’s not that I don’t like snow- don’t get me wrong. I like the stuff. I just don’t like seeing the same snow for three months straight. These first few snows aren’t so bad because they melt. But it’s what they mean – that another long, hard, COLD Wisconsin winter is encroaching upon us! We manage alright but really, it’s just not very fun after a while.

That being said, here are a couple of goals I have for this winter:

1. Build a snowman with my kids. Or a snow fort. Or something like that. I usually let the kids play in the snow the first snow or two but after that it gets so crunchy that we just stay out of it. I need to make some memories with them.

2. Get a sled and try sledding down the little hill in the back of our yard. It’s great for the slip ‘n slide in the summers but in the winter we kind of forget that we have such a big yard. The snow truck plows a nice big shelf of snow and we never venture down the hill after that. Must try it this year.

3. Organize my winter gear. Maybe buy one of those plastic over the door shoe holders to put all the hats, gloves, scarves in. It would also be nice to create a place to put wet snow boots while they dry. Some kind of tray to put them on or something.

4. Find a place to go see Christmas lights. Anyone know of any good ones around here?

5. Do more playdates. Good idea for all of those days we’ll be cooped up. Anyone interested? :)

6. Come up with some good lists of things for the kids to do (crafts, activities, service) so we don’t end up watching too many movies all winter.

7. Shovel and salt my driveway more. We have a truck that comes when it snows over 3” which is great, but when it only snows 2” we don’t shovel and then the cars drive on it and it turns into a skating rink quick.

8. Read some more books. I’ve been in a reading slump lately and the winter is a perfect time to snuggle up in a blanket while the baby naps and read a good book.

Well that’s all that I can come up with for now. If you have any goals or advice on how you improve the winter at your house, please share! :)