Where in the world is Michael?

To kick-off the craziness that was March this year, Michael made his first trans-Pacific flight to Tokyo. He went to train the Asian PR folks for the Four Seasons Hotels. I don't want to steal his thunder, but since he may never do this himself, I'll at least post some of the pictures.
Here is Michael hard at work.
I think this was Michael's favorite 'cultural' experience in Tokyo - going to the early-morning Tuna auction. Those giant grey things behind him? Those are the tuna. Huge.
Here is another sampling of the fine sea-produce. Check out those giant prawns! I think his VERY favorite part of the trip was the food. He became a sushi-convert.

Busy March birthday month!

March is heavy-duty Birthday month at our house. Not only Michael and I, but my sister, Jenni, my Grandpa Sabine, and now 2 more new birthdays to celebrate in March: Our new brother-in-law Bret, and our new niece, Lily (Matt and Jenni's baby.) It is kind of surreal to be almost half-way through my 30's! The girls gave me seeds to plant in our garden. Spencer gave me a pair of tongs -which we actually needed. His orriginal idea was to give me a pot, but Michael talked him into the tongs. Michael gave me tickets to the Police Concert at the USANA ampitheater in July! Woohoo!
Here we are celebrating Michael, Bret and Jenni's birthdays, oh and Easter all on the same day. It was a little too much for everyone, especially Jenni's girls who had had it by the time we got to cake, so Jenni wasn't even there anymore. We are glad Easter won't fall that early again - at least not for a LONG TIME. To many things to celebrate at once!
Here is my cute Grandpa Sabine's 99th birthday celebration! (Frankly, I hope I'm not still around for my 99th birthday.) But we had a fun time celebrating Grandpa's birthday with a good majority of his posterity. When President Hinckley passed away, my Grandpa asked my mom, "Just what do you think President Hinckley died of?" (That young whipper-snapper, only 97-years old! Grandpa was only a year ahead of P. Hinckley at LDS High School.) My mom said, "OLD AGE. People die of that!"
Our cute new niece, Lily Catherine. Our Catherine is very excited about her new cousin's name. Not only because she shares one of the same names, but Lily is Catherine's favorite name. IT was also the name of Cath's fairy-alter-ego that she was for Halloween.
This new little-Lily is a little red-head! It's pretty cute!

While we were gone . . .

Laura and her awesome husband, Bret, took good care of our kids while we were in Newport. Look at these handsome guys. Bret even brought his own firetruck sleepers to be like our boys. Way to go, Uncle Bret.

Trip to Orange County

Michael and I had a great, quick trip to Newport Beach, CA last weekend. Many thanks again to our various sisters for watching our kids. We stayed in a great little hotel called the Bay Shores Peninsula right at Newport Beach. Friday we went to Fashion Island (a fancy outdoor mall) and ate at the Cheesecake Factory (yum!), drove down to Laguna Beach, climbed on the rocks and looked at the tide pools, drove a little farther down the coast and explored the Ritz hotel, and stopped at Wahoo's Fish Tacos in Laguna on the way back to our hotel. That night I slept 10 hours! I couldn't believe it! Sat was so nice - just a lazy day. After sleeping in we walked from our hotel down the beachfront to Balboa pier and then walked back again. This worked up a great appetite for the local Crab Cooker restaurant. (yum again. Can you tell that food was one of the highlights of our trip?) That afternoon we thought we'd sit on the beach and read in the warm sunny weather, but the wind made things a little cooler than we'd hoped. Oh well, at least there wasn't any snow. That night we went to a wedding dinner at a nice cliff-side restaurant in Orange County - the main reason for our trip. We went home early Sunday. It was so nice to have a warm-weather getaway in the middle of February. Also nice to just have time to hang-out together. It's invaluable time!

Our cute little snowmen.

We have made more snowmen, forts, slides, etc this winter than in the past 10 years combined. We have definitely had the most snow we've ever had since living in Utah County. Good thing our boys love to shovel snow so much because we've also shovelled more snow than ever before. Thank goodness for temperatures warm enough to start melting some of it.

More Wintertime activities

As we endure the heaviest winter/snowfall of the last 10 years we've lived in Utah County, we're constantly trying to think of new activites to keep the kids entertained, to get us out of the house and to keep us all from severe cases of cabin fever. Here are a few examples:

A fun outing to the Aquarium with Aunt Meredith and her girls. Here the kids were entertaining themselves and each other playing that they were hiding from a shark while the grown-ups indulged in grown-up conversation.

Here is Spencer playing at the erosion table at the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point with his preschool class. David and I tagged along.

A few more recent photo

Emma is a great dancer!

The Smarts go to a BYU Basketball game! (In their new Cougar gear.)

Catherine and Emma start to wear sponge curlers on Saturday Nights!

David's artistic talents emerge! (Thank goodness for Mr. Clean Magic Erasers!)

Happy Birthday to Catherine

Catherine's pick to eat at the Spaghetti Factory for her birthday.

Party with friends on Saturday.

David and Spencer jumped in on the Twister game.

Cousins in town from Rexburg

Fun times with Uncle John and Aunt Heather's family coming to visit.

We had a great time visiting. Spencer was somewhat of a basket-case at first but by the end he was in Boy-Heaven with his cousins and devastated when they had to leave. We went swimming at the good old Lehi Rec Center - which is a hit with everyone that we take there. Our Monday morning sledding-outing was a bit more hairy with an iced-over hill that Michael and I couldn't even climb in our old boots - time to get our winter gear updated! (Michael fell pretty hard once and had a sweet, giant magenta bruise on his arm all the next week.) Here is David excited to ride down the hill with Uncle John.

Hanging out together with the cousins: Peter, James and Joseph.

The Noah's Ark play that the Dads used to distract the kids so the moms could have Sunday afternoon naps! (Those Smart boys are something else, aren't they??) Notice Spencer's elephant costume.

Christmastime Festivities

Our trip to Temple Square in sub-freezing temperatures. On the way up the ramp Emma and Abby said, "Let's pretend we're dead and we're going up to heaven!

Spencer and his beloved Gingerbread House. All through December this was the incentive for good behavior - the opportunity to make a gingerbread house! He was SO thrilled with the end result, although disappointed that we weren't going to eat it right away. Surprisingly, it even lasted most of the season intact.

Christmas tea party with Grandma. (Emma and Abby are wearing dresses that were mine and Jenni's when we were little.)

Christmas Morning

Here we are looking cute at Grandma's house on Christmas morning.

Catherine really wanted an easel for Christmas and Santa actually found an official Italian easel for our budding Italian artist. Maybe she'll start her own artistic Neo-Renaissance.

Emma gets her official American Girl doll - Nellie! Somehow Santa connected the fact that her cousin Abby was getting one too, so he let Emma get one 6 months before her 7-year-old Birthday. Nellie is best friends with Catherine's Samantha doll, so everyone was thrilled for Emma and Nellie to find each other.

My favorite picture of the day: Spencer opening his Transformer Walkie Talkies from Grandma and Poppy. That is some serious Christmas joy on his face. He'd seen these walkie talkies months ago and fondly talked about them for weeks. He was so thrilled!

Post Christmas update

It has been far too long since we have posted anything on the blob. December is a crazy month! Yesterday was Catherine's birthday (I can't believe that she is 9!) which always marks the end of our holiday season - although she has her birthday party on Saturday, so we're still not quite done. Anyway, Christmas was great, inspite of a few weather hassles. We really enjoyed seeing all of our family members. Thanks again to all those who made the trip to Utah! I will post some pictures of Christmas and our visit with the John Smart familylater. For now, here are some of Spencer from our activity today. We got a really heavy snow during the night. While David was having a nap we had some good bonding time (and hopefully wore him out a little) making our fort so that we can vigorously defend our property.

After feeling like the coolest mom ever, Spencer brought me back down to reality when he said it really wasn't big enough and can he now tear it down? So I distracted him with the promise of hot chocolate with marshmellows so we could at least show Dad and the girls. He is such a piece of work. But pretty dang cute too.