A happy visit to Maryland!

We just got back from a 10-day visit with Michael's parents and siblings in Maryland!

This is the Temple in Washington DC.

We spent the first part of our visit with Michael's parents, sister Lynn and brothers Tim and Matthew at Solomons Island - a peninsula on the Patunxet River and the Chesapeake Bay. It was a beautiful place to stay with a beach on the river.
We stayed in two little bungalows.
The weather was great. Not even super humid.

Also a visit to a cool Maritime museum on a soggy afternoon complete with fossils, boats and otters.

And a lighthouse.

But the most exotic adventure of the getaway was crabbing off the pier!
Poppy Dave brought traps, nets and bait. The kids loved it.

Unfortunately our harvest was not great. (The consensus is that the rain made the river less salty and therefore undesirable for crabs.) We did catch this guy though. More specifically Emma pulled him up. And we thoroughly enjoyed him for dinner, but supplemented our meal with hot dogs. We also caught a jelly fish or two, but didn't keep those suckers.

Michael and his brother, Tim.

Then it was back to the Smart house in Frederick for the rest of our stay. Our kids had so much fun with their grandparents and uncles. They thought just doing the everyday things were so exciting. Grandma even made chores seem like the fun thing to do. (I think that's a special gift that only Grandma's possess.)

They loved picking fresh vegetables and herbs from grandma's garden.

(And I really liked consuming them.)

Lots of swimming at the good old Frederick pool. Unfortunately, Poppy Dave had to leave on Sunday afternoon to attend a conference in Florida, but not until after giving a brilliant talk in Church. We felt so lucky to be there to hear it in person.
Also unfortunately, I did not get a really good picture of the kids with their grandpa. Pathetic.

The day before we left the kids had a party day with Grandma.
Complete with twisty straws, a cake with lego sculptures on top, and green jello. The kids were so excited.

The party also included a water fight

and a concert.

AND a trip to swim at a lake with a stop at a special candy store on the way.

Pretty hard to top!

And during the party day, Grandma Rosie gave Michael and I the chance to go back and visit the Washington DC temple together (where we got engaged 12 years ago this summer) and to lunch where we got more crab. :)
Thanks again to Poppy Dave, Grandma Rosie and Tim and Matthew for letting us come and visit! We had such a great time. We can't wait to come visit again!

Fablehaven

Has anyone ever heard of this series? I certainly have and I love it! It is by Brandon Mull. He lives in Utah and he is a Mormon(my family's faith). The books are fantasy and they have all sorts of mystical creatures. He has written four so far and I just finished the third. When I put myself on the list for it at the Library I was 23 in line! So you can see how popular they are.I can't wait to read the fourth! If you are interested I can tell you more. Happy reading!















I plan to put a picture of the front cover
of the first one here.

Emma's Birthday and Baptism

This summer Emma turned 8! This is an extra special birthday because it also meant she was getting baptized! As part of our faith, we believe that children do not need to be baptized until they are old enough to be accountable for their own choices. And 8 is designated as that age. So it's always a very special birthday.She was baptized by her dad. They both wore white as a symbol of the purity and washing away of sin when a person is baptized. She was baptized in a beautiful font full of water at our church.

Emma says, "I was a little bit nervous when I was getting dressed, then I wasn't nervous at all. It was kind of scary when I got into the water because the water was hot - not really hot, just hot. Before I got ready to go under the water I plugged my nose. Then I came up and felt really, really good. After I felt 1. Happy. 2. Soaked and water-logged. It was nice that my Dad could baptize me."

Lots of family came to celebrate her special day.

Great-grandma Naomi Udall.

Grandparents King and Cathy Udall

Aunt Meredith and cousins Madeleine, Beth and Mary Sorenson

Uncle Matt, Aunt Jenni, and cousins Abby, Isabelle, and Lily Cannon

Uncle Bret and Aunt Laura Miller who are moving to Seattle

We are so proud of our sweet Emma. She has always had a cheerful spirit. She loves to make people laugh. She is a very caring sister - especially to her little brothers. She loves to do fun things with them. But most of all, she has always loved Jesus Christ. Ever since her fascination with baby Jesus and the nativity, we have noticed her special love for Him. We're so glad she had a special baptism day.

On her actual birthday the day before, she started off by going to her favorite breakfast spot, Kneaders (which she calls "Meeters") with her dad. In the afternoon she had a fun pool party with friends. She says her favorite part was the presents. "I got a Webkinz!" It's great to be eight! On the way home after dropping the party guests off, Michael told her, "Okay princess, we've got to get you home." And Emma said, "Yep. I've got a big day tomorrow. Biggest day of my life."

Smart Family Extravaganza

At the beginning of July we had a great family party with ALL of the posterity of David and Rosemary Smart. The first time everyone had been in the same place at the same time since Lynn left on her mission 5 years ago. So of course a family picture was on the schedule. And I love it! I especially love that I'm not a week away from having a 10 lb. baby (Spencer) like I was in the last official Smart family picture!
We had some fun, full days while everyone was here. The Sorensons (Michael's sister Meredith and husband Luke) kindly took us all boating at Echo reservoir.

The cousins had a great time playing together.

While they were here we also toured the open house for the recently finished Oquirrh Mountain Temple in the southwestern part of the greater Salt Lake area. This has been a really unique year with two new temples opening in the Salt Lake valley. We took our kids to visit the Draper Temple back in March. This was fun to go with grandparents, aunts and uncles too.
It was also a timely reminder that we're so grateful for temples and their role in making it so we can have fun family reunions forever! (The fun kind.)

If you're interested in more Smart Family adventures you can click HERE (on these words) for more pictures.

A festive Fourth

We had a very festive Fourth of July at our house with all the remaining Smart family relatives: Michael's parents, siblings and 3 little cousins. It was a perfect day - plenty sunny, but not roiling hot yet.

Our July girl.

Aunt Lynn was in town from Washington DC and brought Emma her special 8-year-old birthday present a week early: a new scripture tote!

After a BBQ dinner fireworks were enjoyed.

Spencer was SO excited for the fireworks. I'd taken him with me to the store a couple of days earlier and while we were there I told him he could help pick out a few fireworks for the party. So as I'm looking at a couple options in the $20 range he goes around the corner. Then I hear him yell, "MOM! I found it!" and walks back around, barely able to carry the largest boxed collection available, and about $100. The lady next to me laughed out loud.

After our little firework display we went to our secret spot to watch the the Stadium of Fire at BYU. It's taken us 10 years, but we finally found it.
It was a really fun time to celebrate with our Smart family members because it's so rare to all be together for major holidays.

Spencer's trip with Dad to California

Michael here. A few weeks ago I got an inquiry from a company in Santa Monica about doing some training for them. They happen to be five miles from Paul and Rachel's summer apartment. So I started wishful thinking about bringing Spencer with me. I'm always happy when I'm traveling for my business because it's good work. But I feel all the travel and nights in hotels are wastes. Having a child along would make it special.

Well things worked out with the company, and Rachel very generously agreed to watch Spencer while I performed the training for half the day. So Spencer got to come! We flew in on Tuesday morning and went to the Smart's nice studio apt. Rachel had dinosaur mac and cheese and I knew Spencer was in good hands. While I had a great experience with the company, she took Spencer to the beach!

Spencer told me, "We chased the birds and made sand castles with a cup." When they came home Spencer took up a pastime he is only allowed to pursue during travel (see below).

When Uncle Paul got home he took Spencer to the park. When I got home we were treated to a great dinner of turkey burgers, then took a stroll through the neighborhood next to UCLA and got root beer floats. My favorite part of the trip was hanging out with Paul and Rachel. Then we all sacked out, because Spencer had a big day planned on Wednesday.

On a hotel boat!

Many of you know Spencer had been obsessed with cruise ships. He saw one while we drove over a bridge in Maine vising Aunt Annie last year and has been asking about "hotel boats" ever since. He says he's saving his money to go on one and often asks how much it will cost. I knew that some cruise ships docked in Long Beach but couldn't figure out how to get on without paying full price. That's when Uncle Paul mentioned the Queen Mary. It is permanently moored there and operates like a museum. So it was a perfect way for Spencer to experience a hotel boat within his one-hour attention span. Except that it turns out that hotel boats (well, maybe just 80-year-old ones) aren't really all they're cracked up to be.
This is the chain that holds ONE of the two anchors.
On the bridge.

On to the aquarium . . .

Earlier this year I had contact with the PR people at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach; they were interested in me doing some work for them until their budget got cut. So I called my contact and she was more than happy to get me and Spencer in free for the day. She took him right to the shark-petting tank and he got to touch bamboo sharks like this one. This was definitely the highlight of the trip for him.



Luckily we hit the stingray tank right at feeding time.

They also had "real" sharks of maneater size. Our hostess made sure we were in the right spot to watch when they were fed. Spencer would have watched them all day.
He liked the 3-D movie glasses so much he smuggled them out of the theater.
They have a big outdoor cage housing dozens of Australian birds called lorikeets that will land on your arm to lick nectar out of a cup.

We stayed at the aquarium for a full four hours and also saw sea lions, sea otters, a sea turtle, poisonous sea snakes, and giant spider crabs. They also had these shark egg cases with the top cut off so you could see the baby sharks wiggling around inside. Both of us really loved everything there. I recommend the aquarium even if you have full price.

From there we drove to the airport and got dinner at In and Out Burger. Traffic was so light we even got on an earlier flight, so the sun was still up when we landed in Salt Lake City. (Spencer was mad that he missed the weekly trip to Grandma Cathy's :).

I can't wait to take one of the girls on my next trip. They were both very kind to defer to Spencer on this trip since it was to a spot near his favorite attractions.