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.

SNOW!!

Our first snowfall in Orem - appropriately on December 1. The kids had a great time playing outside with their cousins Madeleine, Beth and Mary Sorenson who were staying at our house for the day.

Children's Museum in Salt Lake

A trip to the fun Children's Discovery museum in Salt Lake. Here's Spencer working at a construction site and riding a horse on the farm.

Reading the News and flying a rescue helicopter.

Our Funny Boys

Recently took some funny pictures of the boys that capture what they're like right now. The one above is my favorite, I think. :) My Dad captured that one at the wedding. I have really enjoyed having my days with my little boys. It has been funny as I remember this stage with the girls at these ages and it has been even funnier to contrast the difference between each set. Our girls were definitely entertaining and funny in their own way, but these boys win in terms of being a lot more physical.

Spencer is so funny - as well as your typical, demanding 3-year-old. He's so much more aggressive (and heavier) than the girls were, but I also get such a kick out of his funny humor. Above we were raking the leaves and he was loving it! I have discovered, and Michael constantly reminds me, that if I can keep him doing something physical - or even wrestle him myself - he is his happiest self. Evidenced by this picture. I remind myself that one day as he learns to channel all that enthusiasm and aggression, it will make him a productive person. :)

David is so cute right now. Here he is in Emma's doll's bed. He smiled and said, "Eeesh!" (cheese) when we took the picture. He is saying new words every day. Saturday morning while Michael and I were making breakfast, he started yelling, "Rizz! Rizz!" and we wondered what he was trying to say. Then he yelled, very clearly, "Breffast!" So he was trying to call the kids to breakfast. He is still infatuated with pictures of animals. He saves his most enthusiastic giggles for when he knows he is doing something he shouldn't - like climbing up to Catherine's bunk, or trying to run away.

One night as I went to check on the kids before I went to bed, I went to Spencer's bed first and he wasn't there. I looked on the floor, under his bed, behind the rocking chair and didn't see him. Then I turned around and found him here. Pretty cute.

Retry on the costumes

Don't know what caused the technical problems below. Here's try #2.

Catherine was a specific fairy called "a water sprite"- whose name was Lily. She was very particular about this. She even wrote us a full 2 page description with more details and information about water-sprites in general and Lily, specifically. I made her jacket. I wasn't fully on board with the water-sprite theme until I saw this fabric in the prom-clearance fabric and it looked like something a water-sprite would wear. So here she is. She looked very cute.

By looking at this happy picture, you would never know the drama that surrounded Emma's costume. Our cousin Abby Cannon let us borrow this very cute fairy costume which went so perfectly with the afore-mentioned water-sprite. Well the night before Halloween as we were laying everything out before bed, Emma starts pulling out her different church dresses and asking if she can wear one of them instead. Through all this I was battling internally with deciding whether "it really didn't matter and I should just let her wear whatever she wanted, even if it looked like she had no costume at all" and feelings of "no! My child WILL look cute on Halloween - esp when the costume is all ready to go!" When I finally got her to explain what the problem was with the adorable blue fairy costume, she said that she didn't like the pointy skirt. So I found lots of pictures of fairy costumes on line and (fortunately!) all of them had pointy skirts. I tried to convince her that that was just a trait of all fairy skirts and she looked really beautiful! So she decided to wear the costume and everything seemed to go well the next day and then last night after they'd already gone to bed late, Emma came downstairs crying and said, "Mom, I just didn't want to wear the blue dress!" and wouldn't stop crying about it until Michael rocked her to sleep.
Fortunately there wasn't nearly as much drama with Spencer and David's costumes. They just looked cute. David really had fun this year. He did a little trick-or-treating and then hung out on the porch with me handing out candy.

Happy Halloween!

Michael in his "scary" costume. (No offense to our beloved U of U alums.) I was Taylor, an East High School student from High School Musical in my authentic East High sweater. :)

Photo doesn't do it justice, but our house looked really cute.