Family Pictures

Last year, my friend Vanessa took our family pictures and they turned out - in my opinion - awesome! She is an amazing photographer with a great eye and great taste so I asked her if she would take them again this year. Fortunately for me, she said yes. I think the pictures turned out even better this year! Here is a taste:
I realize that Noah's hand is in his mouth, but this is still one of my favorites, we all look so genuinely happy and I love it!
I just can't get over Clayton's smile in this one! He never smiles like that but it cracks me up and I'm glad we caught it.
These ones of the boys and Justin make me smile. I especially love Justin's face when Noah is running to him. It's a face that I see Justin make a lot when he plays with the boys and I adore it!

Justin pointed out to me that Clayton and I are making the same "fisty" face in this picture. I guess now I know where he gets it...
Vanessa caught these two sweet boys holding hands. While this isn't my favorite picture (I wish they would have been doing this when Justin and I weren't standing behind them), I love the moment. These two are such good friends.
Holy cow!!! Is this Justin's clone or what!?! Even the expression on his face...such a Justin expression!
This is one of my favorite pictures of all time! This kid is so gorgeous! And those curls...they warm my heart. Maybe his little sister will get them too...
I love this one of me and Justin. He looks SO handsome (and so young)!! I'm one lucky lady!
I had to throw these two in. They are my very favorite ones! This is probably typical in a lot of families but in our family, this occurs almost daily. The boys tackle Justin while I watch and laugh (grateful that they aren't tackling me).
Finally, every family with little kids has to have at least one shot like this. I'm not sure what exactly I'm doing in this picture, but I love how all of my boys look. Justin's expression is my favorite in this picture! Ahhh, memories!!

Thanks again, Vanessa for taking our pics! I couldn't be happier with the way they turned out!!!

This week...

Clayton has been sick. Not just any kind of sick either, it's been the kind of sick that just breaks a mother's heart. It started off with two days of vomiting, three days of fever, and two days of congestion with a couple days of grouchy recovery thrown in for good measure. He's been dihydrated, delusional, and so weak that we've had to carry him everywhere. In 5 days he ate two peanut butter sandwiches - and that's it. Poor kid. I'm glad he's finally at the end of it!!
This was taken around day 4 of his illness (so once the vomiting and fever were done). Noah seems to get sick a lot, but at least when he gets sick it's just runny noses and coughs. Clayton only gets sick every couple years, but when he goes down - he goes down HARD!!!
Also this week we had our first snow! I'm certainly not ready for it - I am not a fan of cold weather and there are very few things I like about snow, but ready or not - it's here! Sadly, because Clayton was so sick, he hasn't been able to go play in it. He keeps looking longingly out the window though and telling me he wants to make snow angles. Noah, however, was able to go out and play!

As you can see, it was a huge hit! This kid was in Heaven out in the snow!

Speaking of Noah, we had one more delightful incident this week: Noah took his first trip to the ER! I came home from a meeting at 9:00 Tuesday night only to have Justin inform me that Noah had shoved a small bead up his nose. I swear - I don't know what to do with this kid - he's crazy!!! So off to the ER Justin and Noah went. Fortunately the bead was extracted very easily by Justin once they were in the hospital (yeah, the trip was totally unnecessary) and they were home by midnight! Noah is definitely my little troublemaker. If you turn your back on him for even one minute he might find a marker, hide a cup of milk under his bed (yeah, that was a pleasant smelling surprise), or shove something up his nose! He definitely keeps me on my toes!

So that was our week in a nutshell. I think Justin will back me up when I say I hope we don't have another week like this for a long, LONG time!!

Harvest Soup Festival

Last week, Clayton's school had it's 'Harvest Soup Festival'. The families were invited to come at the end of the school day and see a the kids perform a little singing program and then stay and eat some soup that the kids had made that morning. It was so fun to be able to see Clayton perform with his class. When Noah and I first got there, the kids were all outside playing (the kids from both of the sessions were performing so they played while they waited for everyone to show up). Noah was in Heaven! He loves picking Clayton up from school because it means he gets to play with the big kids for a few minutes - but on this day he got to play outside with the kids for about half an hour!! I just think that Clayton is so handsome. The older he gets the more he looks like Justin. After they played for a while, the parents got to come inside and get ready for the performance. All the kids lined up outside so they could make their 'grand entrance'. Clayton was, in my unbiased opinion, the absolute cutest kid! When he walked past me in line he started beaming and waving like crazy. Then, when they were seated on their "stage" he kept looking at me and giving me this huge smile! Then the kids sang their three songs. I realize that these videos aren't great quality (I'm not the best videographer) and it's hard to tell what they're singing - but when you get about thirty 3 and 4 year olds singing together it's inevitable that they will be difficult to understand. However, all three songs are very short and they're pretty funny so they're worth a watch!



I am so proud of how well Clayton did! I love how much Clayton loves school. Here are a couple of pictures of us right after Clayton's performance:
Noah didn't really care much about watching the kids sing, he just wanted to play. But the toys kept him quiet and well behaved so it worked out perfectly.
I love Clayton so much - I feel so blessed to be his mom!
After the kids sang, we got to eat lunch at the school. The kids made a yummy vegetable soup and all the parents brought delicious dishes to share. It was a great day and I am so glad that we got to share it with Clayton!

Third time's a charm!

Yep, that's right folks! Justin and I decided to give parenthood another try! We go back and forth between feeling extremely excited and extremely nervous (we are going to be outnumbered - what were we thinking?)!! The boys, being boys, don't care about the baby at this point. Every time we try to talk about it, Clayton tries to change the subject (such a guy)! Clayton's known about the baby since week 8. Justin was worried that he'd spill the beans, but he overestimated how much Clayton cares about babies (he's never really been a 'baby' person). Here are some of my pregnancy stats:

-Right now I'm 18 weeks
-The baby is due April 14th (although I wouldn't be sad if it came a week or so early)
-I have been feeling fine - tired all the time but no morning sickness (and a healthy appitite - so my weight gain has been delightful). Basically this pregnancy feels exactly like my pregnancies with the boys.
- We have a couple of names that we like, but we haven't decided on anything for certain.
- The baby is growing and developing well, so far - perfectly healthy (yay)!

So there you have it. 3 kids. Wow - that sounds like a lot! However, we love our boys and we can't wait to add another little Smith to our household!

By the way - it's going to be a GIRL!!!!! (I was so happy that I cried during the ultrasound! But I'm a little nervous, what am I going to do with a girl!?!)

Leaves

I raked leaves today, which is NOT my favorite thing!! I love fall and I love how gorgeous it gets here, but there is a downside. When you have this many trees, you have leaves (duh). These leaves must be raked. Normally, Justin does all the raking, but his schedule right now isn't really condusive to yard work. He comes home pretty late and, because I'm selfish, when he's home I want him to be with us - not out in the yard working! So, I sucked it up and raked the front yard (the backyard is a monster for a different day). 3 hours and 18 leaf piles later (yep, that's right, 18 piles of leaves) I am done. I haven't bagged them up yet - someone (Justin) hid my leaf bags. It was a pain in the neck and I am not looking forward to having to bag them - bagging them is always harder than raking them in the first place.

Anyway, the boys loved this!! Clayton kept begging me to play in the piles. I kept telling him no - I was working pretty hard and I did not want them to ruin it! However, once I was all done with the raking I picked a pile and told them that they could play in it for a little bit. The boys went nuts! They loved it! So, of course, I ran inside and grabbed my camera to capture some of the fun. This was one of those times when I wish I had a better camera. There were so many fun things going on, but my camera was to slow to get most of them. These were some of the ones I did get:
Clayton loved to jump in the leaves. At first he would only jump and land on his feet, but eventually he progressed to belly flopping in the leaves - it was cracking me up!
Noah preferred to stomp through the leaves. You are going to notice that there aren't too many good pictures of poor Noah. He refuses to look at me when I'm holding the camera.
I thought these pictures were pretty cute. They were playing tag and the tree was 'base'. So they'd take turns running up to it and hugging it. I know that Noah isn't looking, but I love profile shots of him. I would love to crop this picture. I think it would be pretty great as a close up!
Clayton is always willing to 'give a little somethin' to the camera.
These next two are my favorites of the day. Wonder of wonders - Noah is looking at the camera AND smiling!!
Clayton is laughing in this picture because Noah was in front of him making funny noises. I told him to look up and this is what I got. I love it because it's totally Clayton - squinty eyes and all.
Speaking of Clayton - I had his parent teacher conference a few days ago (it's still a little weird to me that he's old enough to have parent teacher conferences). His teacher told me that he is the most polite child in his class! He still prefers to do things by himself rather than join the group - but he is always very nice and respectful about it. It made me happy to hear that he's so polite.

So there was a bonus to raking leaves. My boys had fun and, I'll admit, I had a lot of fun watching them. Their energy and excitement over the simplest things always makes me smile. When do we grow out of that? At what point do we become people who look at piles of leaves and think, "Man - there's another chore" instead of, "Yippee, something to play in"? I love these two little guys - they are trying their best to keep me young!

**After I posted this I went out to start bagging leaves (thanks Missy for bringing me bags) and Troy and Mindi came to help me out!! It didn't take long at all for the three of us to bag the front yard and then they helped me rake and bag a good portion of the backyard. Thanks guys - I honestly couldn't have done it (at least not all in one day) without you!**

Whodunit?

About a week ago, Justin and I were lucky enough to get to go to the best Halloween party in town! My good friend Vanessa (and her husband Rick) threw a murder mystery party. It was amazing. She is a wicked good hostess - she had every detail planned to perfection! The theme was 'Last Train from Paris' and it was set in Paris in the 1940's. I don't want to ruin it for those who may do this in the future so I won't go into too much detail. I will say, however, that if you check out Rick and Vanessa's blog HERE you can see a few more of the details and some of the ways that Vanessa went all out to make it an authentic night (seriously, I don't know how much time and effort she spent on this party, but it was really amazing - you need to check it out on their blog). We left the kids with babysitters (Chase and Missy left Enoch at our house and those three boys required three babysitters - seriously) and didn't get home until after midnight. I can't remember the last time Justin and I were out that late - we were having so much fun that I didn't even realize how late it was.

Anyway, it was a great time. I hadn't laughed that hard in such a long time. If you've never been to a murder mystery party, I highly recommend it - it's extremely entertaining. Everyone got into the spirit of the party and was dressed to the nines. The costumes were great and people had the accents to go with them (or at least tried to). Here are all the suspects:

(Back row): Rick, Vanessa, Justin, Missy (she cracked us up all night) and Chase
(Bottom row): Me, Melissa and Dustin
Here is a shot of me and Justin. I think Justin is a handsome man, but he would have been a movie star in the '40's - he seriously looked like he had just stepped out of a time machine!
Each of us had a part to play and I think that everyone was given the right part for them! Justin was an airforce captain and I was a Parisian socialite (I got to wear LOTS of sparkly jewlery - who wouldn't love that)! Alright, I know this post is kind of rambly and I didn't give out a lot of info, but I don't really know what to say. It was insanely fun. The last time I went to a party like this it was for my 16th birthday. It was fun then - but I think it was even more fun now that I'm older and I care less what people think about me (a.k.a. - I am not afraid to make a fool of myself in front of other people). It was a fantastic night with good friends, delicious food, and tons of laughter. I can't wait to do this again!

Halloween

This year, Justin was gone for Halloween. This made all of us very sad. Justin loves to take the boys around trick or treating, so he was really disappointed that he couldn't be with us this year (hopefully this won't happen often). Anyway, this year he was at a conference in Baltimore and so it was up to me to take the boys out. Fortunately for me, my good friend Missy's husband was also out of town for a conference so we decided that we'd take our kids out together. I've said it before, my neighborhood is great for trick or treating. We don't get too many kids that go around our neighborhood so my neighbors make a big deal about the kids that do show up. Especially the young ones (because let's face it - they are the cutest). Every house we went to either handed out full size candy bars or they kept encouraging the boys to "take some more, take some more"! Needless to say, we made out like bandits!! I didn't take too many pictures of the boys but here are some of the ones that I did get:
Sadly, this is the best one I could get of both boys together. Noah is at that age where he is extremely uncooperative when it comes to taking pictures. Everytime I'd put on his costume, he would refuse to look at the camera!
Clayton really got into Halloween this year. He is, I think, the perfect age for Halloween. He totally understands the concept and he was so enthusiastic at every house we went to. He also loved his costume. He chose for himself this year what he wanted to be. He wants to wear it all the time. I think it must be what moms of girls experience with dress-ups.
I was a little worried about the boys being too cold as we were trick or treating (so they both have on several layers under their costumes), but it was actually a great night. It wasn't too cold at all! This is the only picture of all three of us together on Halloween (I wasn't doing that great of a job at taking pictures, most of these pictures are ones that Missy took).
Here is the best picture we could get of all three boys, Noah, Clayton, and Enoch. I think this is a great picture because you can see all three of their faces and two of them are smiling! Amazing!
Finally, here is Clayton with his haul! It actually keeps going off to the right. Noah got just as much - plus we had leftovers from what we planned to give out. I am not sure what we're going to do with that much candy!
Halloween was so much fun this year. I'm sad that Justin wasn't here to experience it with us, but I'm also glad that we got to go with Missy and Enoch (it's just so much more fun with friends)! Okay, well, I have some candy to go eat now...