Christmas activities

Making and decorating a gingerbread house is a tradition we have had since Joshalyn was a baby. The kids enjoy it and become more and more creative the older they get. Even Kayla had a hand in it. Not only do they enjoy decorating it, but they enjoy eating it too. Yummmmmmy!

The kids enjoyed helping Josh put up the christmas tree and decorating it. After they finished we decided to take a family picture. We enjoy the christmas season and decorating our home and participating in family and other christmas traditions. What a joyous time it is to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ and remember him and his loving example. We all hope you have a Merry Christmas and an enjoyable holiday season.

Trick or Treat, Aren't they sweet?

Just wanted to share a couple of photos from our Trunk or Treat party at our ward building.

Shad couldn't wear his mask but he is supposed to be Optimus Prime. For those who don't know who that is he is the leader of the Autobots on Transformers. He has a Blue and grey face so Shad let us talk him into painting his face and hair. Of course our little lady bug Kayla sure got a lot of compliments. She was so danged cute.

Speaking of cute I want to tell you that she has been starting to say more and more things. But one of the cutest/funniest was last night as we were kneeling down to pray. It was Shad's turn and he didn't want to pray so Lynette told him to help Kayla. He decided that was OK and Lynette said "She can't hear you." When she said that Kayla leaned in towards Shad and said "Huh?" as if to tell him "Yeah, I can't hear you." Lynette and I had to fight to keep from laughing. It was so cute and you probably had to be there but we sure loved it.

Carving Pumpkins

I know we are a little late in adding this post about Halloween but better late than never.

This was Joshalyn's first year of carving a pumpkin by herself. She actually picked out her pumpkin and the design she wanted to carve. This picture here is her design at night. If you can't tell very well it is a Cat. She did very well for her first pumpkin by herself. Because she is such a little princess I thought there was no way she would do it all alone. But the only thing that I did was cut the top for her. She cleaned it and cut the design and everything else. It was fun.

The night that we did the pumpkins was a Family Home Evening night and we thought it would be fun to have some friends over. We have been having a family over to our house to have the discussions with the missionaries. This was the family that came over. Man what a good time we had.

Plumbing goes awry

Well - As you know whenever you do any plumbing project it ends up being more difficult that originally planned. That is exactly what happened the other day. What should have been as simple as taking off the p-trap to retirieve Joshalyn's CTR ring turned into a much bigger project.
I have known that I would need to do something about the plumbing under the Bathroom sinks for quite a while. Well probably the first time I thought about it was 8 years ago. I always had hoped that I wouldn't need to worry about it. Since Joshalyn's ring was the first major thing to fall in there I decided I would look at it. What I found was that all the pipes under the sink leading to the wall were 1 1/2" pipes that had been cemented together using a 1 1/4" pipe as a connection inside the 1 1/2" ones. so there was no easy way to get them apart. (The only way is to cut or break them). So I went to Lowes and bought all new piping. Of course I then realized that I should have gotten 1 1/4" pipe for the bathroom and in that process realized that the bathroom had really only been plumbed for 1 sink.
When I realized that I had the wrong size pipe I decided that I would go ahead and install a new pop up drain. To match the faucets that we already had I would need to get a brass one. Well I found that I could buy a fairly inexpesive faucet for $3 more that it would cost for the pop up drain. But that would mean that instead of brass we would now have silver faucets and drains (which I like better anyway. It turns out Lynette wanted the brass look but it is too late for that, everything is done.) In replacing the faucets I found that the old owner of the house had used copper pipe for the water supply. That was fine except that I came up about 2" short and the copper pipe didn't meet the faucets water supply pipes. So back to Lowes to get new water supply hoses. Long story longer, I then realized that I needed to get a splitter of sorts (I guess it's called a "T"). What I needed was to be able to run water to 2 different sinks. I picked 2 up (one for hot and one for cold). It turns out I thought I had the right size but I was wrong, so back to Lowes I went. I really don't know how many times I visited that store but at one point I worried that someone might recognize that I had been there quite a few times and wonder what was up and start watching me. What should have taken just a couple of hours ended up taking about 7 or 8 hours. It was Columbus Day. For those of you who don't celebrate Columbus day, because you really didn't know it was a holiday, I work for County government so we get it off. It was this last Monday. So that is what I spent my holiday doing. Anyhow I hope your Columbus Day was as good as mine.

In working on this project I thought of another project that I had done where I was replacing the lever in the shower in the master bathroom. While researching how to do that I found the following link. Before I give you the link I want to warn you that there is at least 1 time where the lady drops an "F" bomb. And while I admit that it wasn't necessary for the story she told If you can get past that I think you will find her experience hillarious. http://frectis.net/?p=673.

Hyrum rides his bike

Hyrum learned how to ride his bike without training wheels in ONE day! He was shouting as he was riding, "This is soooooo cool!" Way to go Hyrum! Shad is very happy for him, because now he gets to have Hyrum's old bike. Joshalyn is happy for both of them. She was telling them how cool they were. Now we all can ride bike's together for a little while longer before the cold sets in. We should have worked with Hyrum this summer, but we didn't take the time since we were working on our house. It is fun to see these accomplishments whenever they are. Now we need to teach him how to tie his shoes. He can read 90 words per minute and do basic math facts, but he can't tie his shoes. What is wrong with his mother?!

Kayla plays the piano

We start at a young age here at the Smith house.

(Sorry it's sideways. I tried to change it twice).

Musician in my house

Lynette and I posted an ad on Craig's list to sell the remaining brick from our house. It took a little while for somone to finally buy some of it but the cool part of the deal is not that someone finally bought it but rather who it was that bought it from us.
Most of you, if not all of you will not recognize her name. Gayle Chapman. She lives even closer to the Boise Temple than we do and we are quite close. Gayle Chapman was the original keyboardist for Prince. You all, I am sure recognize that name. At one time she also fronted for a local Jazz band, The Frim Fram 4. Not a big deal but that was our brush with a celebrity.
She came to get the brick this past Monday night and I helped her load it into her van and we had a pretty good chat about everything from her working for/with Prince to what she does not to allergies and how to best deal with them. It was fun. I found out, and she told me, that even celebrities are just normal people like the rest of us.

The inside of our new addition

We have had many ask us to show pictures of the inside of our new addition. We added a bedroom and a study bringing our home to 2200sq ft with 4 bedrooms, 2 baths and of course the study. We are enjoying the extra room so far and look forward to working on the yard and making improvements to the rest of the inside in the next few years as time and money permit.

Top to bottom - study, bedroom closet, doors to study, entrance to bedroom, hallway to garage, part of entry, new front door and entry way.

Joshalyn's Baptism

Joshalyn was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on August 3oth and confirmed on August 31st. She was very excited and has been looking forward to this day all year. She has been learning about baptism and has watched several of her friends be baptized. We are very proud of her for choosing to follow our Savior Jesus Christ and His example. Many of her friends and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins came to witness this event. There were some who weren't able to come and we missed them being here. Joshalyn said the water was so warm like Grandpa Herzog's swimming pool.

Back to school

The kids started school on August 25th. Boy were they excited. Not only was it Hyrum's first day of school (he's in kindergarten) but they just finished the new school. They are both excited because there are new rooms and new teachers and probably most important there is new playground equipment.
Since the Boise school district changed the boundaries for the various schools this is an exciting year for both of them because they have teachers that came from different schools as well as students/friends that come from different areas also. That means that they get to meet more people than they would otherwise have done. There are between 550 and 600 students in this new school. That is almost double the number of students that attended the old school.

Obviously Shad isn't in school yet so why is he in the picture. Well he just loves to have his picture taken. He is cute and it's a nice picture of the three of them together. I think he misses Hyrum while he is at school. He sure loves his big brother (notice that they are holding hands in this picture).

We've got PAINT!

Since we finally got the outside of the house painted we thought we would show you the "Before" and "After" shots.

If you will notice the in "Before" shot (the first image) there is some brick work to the immediate left of the tree. That is a flower bed. You can still see that flower bed in the "After" shot. It is at the very right of the picture. There is a brown door that separates two flower beds in the "Before" shot. Everything from the corner of that door to the garage is now filled in with what you see in the "After" shot. It is only 510 sqft but is sure makes the house look different. The new roof as you can see makes the house look monstrous in comparison.

Lynette wanted to paint the house with earthy toned colors so the main body of the house is a tanish color. Not sure if you can really tell from the "After" shot but the trim is an olivey color. Lynette wanted to try to match the color of some of the brick on the front of the house. I think she did a great job of picking out the colors.

We have spent the last few nights in putting up the casing around the doors inside and boy does that make a huge difference. We are going to start on the baseboard this week and then we hope to have carpet in before all the family comes for Joshalyn's baptism. That way there is someplace for everyone to stay.

Also I wanted to show you a close up of the front door. We spent some time Saturday doing little things like what you see here. Lynette was so excited when we got it done. She said, "It's starting to feel like our house again." Anyhow, I think it looks nice the way she wanted to decorate the front door area. It's all the same stuff we had before but hung in different locations and on the new siding.

Twin Falls Temple Open House

We went to the Twin Falls Temple open house on July 11th. We met Lynette's Mom and her niece Trynity there. What a wonderful time. This is the second Temple open house that we have taken our kids to see. We also took them to see the Rexburg Temple. They enjoyed it very much. It was fun to give them a pamphlet of the Open House and show them the pictures as we went through and tell them "We are in this room now". They really liked the baptismal font and the Celestial Room. The carpets in the Celestial Room are hand trimmed Syringa flowers throughout. VERY BEAUTIFUL!!!! Of course we could not take a camera into the temple so we don't have any pictures for you to see but we have lovely images in our heads of the different rooms in the temple. Since we can't share those images that are in our heads nor express in very good terms how we felt as we toured the temple and the grounds we would strongly encourage any of you who have never had an opportunity to go to a temple during the open house before the dedication to do so. You will not be disappointed. For those of you who are not members of our Faith, this will give you a good idea of what the temple means to us and what it is that we do in the Temples of the Lord.

Las Vegas is HOT!!!

We had a wonderful 4th of July and of course as with everything else I am slow to get something new on the blog.

While in Las Vegas we were at Max and Merrillyn's house. I think the kids were in the pool everyday. After I got there we had to talk Lynette into getting in to her swimming suit. Once we did that we figured we needed a family picture.

If you look closely at Shad you will see that he is wearing a yellow life jacket. The funny thing about that is he is wearing it around his bum. One of the cousins told him to wear it like that and we couldn't talk him into using it any other way. It worked really well for him though. He thought he was made to be in the water. Of course so did Hyrum and Joshalyn. They had swimming lessons in June and as you can tell by looking at them they are a couple of fish. Joshalyn cracked me up. I think she thought she was born in a pool.

We had a good 4th. We lit of fireworks but were bummed by the package we bought. The fireworks weren't very good. Well what I mean is that there wasn't a lot of the fun stuff that we wanted to see. It was very "Family Friendly". Although we thought some of the kids were either going to get run over or caught on fire because they kept standing up and running in the street.

John (Lynette's brother) and I went to see a show at the Wynn casino. Spam-A-Lot. That was a funny show. I enjoyed it. It was the only time during the week that I was in a casino. Lynette and the kids did go to the Bellagio which for those of you who may not know it is a water show that dances to music as she calls it. It has become a favorite attraction when we go to Las Vegas. Funny thing about that is that the guy that taught the lesson for Lynette's sunday school class told everyone that he thought we were probably in one of the casinos right then gambling away all our money (or something like that). Hard to do that when you don't go in the casinos. Of course Lynette didn't have time to do any of that because if my memory serves me correctly she finished 26 pages of scrapbooking.

The whole vactation was wonderful and very much needed. When I got there I could see written all over Lynette's face that this vacation was just what the doctor ordered for her. It was good for all of us but I must say that the next time we go to Vegas we have to do it at a cooler time of year. Thank goodness for the pool!!!

New House?!?!

Well -
As a first post I thought it would be good to talk about our "new" house. OK it's not really new but you wouldn't know that by looking at it. In fact everyone says "WOW, what happened to your house. That is awesome."
We just paid our last to the contractor. He is done with all of his work. Now it is just up to us to do some of the finish work on the inside.
Lynette just rearranged the front room. She is super excited. Well we all are to be honest. We can now use the front door and it feels like our house is back to normal.
Over the next while I will be hanging doors and putting in the baseboard moulding and carpeting. Of course Lynette wants to put hardwood in the entry and hallway so it will be a little while before that gets done. But we sure love what we have.
I will post more/better pictures another time. Mostly I am doing this tonight becuase Julie Anne wanted me to start a blog. She says it's fun so we will see how it goes.