The Smith Family Adventures

Today two very exciting things happened!

First, it was Elias’ preschool open house. He will officially begin school next week. Today we got to go to see his classroom, meet his teacher, play with the other kids, and get some paperwork for Mommy and Daddy.

Elias was excited to go to preschool. Here he is excited while Daddy is trying to help him with his shoes. (His hair is wet because I had tried to comb it)

Elias will be attending Prince of Peace preschool one day a week from January to May. I am very excited for him, and a bit nervous as well. There are five little girls, and three little boys (including Elias) in his class. Everything was set up just perfectly. The teacher has a symbol next to every child’s name. Elias’ symbol is a red wagon. He was very excited about it when his teacher showed him the red wagon next to his name on his coat hook. And, Elias found his cubby all by himself even before the teacher talked about them just because of that red wagon. What fun!

I had a very good feeling after we left the open house. I think it will be a great fit for Elias. He informed me all day that “We will go to preschool tomorrow.” I kept trying to explain to him that we only go on Fridays, but he just kept saying we’ll go tomorrow. It will be a long wait!

Elias playing the piano.

The second exciting thing that happened today was that my piano was moved to our new house! The piano was in my grandmother’s house, then in my mother’s house, and now it is in my own house. I am so excited I can hardly contain myself. The piano sounds great in our family room. Elias, Simon, and I all had a lot of fun playing on it today. Elias wanted me to play Cannon in D so I played that quite a few times. Simon can barely reach the keys with his fingers so he played a bit. Elias loves playing the piano and he makes up his own songs. I am so thankful to have this piano. I don’t know if I will be able to be so unselfish and pass it along to my child. My mom is only in her fifties…that’s a lot of years left without a piano!

As I was writing the above paragraph, I heard the piano…since the boys are both in bed I was quite surprised. I went downstairs to investigate, and our cat Hermione had walked on it! I guess I will be closing the keyboard lid at night from now on!

We are lucky to have pretty mild winters here. Even when the days are rainy such as today, we are able to find short patches of dry time to get outside and play. With two little boys, that is important! How have we occupied ourselves?

1. Sidewalk chalk! Elias has really loved doing sidewalk chalk. Now that we can just go right outside our front door, it is much easier. (Although it still takes almost as long to get the boys bundled with hats, coats and shoes as we end up spending out there). Here are the boys enjoying sidewalk chalk in our driveway:

2. Baseball! Elias loves to play baseball in the backyard. He is getting pretty skilled at hitting off the tee. Even though he always comes in with muddy boots, it is worth it to see how happy it makes him even just to hit a few balls. Elias also got to “help” Daddy rake the leaves in the back yard. He instinctively kicked all of the leaf piles so it’s official: he’s a little boy.

Simon, though, does not often get to participate in the backyard play. He’s not very steady on his feet…he mostly crawls….so I’m a mean mommy and either put him in the stroller or ergo or keep him inside if Daddy is home. On Sunday when Daddy and Elias went out to play, Simon went up to the sliding glass door and banged and banged on it with his little open hands to show he wanted to go out. He would get excited when Daddy would look up at him, and then pound some more when he looked away. When I came up to him with the camera to take pictures, he just looked at me in confusion and then disgust (once he realized I was not going to help him). It was sad, though, in the end when he just looked out into the backyard at all the fun being had with a solemn expression on his face. He knows what it feels like to be left out. Poor little guy. He’ll be old enough soon! (Too soon for me).

3. Bike riding! One of the things I was most excited about when we moved to the house was having our bikes again…and the bike trailer! This afternoon when I spotted a break in the rain, I bundled the boys up and stuffed them into the bike trailer. It’s a comfy ride, but quite snug with both of them in there. The boys loved riding in the bike trailer. Elias kept shouting, “We’re here behind you, mommy! We’re coming!” Elias also gave me directions on where he wanted me to go. He told me whether to turn right or left or to go straight. He encouraged me to go faster. Simon just enjoyed looking out the “window” of the trailer. We explored our new neighborhood a bit. Either I am not in good biking shape…or that trailer is really heavy with both boys in it! But it was good for all of us to get some fresh air, and I’ll be looking for lots of biking opportunities in our future!

Here is a picture of the boys in the trailer. I snapped this right before we left so they are both looking at me slightly annoyed. I believe Elias said to me just before or after this, “Let’s go!” Who has time for pictures when there is fun to be had!?

We had planned to go to zoo lights a few different times this season, but it always got cancelled for one reason or another. We definitely wanted to go for Simon’s first zoo lights experience. When a friend asked if we wanted to go, I snapped up the opportunity. We invited my parents along, and we met some friends so we had a big group to enjoy the lights with! As usual, it was super fun and beautiful, but we were too cold after about an hour, and went over to my parents for a warm soup dinner.

Both Simon and Elias enjoyed the lights. Here is Simon mesmerized by a sea creature light carousel:

And a picture of our family. Everyone is looking! It’s a zoo lights miracle!

This evening we decided not to keep the boys up any later than usual even though it is new years eve. (We probably won’t stay up later than usual either for that matter. We are party poopers…or we just love our sleep because it has come few and far between lately).

We had a yummy dinner after which Simon required a full wardrobe change. He rang in the new year by helping Daddy unload the dishwasher in his birthday suit and a diaper while Mommy cleaned the floor, table, chair, and went to get a new outfit!

2013 has been a wonderful year for us. It is the year of Simon. It is the year of Elias’ language explosion. It is the year of potty training. It is the year of our new house. We have experienced so much joy this year. 2014….here we come!

We had a relaxed Christmas Day in our new home. Nathan had Christmas Day off of work and we all slept in until 7:30 or so. We got Elias a bike for Christmas. He noticed it right away when we went down stairs. The pedals work a bit differently than his tricycle so he had a bit of a difficult time. It will definitely take some practice…but he’ll get it. Right now I still have to force him to ride the bike…he wants the tricycle. Once he gets the hang of it, though, it will be awesome!

We got Simon and xylophone toy. Both the boys love that thing.

Other Christmas surprises? Simon can climb the stairs. All of them. By himself. We have a gate at the top right now, but not at the bottom. This boy has me worried. I’ve got to watch him like a hawk. Oh yeah…and I did not put the bow there. He must have sat on it himself. I thought it was so cute, though, that I didn’t remove it.

Nana came over mid morning to spend the day with us. Elias helped her unwrap a set of bowls we got her. She read to the boys and played with them, and she helped us cook a delicious Christmas dinner.

Oh yeah…and for the record…I was there too. I had Nathan take this picture to prove it.

All in all it was a wonderful day. Nothing can beat time together with family.

On Christmas Eve, my boys participated in the St. Bartholomew’s annual Christmas Pageant. It was Elias’ second year being an angel, and Simon’s first year being angel. The angels go up and sing “Away in a Manger” and do some hand motions along with it. Last year, Elias did it really well at home and at rehearsal, but had major stage fright during the actual pageant and hid in the corner of the stage crying. This year was much improved. He sang and did all the hand motions in the middle of the stage….but he refused to stand. He did the whole thing sitting down. We’ll just say he wanted to be closer to Simon who just sat there staring and looking cute…or maybe we’ll say that Elias just wanted to leave some room for improvement since he will be an angel again next year.

Anyway, the point isn’t really to “perform” well. Both the boys were so cute in their angel costumes (Elias said he wanted his pirate costume but we told him that there are no pirates in Jesus’ birth story). They helped act out one of the most important events ever to occur, and they looked cute doing it!

Elias was very uncooperative on getting his picture taken. Before the pageant, he refused, and Simon was more interested in Elias than in me so this is what I got:

Yes, I have jealousy in my heart because another mom posted about 8 cute pictures of her two daughters posing for the camera in their angel get-ups. But I have the memories…right?

I did sneak these two pictures while the boys had their defenses down:

After the service, we got our traditional family picture in front of the altar:

We exchanged gifts and had a Christmas dinner together with my family on December 21st. We dropped the boys off at my parents’ house early in the morning so we could go to another bell choir rehearsal. When we arrived back at their house, Uncle Scott and Auntie Kristy had arrived with their puppy Arwen. The boys were having a ton of fun as usual with Baba and Ama and Auntie and Uncle, but we eventually settled down and exchanged some gifts.

It was Simon’s first Christmas, but he was a pro at removing bows. I think he may have removed every single bow from its corresponding package at some point. For awhile I tried reattaching some, but eventually they were all pretty much bow-less. Elias was a pro this year. He helped sort and hand out packages, and he helped us open many as well. As is probably normal with all three year olds, his favorite part was opening the paper…he didn’t care much what was inside.

Uncle Scott and Auntie Kristy got Elias a tunnel and tent. He absolutely loves it! Elias calls it his “first tent.” Simon enjoys it a lot too. Elias moves too fast for me to get any pictures…they are all blurry. But I did get this cute one of Simon in the tunnel:

In the afternoon, Uncle Jim and Auntie Jeani came over. We ate a wonderful meal, and exchanged a few more gifts. But the best part of the day was just being together.

We moved on December 13th. It was a big job, and we couldn’t have done it without all the family help and support. We had to get everything out in one day because we had to spend the following weekend getting our condo move-in ready. Since we got our keys later than planned, I was not able to do all the “prep” stuff I wanted before moving in. Hopefully things will get painted, etc. someday! Right now we are just checking stuff off the list one thing at a time.

Here are a few pictures from our first few days at the house with the boys:

Uncle Scott entertaining the boys while Daddy returned the moving truck and Mommy tried to get a few things done before bed time.

Elias’ first time playing “bat and ball” in his own backyard!

The boys enjoying the Christmas tree. The poor thing survived the move…barely. It was looking pretty brown by Christmas day.

After a long hiatus, I am back to the blogging world. We moved, celebrated the birth of Jesus, and have generally been trying to do too much for too long. I’ll be catching up for the next few posts. We still have a long way to go to feel completely settled, but we are definitely getting there!

On December 12th, we finally got the keys to our house! We had to go to bell choir practice that evening, but we squeezed in a ten minute visit to the house so we could let the boys see it, and generally be excited as a family. Here are some pictures from our quick visit:

The view as you walk in the front door

Elias in his “red room” He chose this room out of all the bedrooms. I wasn’t going to keep those curtains…but I think I am stuck with them for at least a little while. They are growing on me.

Elias was super excited and running around everywhere. Then all of a sudden he said, “I better check the fridge!” It was so cute I decided to take a picture of it.

My attempt at our first family picture in the new house. It is real life…so it’s better than everyone smiling and looking, right?

After our ten minutes of fun, we drove the boys back to our condo so that Nana could watch them while we went to bell choir. When we got home I found Simon playing in this box of toys…it was taped shut earlier in the day. Let’s just say moving with a 10 month old and 3 year old is tough.