The Smith Family Adventures

This morning we went in to get some family portraits taken. It had been a year (since Caleb was born) since we last got formal pictures taken. Nathan has been gone a lot over the last couple of weeks so when we finally had a fully free day I scheduled some portraits. We were a little wary of going into a studio around Christmas card time, but the timing was right with Caleb turning 1 so we got a few of him and the boys too.

We ordered many prints, but I like to put them on the blog in low-res so that we can see even some that we didn’t order if we want to in the future.

Enjoy!

The Smith Fam:

The boys:

One of my favorites – Daddy and the boys:

Mommy with the boys:

Us:

Elias:

Simon:

Caleb turns 1:

JC Penney Portraits was great as always. Now Caleb is napping and the boys are at a birthday party. I’ve actually got a few minutes to myself before the family fun begins again this afternoon!

The boys have been asking to rake and jump in a leaf pile in our front yard for about a month now. The opportunity never presented itself until this afternoon. (It’s a good thing too because we were really in need of raking!)

After church it was sunny and beautiful out so I told the boys that after we ate lunch if it wasn’t raining we could go out to make a leaf pile. That got their bums in gear!

We got outside and I raked them a big ol’ pile of leaves. First they jumped.

After a lot of jumps, I decided to let Caleb out of his restraints (the stroller). He was pretty chill just watching, but I wanted to let him have some fun too. Caleb just loved the leaves. He got absolutely filthy, but I knew that going into it, right?

I took the opportunity when all three boys were sitting together in the leaf pile to snap some cute pictures.

Caleb looks a little serious in the photos, but I think he was just so excited that I was letting him touch them. It was very cute how he held up each one to show us. He also giggled a lot when leaves “rained” down on him and got stuck on his head.

After the leaf throwing, I made the boys help me rake the leaves back into a pile.

We ended up staying outside for over two hours. What a nice surprise on this beautiful fall day!

I didn’t get a solo pic of Simon, but it’s not because he’s the poor neglected middle child. I tried and tried, but it was just too bright. He couldn’t open his eyes, and his facial expressions were so funny, but I won’t post them here in case he gets embarrassed some day.

We’ve had more than enough Halloween fun over the last three days here in the Smith Household. The fun started on Saturday evening, and continued all the way through tonight.

On Saturday, we dressed up in costume and headed to a friend of Nathan’s. We don’t do family themed costumes like some. We had a lumberjack, a tiger, a pirate, and a knight.

Pumpkin carving was a part of this party. The boys excitedly picked out their pumpkins, and got right into digging out the guts.

Right about this point, Caleb stuck his finger halfway to my brain through the eyeball. It was a super bad eye poke! He didn’t do it on purpose, of course. We were just playing while the boys carved. I pretty much couldn’t open my eye for the rest of the evening. I went to bed early since I couldn’t open my eye anyway, so the longest night of sleep I’ve gotten in years was my hidden reward. Sunday I could open my eye, but it was pretty blurry. It is still not completely back to normal, but I’m happy to say that I don’t think any permanent damage is done.

Anyway, back to our Halloween festivities! I didn’t manage a picture of both the boys with their pumpkins because of my eye, but I did manage this one:

Sunday we had a second Halloween party at church. The boys loved cookie decorating, playing with friends, bingo, and many other activities. Elias won the mummy wrap contest and got the first bingo so he was a pretty lucky boy!

Today, on Halloween, I was able to help out in Elias’ classroom for his Halloween party. When Nathan got home from work we celebrated All Hallow’s Read. If you don’t know about this, it was started by Neil Gaiman, and is basically another excuse to give books to your children.

It was Caleb’s first All Hallow’s Read. He was more excited by the wrapping paper than the book inside. It’s ok.

I got Simon a Jake Pirate Halloween Adventure Story, and I got Elias a book called “Little Goblins Ten” which he promptly read to us all using the sing songy rhyme that went with it. It was a fun and proud moment for me.

After dinner, we got dressed up in costumes one more time! The boys were super excited to go trick-or-treating. This year we were lucky to have Grandpa with us, and Ama and Baba also came and met us in the neighborhood to watch the boys get some candy.

I think we were out for about 90 minutes total. After about 70, Simon was completely done, but Elias wanted to do a few more houses. After about 80 minutes I had to call Nathan to rescue us with the stroller because all three of the boys were toast. They livened right up, though, when we got home and it was time to sort through the candy.

And tasting it is the best part! They each got to choose two pieces tonight.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Anyone who knows my mom knows she loves Disneyland. The rest of us think it’s pretty great too! Last winter, my mom started really talking up Disneyland with Elias and Simon. She started showing them youtube videos of all the rides, discussing who was tall enough to ride which ones, and in general just drumming up a lot of excitement. Her ploy worked. Nathan and I started talking about how to get ourselves to Disneyland.

We saved Disney reward points for over two years, and that paid for all of our meals. We also saved for the travel portion of our budget, and last April we made a plan.

On October 11th, we picked Elias up from school about an hour early and headed to the airport with Ama and Baba for our Disneyland adventure.

The short version? It was amazing and magical just like Disneyland is supposed to be, but I don’t remember the last time I felt so exhausted!

There is more to say than I care to write down, but I thought I’d share some pictures and stories for the memory books. Caleb won’t remember any of it after all, and he’ll probably have fun looking back some day.

Wednesday morning we woke up bright and early and went to California Adventure. We had a plan: head straight for the Radiator Springs Racers. Elias and Simon were so excited. Here they are in line:

The last time we went to Disneyland, Elias didn’t like any of the big rides. This time, both boys loved most of them. They had a blast on Radiator Springs Racers, and because of Caleb, we had to do ride swap. For Elias and Simon, it was the best because they got to go again with Nathan using the ride swap. Two rides for the price of one!

We explored the rest of Cars land for awhile. The other rides are pretty cute. Luigi’s Roadsters is a lot of fun.

We also took both boys on the Tower of Terror. It scared them both pretty good. We thought we scarred Simon for life for awhile, but he eventually recovered. Elias will tell you he liked it, but judging by his body language, he was pretty scared. (Although he did elect to go again on the ride swap with my parents so it couldn’t have been that bad for him).

After that scary ride, we hung out in Bug’s land for awhile. No scary rides there! The boys got to taste their first churros. Caleb got tired, and took a nap on Baba. Actually, this became a regular occurrence. I think Caleb took a Baba nap every day we were there.

I just love this picture of Ama, Baba, Elias, and Caleb on Flik’s Fliers. The joy on my mom’s face is priceless. The boys are so lucky to have her enthusiasm and energy. Caleb slept through the ride.

Caleb did eventually wake up, though, and got to enjoy the golden zephyr ride. He enjoyed looking over the side at everything down below.

We got to enjoy so many rides and so much time together. One thing I really wanted to do while we were there was see a parade. We caught one on Wednesday afternoon. Simon was mesmerized.

We ended the day with some ice cream and a family photo with Mater. I couldn’t believe we spent the entire day in the park with no rest time. 8 am to 8 pm!

The fun wasn’t over, though, and we got up even earlier the next day! Thursday we were at the Disneyland gate by 7 am. We weren’t the only crazy ones, though. There were a ton of people there.

First we went to dumbo. Simon had been talking about the dumbo ride every night during our bedtime talk for months. His dream finally game true! You can’t tell…but here we are on dumbo.

We also spent a lot of time in tomorrowland where they have a “build your own droid”  section of a shop. Both of the boys really loved that. They each got to build one, and thanks to Ama, later got to build two more!

Thursday we also got to meet our first character: Mickey himself!

The highlight for Elias was riding space mountain. He got to ride it six times due to ride swap. We didn’t have Simon try after the Tower of Terror fiasco, but Elias really wanted to try, and he loved it! Both Elias and Simon really loved Thunder mountain as well.

Friday morning we went to a character breakfast. The boys started out the morning with a dance party. I don’t know how they had so much energy after two long days, but they were amazing troopers!

After breakfast we were back at California Adventure, and we headed straight to Toy Story Mania. I think our one regret of the trip is that we didn’t get on this ride more than once. There really is nothing like it.

Elias loved the silly symphony swings. He was very serious about the rides and was ready with his hands up.

Another of Elias’ favorites was Goofy’s Sky School.

Friday afternoon we spent a lot of time visiting characters. Elias and Simon loved collecting autographs and giving high fives. Caleb just loved squeezing all of the noses and he laughed pretty hard about it, too!

Here is Elias getting ready for the Grizzly river rapids on Friday afternoon. We got soaked, and went back  to the hotel to change and rest a bit before dinner!

Saturday morning we headed back to Disneyland for our final day of fun. We signed Elias up for the trials of the temple show, and he got to cross blades with Darth Vader himself!

We rode rides all day despite big crowds and all three of the boys did amazing. By 8 pm or so we ended up with both Simon and Caleb asleep. We got on one last ride…It’s a Small World. Here’s proof for Simon that he rode it:

Sunday morning we went to Goofy’s kitchen. Our plane didn’t leave until late afternoon so we had some time to kill. They boys loved seeing Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, Chip, and Dale. Simon was so tickled by Minnie, and Caleb really loved her too. It was so fun seeing how much joy they got from the experience.

I’m so thankful that the seven of us got to have this experience together. Disney really knows how to make things magical! It was exhausting, but was worth it!

Caleb turned 10 months old yesterday. Another month gone. Some of it in memory, some into oblivion. I am feeling emotional that my baby is almost not a baby anymore. Nathan wants to be done with the baby phase of our lives. I am holding on tightly to these wonderful days. Yes, I do look forward to the days when I don’t have to get up at 4am with the baby anymore, but there is so much more good than difficult and I am enjoying Caleb’s babyhood so much.

This month Caleb really came into his own as my little trouble maker. He is getting into everything! He loves toilet paper.

He plays with it. Rips it up. Eats it. Drags it around. We have to keep all the bathroom doors closed at all times these days. If one of the older boys leaves it open, he immediately crawls in. When I close him out again, he gives me a disgusted look, and then I can almost physically see the light come on in his head….he crawls straight for the cat food.

On Saturday, Nathan was out of town and the older two boys were hanging out with my parents. It was just Caleb and I for 24 hours or so. I was trying to get a lot of baking done for an event, and Caleb would sit in the kitchen until he knew he had my attention. Then he crawled for the cat food laughing and laughing.

Caleb is an expert mover these days when it comes to crawling. He is trying to pull himself up on everything, but can’t quite get to standing on his own. If I stand him up, though, he can support himself. He likes standing up and watching his brothers at their swimming lessons.

He looks so grown up when he is standing up like this.

This has been a really hard month for us with Elias and Simon starting school. Elias’ kindergarten pick up falls right in the middle of nap time, and trying to adjust Caleb to a new nap time has not been successful. He often ends up asleep in the car, but since we moved him out of the bucket seat, I can no longer just bring the car seat inside. He often wakes up when I try to extract him.

When I do manage to get Caleb a nap, I almost always have to wake him up. Today he got a nap in and I had to wake him up in order to get to Simon’s soccer class. Then after lunch he took another nap, but I had to wake him up to go pick up Elias. I just hate waking this peaceful little guy.

First world problems, I know. I do have some perspective. But that doesn’t make it any easier. I’m sure we’ll get into a new routine eventually.

As far as eating goes, Caleb just loves feeding himself. He wants to be a big boy. A few nights ago he managed to grab one of Elias’ discarded pizza crusts and was happily chewing on it. You would think he had won the lottery. Caleb loves feeding himself, but he’s not very good at it. Most of the food ends up in the pocket of his bib, so we still feed him purees…only after he is done feeding himself.

Most of all Caleb just loves being together. He loves playing with his brothers. He loves “helping” me. He enjoyed our family outing to the Hoyt Arboretum. Thankfully, he is mostly happy in the stroller or ergo.

Caleb is so joy-filled. He is one of the best reminders for me during the day to just be thankful and happy.