Emma turns 12!

Emma turned 12 years old on Saturday, Nov. 26th.  She opened gifts from Jared & I that morning (minus the new cell she got a week before!).  She's getting to that fun age where she wants clothes and make up.  She had to wait until Ashton & I were home from soccer.  Then we took the kids to see 'Arthur Christmas' and to lunch to celebrate (our new favorite place NOW located in West Jordan - Brick Oven pizza!).

Emma has not had a "friend" birthday party since 2005!  '06 - '08 we were in Disneyland on her birthday, plus 2010, and in 2009 I was 8 months pregnant & didn't have the energy for it.  Needless to say, she was over due for one and we promised she'd get one this year.  12 is a big birthday to me, since they leave primary and head to YW/YM.  Kelsey & Emma get to be together in Beehives until June!  I'm excited for them to be able to go to activities together.  

She has quite a big group of friends, add to that cousins and siblings and you have a very large group!  We had 28 kids total, which required 6 cars to transport them all from my house, to the trampoline place, then back to my house.  In Draper there is a place called Airborne Arena - a huge warehouse full of trampolines all hooked together.  They have a foam pit and an area to play dodgeball.  They got to jump for an hour and they loved it!

Serious game of dodgeball was going on - always boys vs. girls

Big thanks to Whetmans, Bergmans, Brandon & Carrie for helping Jared & I get kids to and from!  Denise stayed home with Sophie, which helped a lot!

 After jumping around for an hour, we came back for pizza, cake & ice cream.  I totally underestimated how much 6th graders can eat.  I ordered two huge 23 inch pizzas from The Pie & they disappeared.

Happy 12th Emma Lulu! We sure love you and are so grateful you are in our family!

Thanksgiving 2011

This year for Thanksgiving we hosted Jared's family.  ALL of his siblings were able to come, plus we had Jared's two aunts (Brent's only siblings) and their kids too, plus Jared's Aunt's mother in law.  Whew.  I think we had about 45 people total.  We wanted to make sure that everyone had a seat at a table - so we had to clear out our family room furniture to make room for tables and chairs.

All the couches moved into the front room

I made place cards.  I took this picture when I was done - or so I thought!  I forgot a few of the littlest kids.

Chairs courtesy of the Midvalley Stake ;]

Jared made all the pies from scratch.  Here are most of them, plus two pumpkin cheesecakes.

It turned out great!  Denise, Brent, Brandon and Carrie helped us clean up and put the house back in order. Jared loved every minute of it.  That night when we finally went to bed I said to him, "Aren't you thinking to yourself, 'I am SO glad that's over?"  and he said, "No, I loved it."  Something is seriously wrong with that man of mine.  ;)     I am lucky to have him.

Halloween 2011

We had a very busy and fun Halloween weekend! 

Friday night we had the Bergman's and Whetman's over for homemade pizza and to carve pumpkins with all the kids.  We don't always carve pumpkins around here, and I forget how messy it can be. We cleaned them out on the porch and carved in the kitchen.  Most of the pumpkins we (the Smarts) carved were from our own garden....including a large 90 pound one! Jared was particularly proud of that thing.

All of our pumpkins on the porch

 Jared ended up in charge of the ward Halloween activity, which made for a very busy Saturday.  Bergman's were a lot of help too.  We had a chili-cook off, pumpkin carving contest, and trunk or treat.  Saturday was also our last "Soccer Saturday" for outdoor soccer (Ashton starts indoor soccer this Saturday with his Sparta team.)  I was gone at games from 9:30 until 3:00, only coming home to drop off Ashton around lunch time.  That made for a lot on Jared's plate that day: making a massive amount of 2 different chili (imagine an Igloo drink cooler full of chili.....about that much!), dozens and dozens of breadsticks, two trips to the store, picking up after everything AND taking care of little ones.  And he doesn't even complain!

There is Kelsey as "Red Riding Hood".  She put her costume together at the last second - love that! She carried around a wolf in a basket too. =]

I was pretty darn proud of this costume....he had glittery socks too. OW!

We had a HUGE turnout. Jared & Seth set up 20 large church tables & we still had some people standing.  It was crazy.  

 The breadsticks Jared made were gone in about 20 minutes, luckily we didn't run out of chili.  We had everyone vote on their favorite chili and pumpkin.  Conner's friend, Ryan, won the pumpkin carving contest with his Angry bird carving.  One of Jared's chili's got the most votes, but since Jared was announcing the winners that would look a little ridiculous, so he gave it to the runner up.  We had lots of help cleaning up after (thank you Whetmans & Bergmans!!), and there were nothing but nice things said about it at church.  

Good job Jared!

We started Halloween off with the parade at the school.  I was in charge of Conner's class Halloween party, so I did that while Jared took Sophie to the office with him.  By the time I was done with Conner's party, Mal was done with hers, so we grabbed Sophie and went home to crash.  Actually, Sophie and I crashed while Mallory watched a movie.  We ordered pizza for dinner, got the kids ready (the weather was awesome!) then Jared took the kids around and Sophie and I stayed home.  Sophie even helped put candy in our trick-or-treater's buckets.  Cute!  It was so nice we even sat out on the porch.  Kels went around with her friend Candice, and Emma was in the neighborhood across 10th with a group of friends.  They trick or treated from 6-8:30 (GEEZ!).  I don't have the best pictures of their costumes, but I'm lucky I remembered at all!

Emma was Alice in Wonderland.  See our huge pumpkin!! It looks fake, but it's not.

Mallory was a pirate.  And she's a mess in this picture.

I never did get a picture of Sophie in her costume.  She wore it for the trunk or treat and that was it because she HATED it.  She's so moody lately (as you can tell from the picture).  She was a garden gnome.  In this picture she had just finished up a sucker that Ashton gave her.  And right before that she got a sucker from Mom.

Conner was the red Power Ranger.  His costume had a mask too.

What a busy weekend, but fun too! 

September fly-by

I can't believe how quickly September went by!  The weather was great all month and we were busy with all our various activities: 

Jared: work, work and more work.  Lots of church stuff (he is the EQ pres) 

and helping taking care of kids, yard and dinners (most nights!)

Jersh: Room mom stuff for Conner's class, I'm Ashton's new Webelo leader, spoke in church on the 18th (yikes!), running kids all over the place, helping with homework, taking care of house. Oh yeah, I work too. 

Kels: busy with lots of homework, friends, babysitting jobs & YW.  

Emma: soccer on Wed & Sat, homework, friends and Activity days.  

Ashton: soccer, soccer, and oh, yeah - soccer. 

Plus we try to fit in play time with friends, homework and scouts.  

Conner: soccer on Mon and Thurs, math homework (which he loves), 

reading homework and play play play.  

Mal: dance class on Thurs mornings, Kindergarten every afternoon 

and lots of playing and being a "diva" (what Jared sometimes calls her).

Sophie: she's pretty busy being everyone's favorite.

The picture is bad, but one day our yard turned into neighborhood central.  Emma & 3 of her friends put up a lemonade stand (on the left side of the picture), that attracted some boys (they are cute girls, boys can't help themselves;]!), and a few of Ashton's friends showed up.....some cousins too.  They played some soccer, rode scooters & bikes, and made a mess.  I think there were about 20 kids over. 

Pretty self-explanatory.  SO cute.

This is Sophie's FAVORITE thing to do.  We'll say, "Want to jump?" and she goes straight to our back door.  The kids love playing with her there too.  Denise asked me if it was a giant playpen for Sophie. =]  Kind of.

Happy Birthday Ashton!

Ashton turned ten years old yesterday! We celebrated on Sunday too, so Ashton got double the fun.  

 Ashton got two new Legos- the "Knight Bus" from Harry Potter and a new Star Wars ship.  He also got a new Nerf gun from Mom & Dad, and one from the Bergmans. (Thanks Seth & Monica!) One of his favorite things this year is his HexBugs. 

 Same as last year - he wanted a carrot cake.  This time we put homemade whipped topping on & caramel.

 Grandma brought over cupcakes & presents after school. He loves the Hex Bugs they got him.

We decided to take the kids to 'Planet Play' in Draper for dinner & of course, to play.  We had a gift card we were given at Christmas that we still hadn't used.  It used to be 'Incredible Pizza' & we took the kids there probably about a year ago.  We hadn't been since it changed, and Jared and I were not impressed.  But the kids had fun and it was great to be out doing something as a family. =]

Sophie played on the little slide all night, she loved it.

Ashton & Conner on one of those virtual roller coaster things. 

Ashton is a great kid.  We are so glad he's in our family.

Grandma Campout

My Mom has made it a tradition to take the older kids camping every summer.  It's something my kids very much look forward to, and start asking at the beginning of summer when they are "going camping with Grandma".  Mom reserved a spot on Wednesday, just to be sure to get a good spot with the busy holiday.  She picked the kids up Friday right after school.  My kids absolutely love it.  They love camping, love being with Grandma and some of their favorite cousins.  I'm sure s'mores are an added bonus too.

Showing "Five" for five years of camping.

The whole group minus Grandma.  My kids loved having Matt & Beka there to tell stories.  There are a lot of grandkids - when they are all old enough Mom is going to have to go in shifts.  Or take a bus. =]

THANKS MOM!