February

Still. Playing. Catch Up.

I know, I'm awesome. :)

We put Ethan in a soccer league and he LOVED it.  He has always had raw athletic ability but this was the first time that we have seen his excitement for sports! All he wants to do now is to play soccer, hit/throw the baseball, play volleyball, etc. Since both Justin and I have always played sports, we are eating it up! 

 He's got a mean drop kick that he's pretty popular at recess for... haha!

 Pretty Ellie and I sure have a lot of fun at home. I'm going to miss this girl when she goes to preschool/ kindergarten. She's my buddy!

And she loves to find Aunt Caryn's makeup when we go over there on Sundays. She's showing off her awesome mascara application below...

                                     

 Mason Man got a swing for our swing set. He loves it and is all smiles the whole time he's in there. 

 That pink tutu goes everywhere with her!

 We bought Zoo passes for the year and love going with friends! It's so nice to not feel guilty now about only going there for and hour or two....

 Isn't that one huge turtle?!

 This guy was not people shy! He came right up to people sitting down on the picnic benches. I didn't realize pelicans were so big. I was nervous for anyone who got close to him!

 The zoo has this awesome play area that has a tree house with a stream running beneath it. The kids love running through the water. Sure they get soaked and muddy doing it but they are sure enjoying just being kids!

 We LOVE all the parks around our house. There are beautiful green belts all throughout the neighborhood which totally make up for the not so huge backyards. 

 Daddy and Ethan playing soccer...

Justin had kicked the ball really high and got it stuck in the top of this tree between two branches. It was wedged in there so tight!! He had to climb the tree to get it down. 

 Mason turned 9 months old in February. At this time, he was no where close to crawling (still isn't- I'm not complaining!!), was teething the whole month and still had no teeth to show for it, demanded that I stop nursing him and just give him bottles, and just really started showing us his cute little personality! We are SO enamored with this little boy. 

 He is so easy going and is loved and adored by us all! No one can make this kid giggle though as much as Ellie can. 

 I finally got smart and taught Ethan how to feed Mason. I don't use him all the time but when I need him to feed him if I'm cooking dinner or something, it is SO nice!

 He loves to be thrown up in the air or help up straight with only one hand. He's got some good ab muscles!

 For V-Day, we made heart shaped pancakes, ate pink eggs and drank pink milk!

 One Sunday I took the kids to the Gilbert Temple Visitor's Center. Justin was out of town for work  so he couldn't join us. The kids got to learn about the temple and even got to take home their very own piece of the temple stone. They thought it was pretty cool! We feel so blessed to live so close to so many temples! This one will be in our temple district and is super, duper close to us. 

 We also planted our garden this month. We planted just about everything we could and so far things are looking really good!

Mason helped cheer us on while we planted and the other kids swinged on the swings with the neighbor kids. I love having kids that play outside. It makes me so happy!

 February was really a great month!

Just A Little Piece of Our Home

I have been waiting to post pictures of our house until I can have it decorated just like the perfect model home I have pictured in my head, much thanks to pinterest and Better Home magazine, but let's be honest...it's not going to happen anytime in the next 10 years :) Even though I'd love to switch out some furniture, put up crown molding, wainscoting, trimming, shutters, etc., this is our home and we love it. 

We built it and we feel so grateful to have been so blessed to live in the perfect home/neighborhood for us! So without further adieu, here is a tour of some parts of our home!

The view when you walk in the door. Formal room on left.

The entry table on the right. I love this picture of the Gilbert Temple!

Half of the formal...

The other half...

View of the entry door. I thought and thought about what to put on the sign above the door since our kids will see it as they walk out the door every morning to go out and face the world, and I love what we decided on... "Love More." Simple but says so much

As you walk down the hallway you enter the family room on the right and the kitchen on the left. 

There is also a bedroom, full bath and laundry room  downstairs that I'll have to post pictures of later.

                                      

I love, love, love our carpet. It is amazing and you really could sleep on it. Seriously. I've slept on beds in foreign countries much more uncomfortable than our carpet :)

At the entry way you go up the stairs and you enter our loft which might be my most favorite room in the whole house... the playroom...

                                          

I love spending time creating and playing with the kiddos here and really the organization makes me super happy. I may or may not have a little bit of OCD in me :)

Tripp & Ellie

We pretty much scored big time in the neighbor department when we moved into the neighborhood. On one side we have the sweetest (and coolest) grandma who has supplied our kids with the majority of the balls that get kicked or thrown into her backyard and on the other side lives the Wagner family. 

They have 4 kids and with the exception of their 8 year old, all our kids are almost the exact same ages...like within a month or so of each other! They are also all opposite genders as well.  Fun, right?!

Tripp and Ellie are best buds. If you ask Ellie who her best friend is, she says Tripp and I'm pretty sure the feelings are mutual. Tripp comes knockin' at our door at least 2 times a day to play with Ellie and these two just love to play! 

Tripp takes good care of Ellie. Every morning at the bus stop, he always brings a snack or treat for her and he always makes sure that there is an open seat in his motorized Jeep just for her. In fact, I have seen him push his sister out of the jeep, drive down the street and pick her up and then they cruise the neighborhood together. It's just about the cutest thing ever!

Here they are on Ellie's Quad and then using Tripp's new tool set to fix it up.

These two have been known to get in trouble however. They are only 3 years old, ya know :) My favorite is when they find a bag of cereal in Angie's pantry (Angie is the mom), dump it out on the tramp, and jump around in the mess while stopping every so often to suck the cereal up with their mouths like a vacuum. But they do it so innocently that it's hard to get upset at these two cuties!

I sure hope that these two always remain best buds and really let's be honest...we wouldn't even mind if they hooked up after a mission or two!  Now wouldn't that be such a cute love story?! :) 

January

I love, love, love this time of year in Arizona!! The leaves turn and fall from the trees but yet it's still beautiful sweater weather outside. Best of both worlds! 

One day we were driving down through out neighborhood and we randomly stopped to play in the leaves. 

Ellie had so much fun throwing the leaves up in the air and also all over Mason.

Who says the Phoenix valley doesn't have all seasons?! :)

After Christmas and before New Years, the whole Smith clan drove to St. George to stay for a few days. Just Dance on the Wii was a hit!

We were all impressed with Ethan's coordination and rhythm! Maybe we'll have a coordinated Stake dancer in our family! :)

It just isn't a Smith get together without girl talk, trying on each other's clothes or doing each other's hair. Love these girls!

Ellie also likes to show off her fashion side with her black leggings and brown boots. Hey, you can get away with any kind of style now a days, right?! She is so funny. She can always be found in someone else's shoes. She steals my shoes, her aunts shoes, and even other kids at the parks shoes. It's so fun having a little girl!

Chanda put together some Minute to Win it games that were a TON of fun! 

I'd have to say that I crushed the competition (aka- Justin) at the throw the marshmallows in the bucket game. I might have missed 3, maybe 4 times the whole minute! I pretty much schooled him!

I also beat Barrett in the "find the penny at the end of the hose and pull it out without using other parts of your body game." I don't know the right name for these games but that works, right?! But then we switched hoses and he beat me. Must've been the hose. It was fun to feel my competitive side come out again. It's been dormant for awhile!

Nate beat everyone at the "blowing the cards off the table, except the Kings" game. He was really good at it.

We decorated a Rice Crispies choo choo train, played at the arcade with the kids, and went swimming at the hot tub in the freezing weather. It was such a fun little vacation. 

Here are some pictures just randomly taken throughout the month:

We love having a trampoline. We just play and play with the kids out there after school or on Saturdays. It's also a hit with our neighbor kids. I feel some kind of pride as a mom having our kids play outside all the time. They love it!

Hungry Hungry Hippos is still a favorite Sunday game to play around here. 

This little cutie is growing up way too fast! He is about 8 months old in these pictures. He will be 10 months old on the 19th! Crazy!

We kinda started a new tradition on Sunday with the kids. They love to bake yummy treats and so we try to bake a treat of their choice and then bring it over to G & G Smith's house later that day. I just buy the box stuff. It's SO easy and SO much less of a hassle than baking it from scratch. Just add water, egg, or oil and your done. Your kids feel like they've been awesome bakers and hardly any clean up.... I'll take it!

And of course they get to lick the beaters and the bowl. That might just be their favorite part :)

Right before Christmas, out backyard was completed. Here is the tour...

We have citrus trees lining the back wall and plan to have some sort of snail vine growing on trellises around the playground area. We decided to put rubber mulch in the play area. So much less hassle than dealing with sand and you aren't having to worry about bald spots on your turf. It's worked out really well for us!

This side of the house if the most shaded spot and so this is where we have all of our tropical stuff growing. Mango trees, blackberry bushes, Banana trees, and a few other exotic plants that I don't know the names of. Around this trellis, we will have vines growing around it someday. 

This is the view on the left as you walk out on the patio. The flowers are so gorgeous now. The baby's breath has taken over and it looks so pretty. Isn't there just something about flowers that makes you so happy?!

On the wall is our raised garden bed. We've already planted our garden for the season and it is looking so good. We are pretty excited!

The yard area.... it's not huge but it's perfect for us right now. Even with all the playground stuff, it's still big enough to have all the neighborhood kids over for a soccer game and for us, that's perfect! Not to mention, we have a park with sand volleyball courts and a huge green area like 3 doors down!

Ethan finally learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. He really could've cared less whether he had training wheels or not for the longest time and then one day he decided it was time to not use them anymore and learned super, super fast!

Ethan had a day off of school for President's day (or MLK Day?) so we went to the Sea Life Aquarium. 

It was fun! Ellie was quite a handful that day, if you can't tell :)

Sometimes, Ellie and I like to have picnics in our very own backyard for lunch. I love that she is just my little buddy. 

One day, we had a rainy day that created quite the massive puddles in our backyard. They were just begging the kiddos to play in them. The tramp really needed some dish soap on it as well :)

This is Halle and Chloe, the 2 oldest of the 4 kids next door. We LOVE our neighbors. All our kids are the same age, like as in 6 weeks or so of each other,  (minus the first, she's 8) and it's just so fun to have lots of kids around!

Tripp and Ellie...These two are so funny together!

Tripp is 110% all boy! He has "athlete" written all over him and he can hit balls off of a tee better than just about anyone!

These two love to hang upside down off our counters. Safe? No way. Especially not with the tile floor beneath them, but they think they are pretty funny doing it. 

We love our green smoothies, and smoothie staches! There's nothing better than making them with freshly squeezed AZ oj! 

What a cute picture to end on, eh?!