It seems like only yesterday...

Just a little over 5 years ago I was large with child. And I mean very large. But now I have an independent little genious, who sometimes gets a little (a lot) hyper and I love him so much. I know his birthday was almost a month ago, but I still wanted to share some pictures from Kurtis' birthday.

The Tall, Tall Tower

Here is my proud boy with his tall, tall tower that actually had to be rebuilt a couple times because it was right in the major walkway in our home.

The 4th of Never

Today is the day I actually post pictures of the 4th of July. Luckily it's from the 4th of this month of this year. I'm not too far behind!

We had a fun 4th with lots of family but mostly we just sat around a lot, ate lots of cookies and sat around some more (with some occasional game playing thrown in there)!

The parade portion of sitting:

The fireworks portion of sitting:

The one thing I learned.

I know there is a huge controversy surrounding Jon & Kate plus 8 and you could learn a lot of things NOT to do from their situation. However, there is one thing I learned while watching older episodes that I will never forget.

When serving pancakes to your kids, cut them up with a pizza cutter! It saves on tons of mess and you can cut 10 times faster (that is, of course, an estimation)!

Pinching Your Pennies is now a little bit easier.

If you want to save some money on your groceries, but don't know where to start with the sales or the coupons or the shopping, don't wonder anymore! Just hop over to pinchingyourpennies.com and plenty of experienced savers will show you the way. Plus there is plenty of other stuff to help save you time or money! Also, you never know where your expertise could help someone else out. Give it a try, you just might find what you've been looking for!

Kole's Baby Blessing

Like I said before, we had Kole's baby blessing on the 28th. We planned for a day that was not Fast Sunday because all of Steve's family was going to be in town that weekend and then all the siblings could attend. We've always seemed to have nontraditional circumstances with our baby's blessings. And I'm happy to say this time was not any different. We like to bless our babies with just family and friends present (and of course a member of the bishopric!), and this time we had most of both our families and a lot of Josh Park's family and some of Josh and Jill's friends. Addie was blessed that same day and she looked beautiful in the dress that Eva made. Wayne (singles branch president) said that we could use the seminary building (where his branch meets) for the blessings and it worked out great to accommodate so many people. The blessing was wonderful. I wouldn't have wanted anything any other way. The only thing I hoped for but didn't get was some pictures of just Kole in his handsome outfit. Eva has been amazing about making all of our kid's blessing outfits. This time I feel like she worked extra hard because of our requests, but she pulled it off.

Thank you to all of our family (those who could make it and those who couldn't) for loving us and our little family. Kole is such a special baby brought to our family at the perfect time. My bond with him is so strong and he's only been here a short time. And his little smile shows more thanks than I could ever express.

Smith Reunion-The Hike

The weekend before the 4th the Smiths had a family reunion. It was a lot of fun (except for the sharing of germs...again!) and everybody was able to make it. One of the days we were all together we went on a hike. It was sort of like a scavenger hunt. I still don't know who won though...hmm... We can just say it was my team! :)

In some of the pictures you'll see my parents and Tim. They came to town because on the 28th we had Kole's baby blessing. He was blessed at the seminary building right after his cousin Addie was blessed. It was pretty special to be able to have both of them blessed on the same day.

There is no particular order to these pictures, but they are all from the hike. And a special thanks to my dad for taking all of these pictures (my camera was "missing" until I found it where I left it!)

We had to find a wooden bridge and we got extra points of there was a person in the picture. Instead we opted for a picture of our family with a bridge in it!

They were showing off the animal tracks in the mud (you can't see them, but I promise there were deer tracks there!).

A picture of the Snake River. And Steve didn't look thrilled to be standing next to me in ANY of the pictures taken that weekend, but I promise it was just the quantity of the picture taking going on that he wasn't happy with!

This is a cool picture even though I was little nervous when he was up there. The other side is just a cliff down to the river. Scary!

The Whole Smith Family.

This picture was taken near the beginning of the hike and the enthusiasm level from them went downhill from there (as we all climbed uphill...for a long time!).

My mom and I look a lot alike, huh?

Kurtis with a flower.

All the Smith grandchildren. Kole made the total 17.