Smith Igloo, or TeePee, or Fort,...............

Sam had a great idea to get all the kids outside for a few hours yesterday, build an igloo!!!!

I did go out every hour or so to take pictures, but it was nice and quiet in the house as I recovered from gallbladder surgery. THANKS HONEY!

It is starting to take shape here.

The fire pit was a place to warm their hands, and yes, that is our Christmas tree still standing in the yard. :)

The wall continues to go up! Snowball fights in the middle of construction are a lot of fun!

Tiffer was a big help making the snow squares.

Those eyes......

It is getting a little taller then I thought it would be. They are working really hard on it! This picture was taken from the INSIDE because it is really cold out there! I like this one because it shows Kaebrie watching from the warm inside.

Whoops! A wall is trying to tumble down! They figured out that if they sprayed it with water, it would freeze quickly and stick together better.

The final wall went on this morning, and now it is finished! With up to 3 more inches expected today, they have already gotten out the graph paper and outlined new buildings to build and created an entire fort-world. I will take more pictures if they complete the rest of their project!

What is wrong with this picture?

Something is odd here. Can you tell in this picture what does NOT belong?

If not in the first one surely you can spot what is wrong here!

Yep. A banana up in the tree. And NO, it wasn't Christopher. The culprit?

Our neighborhood squirrels. We love watching them . There are so many of them and they are HUGE. Much bigger then southern squirrels. One day, they carried a toy up there that had been left in the front yard. So yes, the excuse,"the squirrel did it," does sometimes work here.

I wonder if that would make a good premise for a children's book?

Blog update:

Well, Collin is still VERY excited about his new blog. He keeps typing in more and more of his schoolwork. I have not set the settings on his blog yet, so it is accessible to anyone in the world, and good grief, people from all over the world have seen it! In the first 24 hours, he had 113 hits from the following places:

United States
Italy
Canada
Spain
Brazil
Mexico
Germany
Netherlands
Colombia
Poland
India
Chile
United Kingdom
Portugal

Turkey
France
Hungary
Austria
United Arab Emirates
Romania
Peru
Switzerland
Hong Kong
Singapore
Malaysia
Israel
Czech Republic
Japan
Thailand
Greece

As his teacher, I just informed him that on Monday, he needed to be able to show me on the globe where all those places are! :)

www.collin-writes.blogspot.com

More snow today. Couldn't resist a quick shot of Tiff and Kaebrie with their friend McKenna.

I just love all the bright colors against the white snow.

Click on the picture and it opens up nice and big!

New Blog!

Collin asked this morning if he could create a blog of his writing assignments. I thought it was a fantastic idea!

Here is his new blog address!

http://www.collin-writes.blogspot.com/

Holiday Snow Hike

Our funny Christopher

fighter pilot versus water delivery guy

Christopher has been very fascinated with fighter jets lately. Hard to blame him. We live on a fighter base, we see them flying all the time, we hear them flying all the time, we have great friends who actually fly them...he is surrounded by them in this environment.

He has been saying for weeks now that when he grows up, he wants to fly those jet planes. I have been encouraging him to do so. Telling him, that if he wants to fly those planes, he needs to come do more school work, needs to read and know how to write. Because all pilots have to read and write.

Just 2 days ago he wanted books on jets at the bookstore!

A few minutes ago, as I was unloading the groceries, he comes up to me and says,
"Mommy, I don't want to be a fighter pilot anymore. I want to be the guy who delivers the water."

Well, I told him that water guys still have to know how to read and write because they have to know where to drive the truck to. He was fine with that.

You just never know what is going through their minds. :)

Odds and Ends of Yesterday

Yesterday was a full day for the Smith family!

Collin had his scheduled check-up with his pediatric endocrinologist in Boise. She is young and really nice and he really likes her. He had a great check-up, an A+ rating for being very healthy, but most importantly to him, he reached the 5 foot mark on the height check. He has been waiting to be at five feet! Over the past several months, he has started taking care pretty much of everything to do with his diabetes. He counts his own carbs and programs his insulin pump all by himself. I am glad he took that step, but it really is weird. I have been a living pancreas for over 5 years now, knowing exactly what his numbers were and every bite he has taken, and now I have to ask him. It is weird giving up some of that control, but I need to. I think it is a healthy step for him to assume much more of the responsibility. Sam and I both like to be at these appointments, so we decided to make it a family day.

After leaving the doctors office (with a very happy Collin because blood work wasn't required for this visit), we went to the bookstore to use the gift cards we got for Christmas. Every one of us had a card to use and everyone was excited! It was a little bit chaotic helping the kids find their stuff and making sure nobody wandered off. Kaebrie is "free" now. Meaning, I don't bring the stroller anymore. That takes things up a notch on the watching meter!

After finding Kaebrie a book on horses with real plastic horses inside to play with (which she somehow hit herself in the face with and caused her lip to bleed), finding Tiffer the books on jets and cars that he asked for, finding Kaitlynn 3 Newberry books that were about horses, and Collin his Hardy Boy books and a book on World War 2 military something-or-other, Sam and I were tired. I didn't end up using my card yet and neither did Sam. Both of us said to each other at the same time, "I can't concentrate on my books." We will go back ALONE one night so we can browse in peace. :)

After the bookstore it was off to Cracker Barrel for dinner; the kids FAVORITE place to eat. The boys immediately go to the giant checker board, where Collin graciously lets Tiff "win." Kaitlynn wanders the store looking for who knows what. Kaebrie colors her menu and plays with her new horses. Ordering for them all?? Good grief. They would make it so much easier if they all wanted the same thing! But then, that is the fun of eating out! Kaebrie got chicken tenders and green beans, Christopher got a cheeseburger and fries, Kaitlynn got shrimp and mashed potatoes, and Collin got pancakes and scrambled eggs.

I ate something in between the 6 trips to the bathroom with Kaebrie, but I don't remember. I hate this stage, when visiting a bathroom is FUN, and you can't trust them yet, so when they say they have to go, you go!

After eating, Tiff said he didn't feel well, sat back, rubbed his stomach and proceeded to give the largest burp any 5 year old has ever given. The kind we have heard before, right before he....well, throws up! So I grabbed him and ran to the bathroom with him, where he said he felt better. He just needed to let that big burp out.

Later, I asked Sam what the etiquette rules were for public throw up in a restaurant?

So, here is my question of the day: If your child throws up in a restaurant:

Do you help the staff clean it up?

Do you offer to?

Sam said you leave them a big tip and immediately leave. This is one question I hope to never have to find out for real.

Has this happened to anyone? Do you know the rules? Leave us a comment with your story or advice!

After the dinner was over, we headed next door to go see the new Veggie Tale movie. It was Kaebrie's first movie in a real theater! She was so impressed!................... with the bathroom.

"WOW! This is COOOOOOOOOOOOL," she said.......of the bathroom! Yes, the one stall I took her into was 6 times the size of our entire bathroom here at home.

Her eyes were HUGE when we finally walked into the theater. She was very impressed with the lighted stairs and kept asking when Larry Boy was coming. She LOVES Larry Boy! She enjoyed the movie, mostly when there was music and singing, but we did make 5 trips to the bathroom. Because

1. she liked walking the stairs

2. she really liked the bathroom, and

3. she drank a lot of lemonade at Cracker Barrel.

At one point, after drinking several diet cokes for our lunch, I needed to make use of the facilities myself. So as she was dancing around playing hopscotch with all the tiles in the HUGE bathroom stall, she asks me in her normal LOUD voice, "Mommy, are you going TT or poo-poo? Mommy, if you go poo-poo do you get to eat M&M's?"

Over and over she asks those and other questions. And yes, I hear quiet laughing coming from the other stalls.

I guess all there is to do is laugh!

Movie Review:

We have been a fan of Veggie Tales since Collin was 2 years old. I would not chalk this particular movie amongst the favorites. It was cute and had some funny parts, but we didn't fall in love with it. Also, the producers or whomever was responsible, majorly wimped out. They didn't even do the famous opening song that everyone knows!

"IF YOU LIKE TO TALK TO TOMATOES............................"

No QWERTY computer at the end with the scripture verse. No mention of God or the Bible anywhere in the movie. And no ending with , "God loves you very much."

Did they think someone would be offended? And so what if someone was? Most people know what the Veggie Tales are anyway. If that is going to offend you, why are you watching it in the first place??

By the time we got home, it was bedtime. We are never gone ALL DAY. Not all of us at the same time anyway.

It was fun, as usual, to watch them all spent time with each other and to experience their differences and the unique personalities.

Looking forward to our next family day!

MAMA

For the past few days, Kaebrie has been donning this outlandish hat and Kaitlynn's new scarf, picking up her purse and saying she is MAMA. She calls her daddy, SAM. She is always leaving to go shopping somewhere, buying strange things for her strangely named pets. So, before she quit doing it I picked up the camera this morning, hoping she would answer the asked questions, but having no idea what she would say. She didn't let me down! Her imagination is on overdrive and she cracks us all up every day with the things she comes up with. Seriously, she spends more time each day in a pretend world then she does in the real one.

Once again, I didn't remember to hold the camera in the right position for video. I am NEVER going to able to break that bad habit of "composing" a picture, so, sorry you have to tilt your head sideways.

Has anyone out there figured out a way to freeze their kids, keeping them this age for a long time? Because if there was a way, we would freeze her at 3 years 4 months and 12 days for a good long time!

Just One More :)

I was doing math with Collin this afternoon and looked out the schoolroom window and saw this stick with an icicle hanging on it in front of the window. What caught my attention was the sun shining through it. So naturally, math came to a stop for a few minutes while I took a picture of it. It enlarges when you click on the picture.
Beautiful blue sky today, but 60% chance of more snow tonight.

BIG snow day

I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore that it snows. But I still am. I still have to remind myself that we live in IDAHO!

It has snowed all day. ALL DAY. That is the first time that has happened since we have been here. Usually, it snows overnight and you wake up to a white world, but today was great. It is just so hypnotising to watch. It is supposed to snow all night long tonight.

Anyway, I haven't tried out yet the super close up setting on my new camera. And well, I have enough pictures of the kids in snow, so I took pictures OF the snow, on our Christmas tree that is standing in the backyard and some bushes.

If you click on these next 8 pictures, they will open up really big!

I am enjoying the great depth of field option here. Love blurring out the background!

I like changing it to black and white too.

OK. Couldn't resist. KK came home as I was taking pictures of the bushes, so I decided to see how close up we could get to her cute freckles!! :-)