We're back!

We just got back from the beach!

I've uploaded all of the pictures up to my flickr account, so click on my ad on the right! Here is just a little sampling to get you to click!

At the beach...once again

We are at the beach with Matt's family on Pawley's Island, SC...it is great fun because nearly all of the cousins are here (except for the newest additions) and so Asher has a whole group of people to run and play with. Today we went to a little water park that is on the resort and Asher had the time of his life playing in a "submarine" that was pouring water out all over the place into a 1ft. pool of water. He also loved the "lazy river" today. Just wait till you see the pictures...because I forgot my cord for my camera again.

But we will be back in Asheville on Thursday, so until then....SEACREST OUT!

Oh My Goodness

Baby Tori came home today and we have the pictures of the FULL SMITH FAMILY! How fun is that? Check 'em out:

New Pictures

I am going to brag on myself for a minute, because I took some very good pictures of the kids today(If I do say so myself!). Check em out...

You can also click on my flickr ad to the right and see more.

This is true more often than I like to admit...

P.S. Don't borrow my cell phone.

Please go check out www.someecards.com

I laughed myself to death on their site. I might actually get around to sending some of their e-cards out because they are so dang funny. GO NOW!

Real Simple Tip of the Week

SHINY SINK 101

1. Fill sink to the rim with very hot water; add one cup regular bleach. Soak for one hour. 2. Drain and rinse thoroughly. 3. Scrub with Ajax, Bon Ami, or baking soda. 4. Be sure to rinse thoroughly. 5. Shine with Windex or another glass-cleaning spray. Dry thoroughly.

Pictures of the twins

We received pictures of the twins today! Hooray!

Also a little update, Zoe and Buffy went home from the hospital yesterday. But little Tori is still in the NICU. She is having trouble eating enough and so until that stabilizes she will be there. But they are hoping that she can come home by the end of the week-which would be AMAZING!

So here are the pictures-how cute are they? I can't wait to hold them! Of course, that means I need someone else to hold my kids...but whatever.

Here is Buffy and Tori:Maggie meets Zoe

A Little Sunday Treat for You

Please don't Hassle the Hoff.

Play Date

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the twins to share just yet. So I thought that I would post some pictures from the play date that we had this morning.

Last year; Natalie Knauer, Ellen Troyer and I, all found out that we were pregnant at the same time. We all talked about how fun it would be to have play dates together. I thought that it was a good idea, but we probably would never make it happen. Well, we have stepped up the ante.

Instead of just a play date, we have a "play share". Two moms have ALL SIX kids, tag teaming the little kids and the big kids and one mom gets the morning off. We typically get all of the kids together by 9:30am and the "off" mom picks her kids up by 1pm. So two of us get to hang out and play, while all of the kids play. It is definitely chaotic and LOUD with a nearly five year old, a nearly three year old, nearly two year old and three six-eight months olds. But with two moms, it is definitely doable and the off mom comes back having gone shopping, cleaning their house or with a fresh pedicure!

So here are some pictures as we had the play share group at our house this morning while Ellen went birthday shopping for Hadley (who is turning five next week).

Double Your Pleasure

Our twins have arrived!

Matt's sister, Buffy, delivered two beautiful baby girls early this afternoon. Here is what they had to say,

"Zoe weighed in at a whopping 6lbs - 3ozs. She is resting comfortably in the room with Buffy and I.
Her sister, Tori, is a wee little peanut at 3lbs - 15ozs. She looks perfectly formed, just small for her age. She is hanging out in the NICU for the time being and doing very well."

Hooray for a safe delivery for mom and babies! As soon as I can get my hands on some pictures, I will put them up here!

Here are their full names:
Zoe DuPre Smith
Victoria Jean Smith (Tori)

Congrats to the Smith Family-especially Maggie the big sister!

Real Simple Tip of the Week

I have a Real Simple Tip that I have been using ever since I saw it published in an issue maybe two months ago.

"Put your eyeliner on before any eye shadow. When applying eye shadow, blend the shadow and the eyeliner together to create a more seamless and natural look."

I might be a total idiot, but I never thought of this one simple tip in all of my years of wearing makeup, but I love it!

It makes my eyes look a little more smokey and not so much like I am wearing a paint by numbers face!

There it is from Real Simple to me to you! Happy makeup application!

Lost and Found Auction

Tonight we attended a function at Windy Gap that we look forward to all year long:

The Lost and Found Auction.

It is traditionally held the night before Work Week starts and it is Windy Gap's way of clearing out the crap that has been stored at camp for an entire year. Everything that somebody left at camp that is deemed to have some value-even if it is only 25 cents is held on to for the auction. It starts at 5pm with the "yard sale" portion of the evening where items that are typically of low value are sorted on tables and everything is priced at 25 cents to a dollar. A few examples of tables are; jeans, t-shirts (according to sizes), books, shoes etc.

edit: I forgot to mention the whole purpose of the night is to raise money to send kids to camp. All of the proceeds are donated to Young Life of Asheville's campership fund. AMAZING!

Then we eat. It is pretty much the only covered dish event that we attend all year long and I love it! There is ALWAYS Kathie Odom's Corn Salad, Macaroni and Cheese, Eva Evans spoon bread-oh too much goodness to even talk about.

After eating, we bgin the auction. The best "lost" items of the year are collected on stage and the crowd (Windy Gap staff and dignitaries-such as us) dukes it out over items that might (or might not) actually be of some value. Over the years, I have fallen prey to the "mystery boxes" which is exactly what it says, a mystery. And they usually suck. So I was determined to not do that again this year.

There were a pair of size 8 Nike Shox running shoes that fit me perfectly. I had tried them on earlier this year at a local running store, but decided I didn't want to spend $125 on running shoes. I was so excited and determined that I was going to win them-but I didn't want to spend more that $50 on them. They came up to auction as the 2nd item of the night. Virginia Evans and I got into a bidding battle, but I won them for only $40. They were brand spanking new! I can't believe that someone left those shoes behind at Windy Gap and never even called to see if they were found! Their loss is my gain!

Also, one of the maintenance guys donated six handmade cutting boards that were absolutely beautiful. I really wanted one and managed to win the last one available and I couldn't be happier!

We also got Asher a Land's End fleece jacket for next year and a bubble mower. I also found a "Whoozit" toy that I swear was already ours and we lost it at Windy Gap. So we bought it back for 25 cents.

Here are a few pics from the night:

Obviously, Hadley Troyer won a rocket launcher at the auction. She was off to destroy some buildings.

edit: Another great feature of the auction is getting to see long lost friends! People who are specially invited and who attended this year included the Moldrups, John and Anna Gayle and family, Bo Odom and I can't remember who else right now. But it was so good for my heart to see sweet Anna Gayle and the Moldrups. It was like a breathe of fresh air!

And this was just a cute picture of Lucy from today, I couldn't resist.

Mother's Day

Last year on Mother's Day, I was at the beach with my sister and her two kids, my mom and Asher. We spent some time kicking around names for the little baby that I was pregnant with (we all really liked the name "Lucy"-how fun is that?) and playing with our kids who were all terrified of walking on the sand and how loud the water was. It was a great week, but exhausting! It ended on Mother's Day with all of us working much harder at getting home than any of us were interested in.

This year, it is much quieter. We are at home; Matt and I bought a patio set and we ate outside over the weekend. I love it!

My sister just sent me a Mother's Proclamation from 1870. Apparently, this proclamation was one of the reasons why Mother's Day was created. Check it out:

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace

One of the reason's that I love this proclamation is because I have begun to understand exactly why war is such a travesty. This revelation has only come to me now because I am a mother. Anytime a life is lost, whether by acts of heroism or terrorism...that person was someone's child. A mother somewhere has lost her child and no matter the manner of that death; a loss is experienced and that life cannot be recreated. War does not discriminate and only take the "bad" people who have no families, no futures or no pasts.

Somewhere a circle of people have been impacted and a life that was created by God and loved beyond all measure has been ripped from the earth. This is not what He has designed for his creation. Our sin has led all of mankind to be at war with one another and everytime we pick up arms, we verify that this is indeed a fallen world-apart from Him and without hope apart from Him.

Mother's everywhere have experienced loss as their children grow up and make choices apart from them. They die a slow death, even as pride emanates from them as they see their children grown and learn. That is why we celebrate Mother's Day. Just to honor those who simultaneously love and let go at the same time. It is quite a challenge.

Thanks Shellie for sending this to me. It has given me a lot to chew on!

EDIT: I wanted to say one more thing, as a child of a retired Army officer, I am very, VERY sensitive to anti-war protests and sentiment. The only way that I can reconcile this within myself is to remember a quote that is posted outside of the Army War College Campus in Carlisle, Pennsylvania (where my dad was stationed for a year) it gave a great purpose for our military and something that I wish was more at the forefront of our current government, "Not to promote war, but to preserve peace."

I believe that this quote serves as a reminder of what our military was formed to do, not to be a war-mongering nation...but to uphold peace as the great ideal of the world and to offer our aid as a powerful nation to all who long for peace in their nations. As Jesus said, "Blessed be the peacemakers." PEACE is the call of our nation.

Okay, that's enough for the soapbox today!

Thar's a Bar

Yesterday, the cover story of our local paper The Citizen Times was about how a bear ate a local couple's pet schnauzer (as opposed to the wild schnauzer population that is roaming the hills) when the husband let the dog out to pee on Sunday night. The story included lots of information about how to make sure that bears aren't hanging out outside of your house in the middle of the night because the late spring frost killed their main food source.

It was a pretty freaky story and I definitely had the image of my head of sweet little FiFi barking its head off at big scary mama bear and the bear taking the dogs head off.

So I was carrying around that image in my head all day yesterday.

Around 2:30am, I woke up because Lucy was screaming her head off because she lost her pacifier in her crib and couldn't find it. When I came back to bed, I was settling in and I heard our garbage can get knocked over. My first thought was, "BEAR!" So I jumped out of bed, our motion detector light was on. I was peeking through the windows, but I couldn't see anything except that the garbage can was knocked over. Our window was slightly cracked and I could hear the bags rustling in the wind. I looked for a good three minutes for any sign of bears. I tried waking Matt up-but that was a wasted effort. Since I couldn't see anything, I just went to bed and I didn't hear anything else during the night.

This morning, I told Matt that I thought we might have had a bear outside of our house last night. He asked me why I didn't wake him up-hmph.

And then I went to let Slappy outside for her morning bathroom break and sure enough; garbage was strewn across our yard. Matt was kind enough to pick it all up as I have a delicate gag reflex. Otherwise I would probably still be out there picking up poopy diapers and old cantaloupe scraps and dry heaving the entire time.

All I can say is, I guess the bear really wanted my leftover 7-layer Cruncherito from Taco Bell that I had for dinner last night!

My 100th post!

Wow, I have been blogging for just over two months and I am already at 100 posts-I must have a lot to say. Which is not a surprise for many of you, I know!





I discovered over the weekend that Lucy has crazy hair on both sides of her head, long enough to put into pigtails. Check it out:

Her hair made me laugh all day long. I am definitely going to Target later to buy more hair ties so that we put her hair up more often!

Isn't it weird how we all of the sudden discover things about ourselves, like being able to pull your hair into a pony tail that we could do for awhile, but we never realized it? Or even something as simple as discovering new combinations of clothes in your closet that make old things seem new? I love that!

I'm baaaack

After erasing my hard drive twice, uploading a ton of drivers and software (I still have to upload my printer and camera software) and spent two hours on the phone...I believe that I have nearly restored my computer.

I was in a dead panic last night after I got my computer back from the Geek Squad, followed all of their directions to find out that my computer was infected with a virus that was shutting down my laptop every three minutes. Matt and I quickly came to the conclusion that I was going to be buying a new laptop today. But I decided to try to erase and reformat the hard drive one more time and give it a go-and it worked! Hooray! This might only be a temporary fix, but I hope that it will last a long time. I really don't want to spend the money.

But I am so tired of reconfiguring my computer. I mean, I am exhausted by it all. I have to catch up on work items and oh yeah, I have two kids that I take care of all day long. So it might be a few more days before I get back in the swing of blogging. Sorry bout that.

Looking down the barrel of a gun

I believe that I might be in the last months/days of my laptop. Today, the dumb thing just locked up on me for hours. I just erased about 150 pictures and the useless Microsoft Works that came preloaded on my computer and now it is running super fast (compared to what had been happening!). Now I don't know what is going to happen.
I am thinking that all I might need to do is buy an external hard drive and off-load all of my thousands of pictures onto the hard drive instead of just erasing everything but my absolute favorite pictures. This laptop has been faithful and worked very hard for the last five years. We have definitely gotten our money's worth out of it, however...I know that its days are limited. A laptop can only last so long. But it sucks to think about making such a huge investment again.
So, I am going to do some research and see if all I really need to do is get an external hard drive and can limp through another year. Or, start researching laptops and see if I can get a steal somewhere.

Also, Matt and I just got back from seeing Arcade Fire at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium...let me just say-I had a blast. Matt, had a harder time. He told me that he's not a big fan of people thinking that they are smart for liking a certain type of music, and he believes that people that like Arcade Fire and Wilco think they are smarter than everyone else. So he was judging US all tonight. For a long time. He had a hard time letting go of it. But by the end, he had to admit that it was a cool show and that he liked the music. I mean, they had nine mics on stage, a church organ, french horns, trumpets, keyboards, xylophones-the WORKS. It was musical mastery at its finest. I really liked it and I got to dance next to Cassia Kessler, which was great fun!

New website love

I just found this website: www.truemomconfessions.com


It is like PostSecret but for mom's! Here is the confession that made me laugh outloud:
"So far today, in addition to full meals, I have eaten half a bag of Doritos, half a bag of extra buttery popcorn and 4 bottles of Sunkist. Yet, I will complain because my capris from last season no longer fit. "

Ouch. I hate/love reading things that smack of truth in my own life!