Christmas is in the air

I got a little behind in posting so this is catch up.

Our first real Christmas tree since 2002 when my in-laws chopped down a bothersome Spruce in their front yard and we got the top of it for our Christmas tree. Those needles were so pokey you could hang an ornament on one needle. This tree has softer needles but we now have the opposite problem-ornaments keep falling off the tree.

Our decorating jamboree. The kids hung up the ornaments; therefore, they are all on the frontside of the tree. Fortunately, my kids are different heights, otherwise all the ornaments would be on the same branch.

Michelle's school "Cowboy Christmas" program. Her "solo" part was hanging an ornament on the tree.

Michelle- our cowboy princess.

Michelle with Grandpa and Grandma. (how'd Dora get in the picture?!)

Birthday Girl

Today is Gabriella's 2nd birthday. I can't believe my baby is already 2. She's still too young to even realize what a birthday is but she sure is loving getting the gifts. We had a Rains family party for her on Saturday (my parents were only in town until yesterday) and tonight we're having a Smith family party. It's hard having a December birthday. Last night I went down to our gift hiding room to sort through the gifts. I had to decide what to give her for her birthday and what to save for Santa.
This is Gabriella's "cake" for the Rains family birthday party. That's the kind of donut you get when Grandpa Rains does the choosing, but at least he chose chocolate. No matter, Gabriella loved the giant donut. Once the candles were blown out she insisted they stayed in the donut. (Notice the blinds in the background. They were hung by myself and my dad just 3 hours before this party. For the past 18 months we've had broken blinds that had to be tied up with a string. These are cordless and are wonderful.)

This is Gabriella and her daddy on her birthday morning. We had to wake her up in order to open her gifts before the older kids went to school and Dad to work. She's not exactly a happy morning person (kind of like her mom).

Gabriella loves puppies and bunnies (she even calls our hamster a bunny).

Gabriella's hands had to be held because she thought the candles were so fascinating she wanted to touch them, not to mention poke at the bunny again (look closer at the closeup photo of the cake).

No Tooth Fairy

Yesterday Caleb lost a tooth. As he was getting ready for bed last night he mentioned that a friend at school said that there really isn't a tooth fairy, that it Mom and Dad that bring the money and take the teeth. At that time I just told him that if he didn't believe maybe he wouldn't get any money. That worked for that moment. This morning he brought it up when he was with his dad. His dad told him that he was right, the Tooth Fairy really doesn't exist, but if Caleb told his sisters and ruined it for them then no more money will be coming his way for lost teeth. Any day now Caleb will come home and announce the great secret about Santa Claus.

Relief

Remember how I blogged about running 12 miles the day after Thanksgiving? Well it came back to haunt me. The following Monday (one week ago today) during the first mile of my run my left foot starting hurting. It got worse so I removed the orthotic from my left shoe and hobbled back home. For 3 days it really hurt to stand or walk. So I googled the possible causes. I found out it could be anything from a deep bruise to a stress fracture. I had already had my follow-up scheduled with my podiatrist for this morning so I endured the discomfort. Turns out it is an inflamed tendon (peroneus longus tendon, to be exact). The doctor readjusted my orthotics, gave me a wrap and sent me on my way. To my great RELIEF he said I can keep running. After taking last week off of running, I was worried how far of a setback this little injury was going to cause me.

Muddling Through

As if the hamster didn't have enough excitement yesterday, the kids opened his cage to pet him this morning (and yes we've told them countless times they are not to touch the cage without and adult nearby) and Lightening jumped out of his cage, off the counter, and ran under the stove. Having experience my husband was able to catch Lightening before I got out of bed and came downstairs.

The day went downhill from there. Before church, I got frustrated for too many reasons to list, slammed a door, knocking a clock off the wall and breaking it. At church my husband and I were constantly dealing with potty breaks (some in diapers, some in pants, and some actually made it to the potty). But it's 7:30 we lived through the day and it's soon going to be my favorite part of the day--the couple of hours the kids are in bed and my husband and I can relax.

The Good, The Bad and The Tired

At 6:00 this morning we were startled awake by Caleb turning on our bedroom lights and yelling "Lightening's escaped!" We came downstairs and found that the hamster's exercise wheel had fallen off the top of his cage and he was nowhere to be found--not even a poop trail.

The good part was that in searching for this little critter that is small enough to crawl under a closed door, we cleaned the pantry floor, the coat closet floor and even moved and cleaned under and behind the fridge and stove. I did a google search and found that hamsters cannot climb up human stairs but they can certainly fall down them. That narrowed our search to our main floor and our unfinished basement. Another google search gave us a step by step guide of how to build a hamster trap, which we did for the main floor and were going to do for the basement if I wasn't so lazy. Since hamsters are nocturnal we were supposed to wait overnight and check the trap in the morning. Caleb has no patience at all and I was worried the hamster would start chewing on cords to the computer so the two of us kept searching. The last place I looked was in the hole between the cabinets and dishwasher, just then I saw a little furry nose poking out. We took off the front panel of the dishwasher and were grossed out by all the food and debris that had collected under there. The hamster could've lived for a week without ever coming out of his hiding spot. My husband chased the hamster out with a broomstick and I was supposed to catch him in the hamster ball, but did so too timidly (not wanting to crush the fast little guy). I finally rolled the ball the my husband and he caught the little escape artist.

Later this afternoon we took Caleb and Michelle to BYU's folk dance show "Christmas around the World". We were trying to show Michelle what clogging was so we'd know if she'd be interested in taking a clogging class. The show was beautifully done but each of us were so tired we could barely enjoy the show.

By the way, Happy St Nicholas Day! Sinterklaas was kind enough to still fill each of shoes with candy even though some of us may have really deserved only a lump of coal.

Our Newest Addition

On November 28th we brought home our newest family member. "Lightening" is a baby Roborovski Hamster. The kids have been begging for a pet for years now so we finally caved in. With a hamster there is minimal care involved and since I already clean up after enough kids I certainly wasn't going to get a dog or cat.

Since our kids are spaced every 2 years people were starting to ask if another was on the way. Unlike a couple of my longtime friends that are currently pregnant, I chose the easy way. With our new family member there was no morning sickness (or all day sickness in my case), no gestational diabetes and no birthing pains (sorry Mel and Ali, I really do hope you feel better soon).

I'll post pictures as soon as I can find my camera (too many "helpers" around here).

It's now 4:00 pm and Megan finally showed me that she hid my camera under the extra rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom. Now why didn't I think to look there?!

Too Much

We had a great Thanksgiving. We've been able to spend 5 days together as a family. It was like a mini-vacation. I got what I asked for and had plenty of turkey and pumpkin pie, not only on Thanksgiving Day but every day after that. We were given lots of leftovers. Over the course of the long weekend, I've personally eaten an entire pumpkin pie. I'm still working on the turkey ( I had to wait until I had cranberry sauce). Good thing I ran 12 miles on Friday, that right there expended 1600 calories. Too bad a whole pie has 2275 calories. Oh well, better half than nothing. Hope all of you had a great holiday and remembered to GIVE THANKS.

Countdown to Turkey and Pie

Everywhere you look you see stuff about the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Is anyone else's mouth watering as much as mine? Having a husband that doesn't really like turkey and having kids that don't like pumpkin pie, Thanksgiving is my time to gorge on these otherwise never served foods. As of now I have 2 days and 2 hours left until turkey and pumpkin heaven!

What's better than leapin' in leaves?

MORE leaves and MORE people! On Saturday we had a family barbeque and leaf jumping party. We even wheelbarrowed leaves from the other side of the yard to make the original pile even bigger. We had my 2 brothers and their kids as well as my sister's girls join in on the work and the fun.

Leaf Leapin'

Our huge backyard Maple tree finally dumped it's leaves this past week. Gabriella worked hard (although I'm the one with the tired arms) to rake them into a huge pile which Caleb and Michelle promptly jumped in. I love this time of year, especially the days that are 50 or 60 degrees, in my mind that's the perfect outdoor temperature. I guess that comes from having lived in the mountains of Colorado.Caleb likes to take candid shots, he never told us when he was going to click the picture. To think this is the best shot of the 4 he took. Gotta love digital cameras! With a camera using actual film I'd never let the kids take pictures for fear of wasting the film. Oh the good ol' days.

Goodbye Blisters! Hallelujah!

Podiatrists are PHENOMENAL! Ever since I've started running I've been plagued with BOUS's (blisters of unusual size). I've tried everything to prevent them to no avail. Then I gave up and went to see a podiatrist that a friend recommended (if only my brother-in-law lived closer). I won't give you the whole long story but it turns out my blisters were being caused from inside the foot. Suffice it to say that now I wear orthotics (shoe inserts) and my feet and legs have never felt better. It's now only a matter of time until the blisters start to fade. Now a marathon is an actual possibility! CAUTION: the following photo is not for the faint of heart, but I had to show you proof of the plague.

The picture doesn't do the blisters justice (yes that's a bulging blood blister on the left foot). These are my feet after the HALF marathon my husband and I ran last July. I shudder to think what they would've looked like if the race would've been a FULL marathon?!

The Cutest Wolf

Last Thursday night was Cub Scout pack meeting for Caleb. He received his Wolf badge, a gold arrow point and a silver arrow point. That night was also the Pinewood Derby. Caleb and his dad worked very hard and made a pretty cool car named the Golden Racer. The den gave it the award of "Most Futuristic".

Have Horrendous Hair?

Having 3 girls ages 6 and under and all with long hair (they're born needing haircuts) I often face this hair challenge.

I've discovered a few magic potions to help with this challenge. Not only do they work GREAT but they're easy on the wallet.

The one on the above left is VO5 daily leave-in conditioner (Detangle and Shine) 10 fl oz for less than $4 at Walmart.

The one on the above right is Pantene Pro-V deep Fortifying treatment (undo 3 months of damage in 3 minutes) 8.5 fl oz for about $5 or $6 at Walmart.

This morning I used the detangler spray on Gabriella's knotty mess and this is the result (after waiting a couple minutes for the spray to start working and a couple strokes of the brush).

TPing practice

So I'm upstairs cleaning Megan and Gabriella's bedroom. I come downstairs to find Megan in nothing but socks and underwear. When I walked into the kitchen I found she'd been doing while I was cleaning her room. She'd unrolled the toilet paper from the bathroom and strung it around all 6 chairs at the kitchen table the tucked neatly into her toy toolbox. She had the most pleased "look-at-what-I-did" expression on her face. Needless to say I was not very pleased, especially since we've been going through T.P. like crazy around here. We spent the next 10 minutes rolling the toilet paper back up and as doing this I suddenly thought "hey I should've taken a pic for my blog". But it was too late. Besides, if I would've taken a picture it would've made her think what she did was acceptable and I certainly don't need her to continue TPing the kitchen--just think of what she might do when she's a teenager, maybe TP a boat or something.

While I was typing the above post, Gabriella went into Michelle's room, found some markers and proceeded to color in a book and on Michelle's sheets. Days like today explain why I've come to love running. After my interval speedwork session on the treadmill this morning, I didn't have enough energy to get too upset with the girls. I just sighed heavily and told them not to do it again. Why should I pay for anger management classes when running is free!

Thanks to all who Serve

I love waking up and seeing the flags that have been posted in everyone's front yard. My kids love it too because they know it's a holiday of some kind. It's a great conversation starter and teaching moment. I appreciate all those that serve in the military, both past and present. I also feel for the families they leave behind. I get chills every time I see a flag waving in the wind.
To quote Lee Greenwood:

"I’d thank my lucky stars,to be livin' here today.
‘Cause the flag still
stands for freedom,
and they can’t take that away.
And I’m proud to be
an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I won't forget the men
who died,
who gave that right to me.
And I gladly stand up, next to you
and defend her still today.
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA."

Just Runnin' in the Rain

The ground was dry as I set out running this morning, but before I'd run a block the rain started. My first impression was to run right back home, but I perservered and actually had a great run. Having the maiden name of Rains, I'm used to the rain coming at inopportune times. I could go on and on about the vacations, in deseret areas mind you, that were truncated due to rainy weather. But back to this mornings run. The rain was more of a mist or a drizzle. As I was running my last mile and admiring the awesome mountain view, the theme song from "Man from Snowy River" started playing on my mP3 player. All of a sudden I replayed the great horse running footage from the movie and I felt myself running faster-it's an awesome thing, the magical effect of music!

Season Opener

All my life I've been surrounded by sports so I thought that'd be a fitting title for my first ever blog. So far the hardest part of blogging was thinking of a title or name. Then once I found the perfect fit, it was already taken. Hence the one and only drawback of being a Smith. I actually love being a Smith. Since becoming a Smith, I almost never have to spell my last name, and when people do ask, they soon feel stupid for asking such a no-brainer question. I enjoy the anonymity that comes with the name too--there's at least 4 other people in the county with my same name, not to mention a sister-in-law with my same name.

Speaking of sports, last year my husband and I took up long distance running. This morning during my 8 mile run, I passed the 1,000 mile mark. I raised my arms up and cried out, "Yes, I am so awesome!"--too bad no one heard me, that's the breaks when you run at dawn and the temperature is near freezing. I feel much better now that it's been published on the internet.