Stuff and Things :)

Crazy days at the Smith house :) Bear with me folks, this is a long post with lots of pictures (it is my attempt at catching up). It is also in reverse chronological order - oh well.

First we have Raegan's birthday party. We had twelve girls attend. We made these cute desserts - thanks Pioneer Woman for the idea. The bottom is a pot with pound cake, ice cream and crushed oreo cookies. Then the girls got to decorate their 'flower' to put in the pot.
Here we have the scavenger hunt for the goody bags. I had 10 clues, I think the girls finished in about 2.6 seconds.
I'm not exactly sure what we are doing here, either decorating the sugar cookie, or decorating their flower pot.
Just a cute pic of all the girls.

Next on the list we have Haiden's baseball game. He was in a tournament again this weekend - it was for Autism Awareness. Fun tournament and I was sad to miss his games on Saturday. Notice anything similar in the two pictures?

He is ALWAYS sticking out his tongue. He did really well and the team finished in 2nd place. He even hit one to the fence! I'm really proud of all of the boys. What a fun group to watch!

Ok, here is our annual trip to the "Easter Cabin" We always do an easter egg hunt, this one is of me telling the teens to WAIT, WAIT, WAIT
And here is my younger munchkins going - we have to go in separate groups because it is VERY competitive and people get ran over. I honestly think the adults have more fun hunting for eggs than the kids!

Ok, this was on our return trip from the Ragnar. We decided to take the kids to the Grand Canyon. It was REALLY cold but fun to see.

Below - nice panoramic picture with the beautiful canyon behind us..... and some lady's bum.
PHEW! I think that is it for now and I am caught up. All the kids are busy with lots of things right now. Haiden with his baseball, Rae with her dance and now baseball and Tre/Xander are soon to start swimming lessons. Darrin and I are just running around trying to keep up with it all. Lots of good times :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAEGAN!

Happy birthday to my big 7 year old girl! It is hard to believe how fast time goes. Thanks for being such a cute little girl and taking care of your brothers (and anyone else that is around). We LOVE you!

Ragnar!

My team: Kim, Me, Dana, Jill, Melanie and Laura


This weekend I was able to participate in the Ragnar Relay series in Arizona. I had an awesome team that was very supportive and a ton of fun to be with.

Background: Each Ragnar team consists of 12 people that run 3 legs each. Each 12 person team is broken up into two 6 people per car teams - runners 1-6 in car 1, runners 7-12 in car 2. The relay is 204 miles winding through Arizona from Prescott to Tempe.

I was in the 2nd car so our first run didn't begin until the afternoon. I was the 9th runner (3rd runner in our car) so my run started at about 2:30 in the afternoon on the 26th. It was a VERY challenging run, mostly up hill, I feel that I was vastly unprepared for it. That being said, I made decent time and finished my 6.7 mile run (ok, run with a lot of fast walking) in 1 hour and 17 minutes. Our team finished our runs at about 7:30pm and went to dinner and a friends house to rest. We got up at midnight and drove to the next exchange to start our 2nd run. Kim (amazing woman on my team) was the 7th runner (our 1st runner) and was pumped up and ready to go on her 8 mile run (at 2am), unfortunately there was a very bad accident and a young runner on another team was struck by a car on the highway. He is currently in critical condition. They held all runners for about 2 hours and then told us to drive to the next major exchange point for a mandatory meeting. Which means our car skipped our 2nd runs. There we still did not have a lot of information but several rumors that a person had been hit and killed and possibly 2. We made an emotional decision to not continue the ragner. We then drove 3 of our team home and I went to Kim's house to rest up and wait for Darrin to pick me up.
(me finishing up my 1st run - racing a little hehehe)

After a little nap we needed to go get my car charger out of Dana's (another amazing woman) car. On the way Kim and I joked a little that we should just go run the last 3 legs of the ragnar and finish it out. We then told Dana and she was SO excited that we actually did it. We changed our clothes, drove an hour and a half to the ragnar and each of us (Dana, Kim and I) ran. I ran a 3.5 mile leg and felt much better about it, made good time, no hills and I ran - not walked :) Then for the very last mile (during Kim's run) Dana and I joined her and we finished it together.
(above, me getting the relay bracelet from Dana on our last 3 legs- below finishing my leg with a sprint)

What an amazing experience. I am very grateful to have been a part of it. I think the 3 of us at least felt disappointed to not be able to finish it out, and even running those last 3 legs made us feel a lot better about it.

I am so very thankful to my wonderful husband for supporting me, driving me to Arizona and taking care of my wild children while I ran and participated.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the young man, his family and team. I hope he recovers quickly.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAIDEN!!!

Happy 10th Birthday HAIDEN!
I can't believe that I have a 10 year old. He is growing up so fast. He loves all things sports (esp. Football) related, just like his dad! He is doing great in school and is makes friends easily. His favorite foods are hamburgers, raw vegetables and ANYTHING SWEET! We are very proud to be his parents. Love you bud!

Boring blog.

I am sure a lot has happened since last time I blogged, I just haven't gotten around to posting any of it. Christmas, new years etc. and so forth. We had a very nice Christmas and the kids got spoiled. For New Years Eve we did... NOTHING, which is what we usually do. I did hear some fireworks that night and then rolled over and went back to sleep :) The kids are doing good in school and hanging out waiting for warmer weather to get here. I crazily signed up to run in the Ragnar Del Sol and am training for that, it is at the end of February. Cross your fingers that I do ok, I am super worried about it! (It might help if I wasn't such a complete slacker on my training!) That is about it for now. Sorry for the boring blog! YAWN!

School program and Gingerbread Houses

Here are a few pictures from the last few days.

Raegan had a cute singing program at school, We missed Xander's program (there's always next year right?), she also had a little performance at dance.



Yesterday and today we made gingerbread houses with the kids. Darrin won the "most structurally sound" as well as the "best looking" I helped Rae/Tre/Xander with their houses and feel that I have not missed my calling as an architect in any way.

Thanksgiving Football

I know, I know. Thanksgiving was a while ago. Give a girl a break.

These are some pictures from Haiden's football tournament in Las Vegas. It was a lot of fun watching him play. He played every single play on both offense and defense, he didn't come off the field once. I think after each game he was exhausted but he played really well and seemed to have a fun time. We are hoping to make this a family tradition and go to the tournament every year.


#12 "Fast Haiden Parker"
That's my boy up there with the ball :)
This one is Haiden tackling the other guy.