We have a little bookworm in the making

Found on glogster.com

Lily loves to be read to, and I read to her quite often.  Last week, Lily grabbed one of her books off the book shelf, brought it over and plopped down right on my lap.  Usually, this means, “Read this book to me Mommy.”  But this time, she was whining and closing the book and turning pages and screaming and trying to pull the book from my hands.  I was trying to be patient, but I didn’t know what she wanted!  So, finally, fed up with the way she was acting, I just let her hold the book and sit on my lap.  THEN SHE STARTED READING IT TO ME!!  I was stunned by her adorable-ness.  Now she can't get her little button nose out of her books.  Which makes me extremely happy because books are a fabulous!  I think we have a little bookworm on our hands.

Go Class of 2013!!

My little sister-in-law flipped the tassel last night, and is now officially a high school graduate!  WAHOO Christyl!!

But I am getting ahead of myself, let's start at the beginning.  I have lots of pictures documenting her special day.

First her hair, because, seriously, hair is important.

Oh!  That picture makes me giggle.  We didn't really leave her hair like that.

After the giving of gifts, we had a lot of time to kill before the graduation ceremony.  So we ate lunch, put the kids down for naps and played a game of Beyond Balderdash.  Which I lost, miserably.

Found at funagain.com

As we were finishing up the game we realized-- WE NEEDED TO BE ON THE ROAD!  Like, 20 minutes ago.  So we rushed to get dressed, hurried out the door and scrambled into the van.  The ride was a little heated because "every other driver was deliberately getting in our way just to slow us down"-- or so it felt.  Christyl was supposed to be at the Glendale Civic Center at 4 PM to get instruction on how to "walk" and what not.  But . . . 4 o' clock came and went, 4:30 came and went and just as the clock struck 4:48 Mom and Christyl breathlessly walked through the Civic Center doors.  Ok, so maybe they weren't breathless, but it was still pretty intense.

After all that, things seemed pretty lame, sitting around waiting til 5:30, for them to open the doors.  I know I was starting to question if 5:30 was ever going to come.  I was completely unprepared for the mad dash the moment the doors were opened.  CRAZYNESS!!  AJ was in the lead and three different times he was blocked from procuring us seats.  People would appear from nowhere and dash to sit down before AJ could, or throw their purse onto the seat and one girl even jumped, JUMPED, from behind AJ and landed on the seat AJ was going for.  Mad house, I tell you.  After that AJ got a little more serious, and thankfully we found five seats, all together.

After 30 long minutes, was the presentation of the graduates. . .

On with all the "boring" graduation stuff.  Thankfully, all the talks were short and the musical numbers entertaining.  Then began the reading of names, which Samuel made extremely entertaining because he repeated every name and then would scream and cheer as loud as he could.

The big moment: Chrisyl's turn to walk across the stage and receive her high school diploma!

Now, I have to make a serious comment, this was, by far, the shortest graduation I have EVER been to.  The ceremony started at 6 and was over by 6:45.  We were all greatly impressed.

Congratulations Chrsityl!!

And to celebrate, we ate dinner at El Pollo Loco, because it is kinda a big deal in the Smith family.  Booyah!!

Temple Sealings and Empty Mason Jars

Today, I want to share an inspiring quote I stumbled across earlier this morning.  I found it on THIS blog, but the quote comes from S. Michael Wilcox's book "House of Glory: Finding Personal Meaning in the Temple".

“My wife often cans peaches and pears in the fall. A great deal of work is necessary just to prepare the fruit. Then, once it is prepared, she puts it into jars, places the seals on, twists the lids tightly into place, and sets the jars in boiling water. Then she waits for the seals to set.

She has performed this operation dozens of times with hundreds of jars. In all that time I have never seen her seal an empty jar. Unless the jar is loaded with fruit, a seal is not placed. I doubt if anyone, among the thousands who can fruit every year, has ever sealed an empty jar. There must be something to preserve or the seal has no significance. 

The sealing of temple covenants is similar. When we are married at the altars of the temple, the Lord, from one point of view, gives us an empty jar. Then he instructs us to fill it with the wonderful fruits of righteous marriage. We fill it with love and compromise and forgiveness and joy and peace and shared trails; we fill it with all the things of life, all the good fruit. As we keep our covenants, returning often to renew them as we work for the dead, the jar begins to fill. As we grow older and our love deepens, we desire to preserve forever all the good we have stored. 

Our abiding in the covenant allows the Lord to place the seal on our covenant relationship and preserve the fruits of our righteousness for all eternity. This is the same for all temple covenants. Nobody seals an empty jar; neither does the Lord seal empty covenants. First there must be fruit to preserve.”

 This is my goal for my marriage with AJ, and as it was so wisely put on Seth Smith's blog...

"Eternal marriages are not made at the altar. They are made by the things that you do together and for each other every day thereafter. [Spend] your lifetime filling your jar with all of the sweet things of your life together."  -The Snyders

The Smith Siblings Dance

I have mentioned a couple times, the Smith family reunion we went to, all of last week.  The WHOLE reason we had a reunion at all, was for a very special dance.

In the Gila Valley, is the Safford Dance Academy, and all of AJ's siblings, including AJ, learned to dance there.  The Safford Dance Academy is kinda a big deal in the Smith family.

Well, about 7 years ago a crazy-awesome idea formed, the origin of the thought is unknown to me, and the thought was, "All of the Smith kids--talking about AJ and his siblings-- should do a big dance, all together, for Mom."  Mom clung to it like a lifeline, and decided the year Christyl graduated she was going to have her dance.

2013, was the lucky year.  Jamie, the oldest, choreographed the dance-- she is super talented like that.  And everyone learned the whole dance in FOUR days-- they are seriously talented like that.  But Amanda takes the prize though, because she danced pregnant!!

Just remember, this dance was seven years a week in the making...

From right to left, (at the beginning of the dance):  Matt (striped shirt), Christyl (white dress), AJ (the sexy one), April (grey dress), Amanda (grey cardigan) and Jamie (black shirt)

"We love you Mom!!!"

Samuel tells Grandma about Disneyland

Honestly, I didn't think Samuel would remember anything about our trip to Disneyland because he was so young.  I was astonished, when we pulled up the pictures from our trip to show Grandma, a whole month later, and he started describing all the rides!!  And he was right!

Riding the "Twisty Thing" at the park...

This, is the "Twisty Thing".

It lives at the Daley Park.

On Monday, for FHE, we went to the park, and we rode it.

We had never seen anything like it before.

So, of course, we had to give it a try!

I hadn't laughed so hard in a long time.

The Car Crash: Did that really just happen?!

Two words. . . Reunion and Globe.  That is how it all happened.

We were just driving along, chatting it up with Matthew and enjoying the beautiful Arizona landscape.  Occasionally, I snapped pictures from the passenger seat, with our new camera, trying to figure her out.

As we were passing through Globe, AZ, AJ decided he wanted to point out the "Globe, globe" to me so I could take a picture.  The speed limit in Globe is only 35 MPH and AJ slowed down so he could point the globe out to me.  He looked away from the road for two seconds to say, "There it is.  Right under the bridge."  And before he could look back,

CRASH!!!!

Our left front tire hit the stinking median!  Stuck in the middle of the road, Betsy, our car, wouldn't go.  And because of the popped tire, we couldn't put her in neutral and push her out of the center of the street.  Thankfully, three angels came to our rescue and towed us off the road, while the officer-- of course there was an officer-- followed.  As it turned out, the two men who towed us, happened to be "auto claims adjusters".  (That means they determine what the cost of repair is going to be.)  They guesstimated around $2,000.

Freak out moment!! 

The officer had to put together an "accident report", for insurance purposes he said.  He gathered all our names, birthdays and where we'd been sitting during the accident.  AJ and I were SO grateful when he decided not to issue us a ticket, because he figured "we were already paying enough."  Bless that man!

The damage: our tire exploded, the rim bent, the tire well is now misshapen, our driver door hardly opens, the steering shaft is most likely snapped and the transmission possibly blown.

My Dad made the 90 minute drive, from Queen Creek, in his big truck with a trailer, to pick up our car and take it back to the valley for us.

And my Mother-in-law made the 75 minute drive from Thatcher to pick us up and get us the rest of the way to Thatcher for our family reunion.

What a blessing it is to have such great family members, who will drop what they are doing to help us in our time of need.  Thank you, thank you!  We couldn't have done it with out you.

Thank heavens for family!