Christmas activities

Making and decorating a gingerbread house is a tradition we have had since Joshalyn was a baby. The kids enjoy it and become more and more creative the older they get. Even Kayla had a hand in it. Not only do they enjoy decorating it, but they enjoy eating it too. Yummmmmmy!

The kids enjoyed helping Josh put up the christmas tree and decorating it. After they finished we decided to take a family picture. We enjoy the christmas season and decorating our home and participating in family and other christmas traditions. What a joyous time it is to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ and remember him and his loving example. We all hope you have a Merry Christmas and an enjoyable holiday season.

Trick or Treat, Aren't they sweet?

Just wanted to share a couple of photos from our Trunk or Treat party at our ward building.

Shad couldn't wear his mask but he is supposed to be Optimus Prime. For those who don't know who that is he is the leader of the Autobots on Transformers. He has a Blue and grey face so Shad let us talk him into painting his face and hair. Of course our little lady bug Kayla sure got a lot of compliments. She was so danged cute.

Speaking of cute I want to tell you that she has been starting to say more and more things. But one of the cutest/funniest was last night as we were kneeling down to pray. It was Shad's turn and he didn't want to pray so Lynette told him to help Kayla. He decided that was OK and Lynette said "She can't hear you." When she said that Kayla leaned in towards Shad and said "Huh?" as if to tell him "Yeah, I can't hear you." Lynette and I had to fight to keep from laughing. It was so cute and you probably had to be there but we sure loved it.

Carving Pumpkins

I know we are a little late in adding this post about Halloween but better late than never.

This was Joshalyn's first year of carving a pumpkin by herself. She actually picked out her pumpkin and the design she wanted to carve. This picture here is her design at night. If you can't tell very well it is a Cat. She did very well for her first pumpkin by herself. Because she is such a little princess I thought there was no way she would do it all alone. But the only thing that I did was cut the top for her. She cleaned it and cut the design and everything else. It was fun.

The night that we did the pumpkins was a Family Home Evening night and we thought it would be fun to have some friends over. We have been having a family over to our house to have the discussions with the missionaries. This was the family that came over. Man what a good time we had.

Plumbing goes awry

Well - As you know whenever you do any plumbing project it ends up being more difficult that originally planned. That is exactly what happened the other day. What should have been as simple as taking off the p-trap to retirieve Joshalyn's CTR ring turned into a much bigger project.
I have known that I would need to do something about the plumbing under the Bathroom sinks for quite a while. Well probably the first time I thought about it was 8 years ago. I always had hoped that I wouldn't need to worry about it. Since Joshalyn's ring was the first major thing to fall in there I decided I would look at it. What I found was that all the pipes under the sink leading to the wall were 1 1/2" pipes that had been cemented together using a 1 1/4" pipe as a connection inside the 1 1/2" ones. so there was no easy way to get them apart. (The only way is to cut or break them). So I went to Lowes and bought all new piping. Of course I then realized that I should have gotten 1 1/4" pipe for the bathroom and in that process realized that the bathroom had really only been plumbed for 1 sink.
When I realized that I had the wrong size pipe I decided that I would go ahead and install a new pop up drain. To match the faucets that we already had I would need to get a brass one. Well I found that I could buy a fairly inexpesive faucet for $3 more that it would cost for the pop up drain. But that would mean that instead of brass we would now have silver faucets and drains (which I like better anyway. It turns out Lynette wanted the brass look but it is too late for that, everything is done.) In replacing the faucets I found that the old owner of the house had used copper pipe for the water supply. That was fine except that I came up about 2" short and the copper pipe didn't meet the faucets water supply pipes. So back to Lowes to get new water supply hoses. Long story longer, I then realized that I needed to get a splitter of sorts (I guess it's called a "T"). What I needed was to be able to run water to 2 different sinks. I picked 2 up (one for hot and one for cold). It turns out I thought I had the right size but I was wrong, so back to Lowes I went. I really don't know how many times I visited that store but at one point I worried that someone might recognize that I had been there quite a few times and wonder what was up and start watching me. What should have taken just a couple of hours ended up taking about 7 or 8 hours. It was Columbus Day. For those of you who don't celebrate Columbus day, because you really didn't know it was a holiday, I work for County government so we get it off. It was this last Monday. So that is what I spent my holiday doing. Anyhow I hope your Columbus Day was as good as mine.

In working on this project I thought of another project that I had done where I was replacing the lever in the shower in the master bathroom. While researching how to do that I found the following link. Before I give you the link I want to warn you that there is at least 1 time where the lady drops an "F" bomb. And while I admit that it wasn't necessary for the story she told If you can get past that I think you will find her experience hillarious. http://frectis.net/?p=673.

Hyrum rides his bike

Hyrum learned how to ride his bike without training wheels in ONE day! He was shouting as he was riding, "This is soooooo cool!" Way to go Hyrum! Shad is very happy for him, because now he gets to have Hyrum's old bike. Joshalyn is happy for both of them. She was telling them how cool they were. Now we all can ride bike's together for a little while longer before the cold sets in. We should have worked with Hyrum this summer, but we didn't take the time since we were working on our house. It is fun to see these accomplishments whenever they are. Now we need to teach him how to tie his shoes. He can read 90 words per minute and do basic math facts, but he can't tie his shoes. What is wrong with his mother?!

Kayla plays the piano

We start at a young age here at the Smith house.

(Sorry it's sideways. I tried to change it twice).

Musician in my house

Lynette and I posted an ad on Craig's list to sell the remaining brick from our house. It took a little while for somone to finally buy some of it but the cool part of the deal is not that someone finally bought it but rather who it was that bought it from us.
Most of you, if not all of you will not recognize her name. Gayle Chapman. She lives even closer to the Boise Temple than we do and we are quite close. Gayle Chapman was the original keyboardist for Prince. You all, I am sure recognize that name. At one time she also fronted for a local Jazz band, The Frim Fram 4. Not a big deal but that was our brush with a celebrity.
She came to get the brick this past Monday night and I helped her load it into her van and we had a pretty good chat about everything from her working for/with Prince to what she does not to allergies and how to best deal with them. It was fun. I found out, and she told me, that even celebrities are just normal people like the rest of us.