hello again

Ok so I tried to blog at wordpress but I just couldn't really do it. I feel home here. My words flow here. Even though the app for blogger stinks/doesn't really exist anymore...Even though the app for wordpress is amazing...

Even though I'll have to get on my desk top to write instead of using my phone...
I just wasn't blogging much. I wasn't feeling inspired to go. I didn't enjoy typing the same way I do here. That makes no sense.

Click here to read the few posts I made over at Wordpress...

Updates then...

Ella is big. Well, actually she is tiny, petite. But she is a 6 month old crawler and at almost 7 months she is pulling up to standing on toys or things low to the ground.

Hattie and Freddie are completely in awe of the world. Fred can help me with things and does, occasionally. Hattie tires my patience. I might say she is my hardest child but then again, Fred was crazy honory and hard at 3 years old. And Ella isn't there yet, so...

We spent Thanksgiving down in Phoenix. Collin and the kids and Dot and I flew down and man was it nice not to have to drive the 12 hours... (plus many more with all the stops). Dot was an angel and loved being at my parents' house. We had the best time I've ever had with my fam. Amelia and David being married adds a great dynamic to the group. We all had fun every night going to the hot tub with Joseph. My mom and dad would take the kids (which they all loved) and we would go. It is awesome to have that ability!!

There was an added somberness and gratefulness as my dad's business partner and coworker of 20 years was killed in a car accident just the day before Thanksgiving. It was a horrible thing and a huge shock to us all. It was so different from any death I've experienced. I get so sad thinking about it and about not seeing him at my dad's office and about his kids. They are my brothers and my age. We have so many memories together. My dad said some beautiful things to us all before we ate our Thanksgiving meal about living life everyday to the fullest and holding each other close. It really set the tone for the rest of the weekend. Even when we did have a small political discussion, we kept calm and listened pretty well to each other.

We were happy to have Dot traveling with us and she was cuddly and fuzzy all weekend long. 

The new Gilmore Girls revival came out and Morgan came over and we had donuts, hot chocolate and pop tarts to celebrate. Here's a separate post about that.

It was amazing to see other friends too!!!

Now we are back up in Sandy, Utah, preparing for Christmas, for Hattie's birthday party and for our travels to Florida for Christmas and New Years.

beautiful table created by Amelia

The beach! CA! The Money's! July 4th!

I am way behind on this post because I kept wanting to post ALL of my hundreds of pictures of the trip and kept not finding the time....but I decided to instead print them out and make a real life scrapbook. So for my blogging purposes I will pick my 7(ish) favorite pictures and post those here. 

We had such a great time meeting my family out in California for July 4th! We had been aching to go to the beach and play in the sand, watch the waves, soak up the sun, feel the humidity, eat fish tacos, smell the salt, swim in the deep, for some time now. And we got to do it all. We hit the road, stopped in Las Vegas, stayed at a friends house overnight, made it to Malibu, where we stayed in an awesome beach house with my mom and dad, Joseph, and AJ. (Unfortunately, David and Amelia couldn't make it.) My dad and AJ met Ella for the first time and it was wonderful to spend time altogether. We pretty much just went to the beach every day after that! So much fun finding crabs in rock caves and pools. Dying trying to swim on a rocky beach with AJ, buying delicious fruit on the side of the road, watching the kids run in and out of the waves. At nights we did puzzles, ate, listened to the waves from our bedroom at night. It was pretty much a dream.  Then on Monday the 4th we stopped Joseph and his friends off at EFY in Santa Barbara, then went to the pier and ate some yummy seafood. The money's left and we smiths stayed one more night in Ventura.  We ate In N Out, watched fireworks on the beach and snuggled together, we 5, under a dark sky filled with stars and rockets, thinking about freedom and blessings. 

The next day Collin and Frederick and Harriet dropped Ella and me off at LAX where we flew home to Provo, and hung out with Dave and Mia till Collin and the kids, who had driven home all day, picked us up and we all drive to salt lake together and ran inside to see Dot, our beloved kitty. YAY.