I got some fun pics of Callie from last Tuesday's visit. She's a girl so she loves to play dress up! Fun wig, huh?

an amazing talent

My wonderful, totally awesome friend Laura made this really, really nice present for me. She's a photographer and she loves what she does. She does an excellent job too, in my opinion!
She sent this to me in as really nice frame from her work. Isn't it beautiful?

Yay!

Here's my laceleaf Japanese maple doing its thing for fall.

The way the light was coming through my window and making my plants' leaves glow was really pretty. This purple one is fascinating in the way the leaves kind of change color based on the direction you look at it. It's called a Rhoeo, oyster plant, Moses in a boat, mostly for the shape of the flowers. This has never flowered and I'm having a hard time finding pictures of it on the internet to show you what the flowers look like.

A few years ago when I was at the school greenhouse, I found a small piece of a stem in the garbage can. I took the segment home, not knowing what it was and it grew into this! This is a leaf from my rubber tree,another one of my first rescues. I found it in a dumpster in my old apartment in Salt Lake with no pot, no soil around the roots, and no leaves on it whatsoever. But I potted up the bare sticks and they grew into a lovely little tree! This one has traveled with me in my moves between Washington and Utah several times. That bright green color is great, eh?

This wandering jew was started from a piece I found on the floor at Lowe's. If you look closely you can see the crystaline texture through out the leaves.

Called the "Heart Leaf" Philodendron(for obvious resons), this photo was inspired by my totally awesome friend Laura. I "heart" it!

My feet were so sore!

After a long day of traversing across the county by foot and by bus running(and I mean literally running) errands. Callie and I made it to the bishopric's dinner at the Bishop's house, only 1/2 hour late and completely exausted. We had taco salad and taco soup, it was very good. For desert we had peach cobbler. Afterwards, we all gathered in the living room and played games. we played Apples to Apples and catch phrase. I skipped out on the Catch Phrase game after the first ropund and read a book to Callie. It was mostly because I'm not very good at that game, but the book thing was a good excuse to duck out. My little girl was the star of the show the whole time we were there. Everyone was commenting on how sweet and well behaved she was at dinner.

She was all giggles and smiles when we were playing the games. It was such a blessing because it easily could have gone in the opposite direction; she could have been whiney and fussy after such a long day . She could have been stepping all over peoples' cards or running around destroying the bishop's house. I'm thankful that she was such a trooper.





After we got home as I was pulling her sweatshirt off, I did this to her and sang the ,"Do your ears hang low?" song.

. . . And this one was from earlier in the day when we were waiting for the bus. Gotta love the sock mittens. Although you can't tell in the picture, it was SNOWING.

Random

Callie does this sweet little attempt at blinking when you wink at her. I think it's pretty cute. We had a pretty fun night last night. Since I have no vehicular transportation, Sarajayne dropped her off at my house. We didn't do anything spectacular, just hung out here, had dinner and read stories. Pretty soon, that's all we'll be able to do because of the cold. By this Saturday, our high temperature might not get above the low 40's or upper 30's!

When I'm at work I sometimes get to cruise around in our brand new F-150 to go on deliveries. It's pretty nice.

Another one bites the dust . . . Or, bad "car"-ma

I know I'm well into the double digits by now of the cars I've had in the past ten years. They all have one thing in common (except for the rentals) - I was their last owner before going to that great parking lot in the sky. I really don't know what it is, I don't do bad stuff to them. i just drive them normally but their last leg seems to give out while in my possesion. It is time to add another one to the list; the lovely white Buick!

Here's my attept at trying to remember all the poor dead cars.

Blue Dodge Colt{technically not the last owner, but it died anyway}
Thunderbird(5-speed)

Black Ford Tempo {a person ran a stop sign, I swerved, then hit a concrete barrier head on} [I only had this one five days!]

Chevy Cavalier-rental(but I had this longer than the Tempo before it)

Tan Ford Taurus {Overheated, died in Oregon}

T-bird again(changed to Automatic transmission) {power steering failure, then hauled away}

Light blue Tempo {hauled away}

Yellow Dodge Colt {wheel fell off}

Another Blue Tempo {wheel fell off}

White Dodge Caravan {Transmission failure}

Pontiac Gand Prix {T-boned by Dodge Ram pickup}

Chevy Cobalt- Rental

White Buick Le Sabre(in the process of dying, it will cost more to fix than it is worth)

How do I stop this pattern of killing cars?

And of course I had to take plenty of pictures of Callie while I was at the wedding.


I had to! ! !










Callie, meet Kali!








...that's close enough!!!!












all wedding-ed out!

Best friends

Although Aaron and I have been friends for ouer entire lives, I only have access to photos from the last 16 or 17 years or so. Who would have thought way back then that we would be where we are now? We've been through a lot. We've had our highs and our lows. We've been near and far, but whenever we get together, it's like no time has passed and we just pick up where we left off. Here are a couple pictures from along our friendship's journey.

(Most of these are photos of photos that have been kept in a shoebox forever)

The first one is the spring of '93maybe? That water was COLD!The second one is right after I got out of the hospital. Aaron's mom took us to Sears and got our pictures taken for our birthdays. Aaron was 16 and I was 17.

The next one is a picture of an old print out of a blown-up picture of a picture taken after an afternoon on the go-karts. Then we have us when we went through the Seattle Temple before our missions.

Fast forward about 12 years to last Saturday when Aaron took Kali and I took Callie for a walk before his sister's wedding.

And some more of getting back to our old shennanigans

Just a picture

This is just a picture of Callie and I all ready for the wedding...

That's all for this Post!

Another event-filled weekend

It has been several years since the entire Smith clan has been all together at the same time under the same roof. This occasion was for Sarah's wedding. I took Friday off from work and went down Thursday night.

It was quite chaotic considering there were nine siblings + their spouses + their kids + 1 foreign exchange student + 1 cousin + his daughter, all trying to get ready at the same time.

Everything turned out well though. The only minor glitch I noticed was that the flower girl (Luke's daughter) refused to throw out the petals from her basket. She cried when Liz picked her up and started spreading the flowers out from the basket for her.

In this picture are Shelli, Emma and you can barely see Sara in the background there



Sara and Uncle Wayne . . .


















The ceremony was performed in Weston's parents' back yard. It was a very nice setting, except it was very hot! We all survived though. The luncheon was excellent. I had to leave before the reception party that night, but everyone was well occupied for the whole afternoon.









The bishop, Sara, Weston, Luke, and... Kyler? I can never remember!!!

The happy family

THE ALLENS

Some more pictures

Emma and Shelli~Mariah~

What a cutie !

And Luke

Sunday driver

There are basically only two times of the year when Cache Valley is truly beautiful. Fortunately, they both come exactly when they are needed the most. The very best time of the year in Logan is after a l-o-o-o-o-o-ng, dreary, frozen, hazy, winter when even the die-hards are about fed up with the snow and ice and the smog that gets trapped under the clouds. The clouds, in turn are trapped here by the mountains surrounding us on all sides, like a layer of dirty gray whipped cream on top of a bowl of jello.

Then, a crocus will pop up almost unnoticed. Then another and another. The tulips and daffodils and other flowers mark the beginning of Spring. At the same time,the tree buds begin to swell and the slightest tinge of green begins to show on the outermost edges of the tree canopies. Finally, the snow begins to retreat and the mountain benches green up. It is that time of year when the earth is fresh, renewed and full of life again.


Sadly this #1 beautiful time of the year seems to get cut short by the onset of the typical Utah summer. The jade green mountainsides turn brown as the grasses dry up in the heat. Bare rock is left exposed as the scorching sun blasts away the snow from the tops of even the highest peaks. In their own way, 'the purple mountains majesty' is beautiful, but still no comparison to the preceding season in my opinion.


This brings us to the second-most beautiful time of year for our big jello bowl. Finally the record-setting temps begin to drop and you have to start wearing a jacket to go out in the evenings. Ever so gradually you notice a hint of pale, yellowish-green in the trees on the mountains. Little patches of stronger yellows and oranges fade in and the reds show up. A close up view reveals light pinks to the darkest purples and every possible shade in between.We're now officially into Fall here in Logan and we're ready for it! I took a drive up in Logan canyon today after church to witness this spectacular transformation. The pictures I got don't even do any justice to the views I saw tonight, but here are a couple anyway. I think a certain 19 month old got her grubby fingerprints on my camera lens somehow, so the clarity just isn't there on these. Oh well.














We also know that this means that ugly gray blanket of clouds will soon be hanging over us before we know it; Blah! Oh well, we might as well enjoy these nice moments while we have them, right?!

Ward Activity

Tonight was our ward activity for September. It was pretty simple, just hotdogs, marshmallows, and hot chocolate at a campsite up in Logan canyon. It's really pretty up there this time of year when the colors are changing. I'll probably take a drive up there tomorrow to get some nice photos.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

No matter how many times I tried, she wouldn't do the same growl on camera as she would when she was off camera! Anyway, here's a clip of her version of a pirate . . .

Don't shop when you're hungry

If I followed that rule, I'd never go grocery shopping. On the other hand, if I never went shopping I'd get more and more hungry, further necessitating the need to go grocery shopping!!

What's a guy to do? Fast food is NOT an option. So I broke down and went to Walmart. (Have I mentioned that they have started building the second SuperWalmart for this valley!? It's less than three miles away from the current one!!! AND we have a Sam's Club in between those two monstrosities, for Pete's sake!!!!) Anyway... I went in there with the intention of just getting a frozen pizza to tide me over and came out over $100 poorer! I will eventually eat it all, I'm just not accustomed to spending so much all at one on food. I also had to fill up my gas tank today which was another good chunk of change.

one good thing that happened today was that I was able to rearrange my ling/bedroom into a much more spacious and function situation thanks to my landlords trading out the queen sized bed for a twin. They had had a queen size in here previous to my tenancy and I've been using that this whole time. with the adition of Callie's crib , it made things quite tight Last night they brought in a twin sized frame with a brand new mattress for me! It really opens up the possiblities for multiple arrangemts of the furnishings. The queen size just didn't allow for very many options in the layout of where it could go. My life must be pretty exciting when I
good night. have to go into detail about the layout of my living area, eh?

I'm falling asleep at my desk, so i better go sleep on my new bed and make sure it works properly.

Busy weekend

Saturday morning, after an adventure at the laundromat, I took Calathea to a park we haven't been to yet. I had seen it before and it looked like a fun place to take a kid. It shouldn't have been a surprise that it was packed with people when we got there! We still had fun, we just had to wait our turn to play on the toys. After a full rotation on the playground equipment, we walked over to the duck pond. It is nice because it doesn't have the big scary geese there that chase you. Just cute little ducks. And it wasn't messy either, a very big plus!

I took Callie to the demolition derby later in the day. She is definitely a Johnson, she loved it! Here's a few pics and videos from the event. After awhile, the loudness and everything got to her so we left early. But was fun while it lasted...

The yellow-green dodge in the middle had a Cummins turbo diesel in it with just a huge pipe coming out of the hood and no muffler! It was a brain rattler! It was actually one of the first to die though : (

Play them all at the same time to get a closer similation of the mayhem was really like! (And pray that your speakers don't blow up!)

And last but not least, She was trying to climb up on my landlords' Harley on her own, so I helped her up there for a minute.

...and another fun video...