Sisters make the best friends

One of my favorite things to do lately is sneak up on Gracie and Brynlee while they are playing together and listen to the conversations they have. They play all day long together and are lost if the other one is not around. It was pretty difficult to have babies 15 months apart for about the first year or so but now it's so fun for them to have each other and dare I say worth it! (however, I don't see myself ever having kids that close again!) I just hope that when they are teenagers they will still be able to stand each other! Sisters really are the greatest, I know because I have 5, and I'm so grateful each of them. I'm just so glad that my girls get to have that sister bond too.
P.S. I also have 1 brother that I love dearly! I don't want to leave you out Tanner:)

Lydia's Blessing

Here is our sweet Lydia in her blessing dress. Poor girl has definitely gotten the 3rd child shaft when it comes to taking pictures. I'm pretty sure we took at least 60 pictures when Gracie was blessed ( you know... getting her ready, one with mom, one with dad, one with mom and dad, one with grandma and grandpa, one with everyone there, just the Smith's, just the Bennion's, standing, sitting, smiling ect.) but we actually had to put Lydia back into her dress at the end of the day just to get a picture of her...sorry baby girl:( Any how she looked so cute and the blessing was beautiful. We were also so glad that we were able to have so many family members attend (something else we didn't get a picture of!)

A little update

Well it's been almost a month since my last post so despite the fact that I'm in desperate need of a nap I'm going to take a few moments to put a few updated pictures. Lydia is growing up so fast and has already lost that newborn look which I'm sad about:( However, she is pretty darn cute if I do say so myself!

All the girls in their Christmas dresses. I'm proud to say that I actually made some pieces and parts of these dresses, however the real credit goes to my talented mother in law for the real work!

And I thought I'd throw this in as a representation of what seems to be going on more often than not these days...lots of mischief! If you are ever wondering what happens when you leave a 2 and 3 year old alone to "watch a movie" and forget to block off access to the food storage and more specifically to about 20 packets of Hot Chocolate mix...this is it! Our basement had a nice dusting of Hot Cocoa all over it and still smells like chocolate several days later! And don't worry my girls don't mess with the cheap walmart brand they went for the nice expensive gourmet Hot Cocoa that was intended as Christmas gifts!

Merry Christmas!

Our New Addition!

Lydia Belle Smith
7 lbs 10 oz 18 1/2 in
Born at 9:59am on November 23

We are so excited to show everyone our little Lydi Belle. Everything went very well and Fast! I was in Labor for just over an hour before our little Lydia came into this world screamin! She and I are both doing great and Gracie and Brynlee are loving their new little sister. Today I walked into our room to find Gracie and Brynlee looking down at their little sister gently rocking the cradle and sing Families are Forever...seriously it was so precious!:) (Don't worry we've also had a "don't lay on top of the baby" talk too!) I'll have to get some more pictures up of Lydia now that she is home...so stay tuned!

Halloween, Halloween, Halloween

First of all has anyone else had "posting" problems? It's taken me 2 days to get my pictures to post and for some reason I can never type anything above first picture...anyways on to our Halloween Festivities! Of course it wouldn't be halloween without a package from Grandma Bennion! The girls LOVED their Halloween movie and "neckaces"...Thanks Grandma
We also hosted a preschool party that was a lot of fun. The kids had a lunch of mummy hot dogs, chocolate covered ghost strawberries, spider crackers and bug juice...YUM!

The girls are VERY in to Horses at the moment so we thought if fitting that they be cowgirls for Halloween...I think they look pretty darn cute if I do say so myself! My favorite part of their costume was their boots...$3 and $5 on ebay!!


Then of course in true Jake fashion he carved this Awesome pumpkin of me and the girls! Seriously there is no competing with him so if you'll notice in some of the above pictures mine is the "S" pumpkin! I was just sad that it's a pumpkin that is going to rot and have to be thrown away...I'll have to convince him to do something with a little more staying power:)

Fall Photo Shoot

Daddy's girls
(don't you love how Gracie looks like she is determined to take him down!)

I love watching on the leaves change when fall comes around. I've really enjoyed fall here in Utah because there is actually a fall! In Montana it seems like it goes straight from summer into winter without much transition but here we've been enjoying the 70 degree weather, beautiful colors and most importantly No Snow! We decided it would be fun to get some pictures of the girls with "fall" in the background. Unfortunately, because it is fall it gets darker much earlier so we didn't get as many good shots as we would have liked before it got to dark and cold. Here is what we got...

This one is in our backyard...notice the grass in the background...finally Yeah!

I'm not sure what Brynlee was reacting to, but it made for a good picture!

Weekend Getaway

The view from the deck off our room. It would have been really cool except for the construction EVERYWHERE and the fact that we shared the deck with the room next door!

Some of you might remember that back in March Jake won the "March Madness Pool" at work and we decided we would use the winnings for a weekend getaway with just the two of us. Well now that it is October we finally were able to go! Jake's parents were so very kind to drive all the way down from Wyoming to watch our kids and Friday night we took off to Park City. Friday we spent most of our time listening to a lady trying to convince us buy into a timeshare (yes we are that cheap that we went to listen to the 90 presentation...but we got the hotel room for $25 a night, you can't beat that in Park City!) Anyways, after saying No to the lady about 50 times we were finally able to get on our way. By the time we got into our room it was pretty late and we hadn't had anything to eat so at about 11pm we decided to go find some food! We were both beat but decided to go just because we could, it felt like we were dating being able to just get up and go no matter what time it was and not have to worry about the kids! Saturday we spent the day shopping at the outlet mall (Awesome!) visiting Olympic Park (see picture below) going out to eat and even seeing a movie! By the end of the day we could not believe everything that we were able do...it's amazing how much you can get done when you don't have the kiddios around!

We had a fabulous time spending some one on one time with each other but by Sunday we were really missing the girls. It was great to get away but it's always great to come home too! Thanks again to Grandma and Grandpa Smith for watching the girls...they had a blast and I'm pretty sure they didn't even notice we were gone:) And Thank you Jake for a wonderful weekend, I love you forever!:)