School Boys

Luke is a kindergartner!! **sniff

and Ethan is movin' on up to 1st grade **sniff

As I was helping Luke get dressed for his first day of school and fighting back my tears, he told me that I just needed to have more babies!! Great perspective, Luke! I keep doing that and they keep growing up!!

Ethan's pants are a little...big. I hope he did not pull, dig, adjust that zipper all day...

This I can't complain about... the walk across the parking lot to school. Any time I want I can just peek out the window and see my boys playing in the school yard!!

This picture is to show you all how cute my baby is... and to document the fact that the boys were EARLY to school and had to wait for the bell - so they hung out in daddy's office for a few minutes. That may never happen again! First day of school excitement- I love it! Dressed and itchin' to go 20 minutes early!!

Ethan's 1st grade classroom - Mrs. Jones

There are 9 in his 1st and 2nd combined classroom.

(still diggin')

Luke's Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Lloyd

(my faithful running buddy and dear friend - so blessed to have her teach my children their first year of school!)

Luke also has 9 in his class of littles.

And what did the girls do all day...

we painted, and read, and went to a fun, fun spray park!!

I may never let her go to school!!

Taking a pause to CELEBRATE!!

This is the SMITH'SONIAN'S 200th post!! What better way to celebrate than with chocolate and oooey, gooey goodness!?

And every good celebration has a good give-away!!

The first one to comment and tell us what your favorite SMITH'SONIAN post was gets... a fresh pan of these oooey, gooey rolls mailed out to

Y-O-U. (after I go to the store and buy more brown sugar, of course)

my favorite: "Baby Bottoms and Other Things"

SPRING Soccer

(not to be confused with FALL soccer which starts in a few weeks...hee hee)

Luke's Team: The Yellow Cheetahs

Ethan's Team: The Grey Knights

This season, we had 5 month old Noel, which made things a little interresting at times...between nursing, napping, diapers, and all the STUFF that babies require you pack in...

chillin' on the sidelines

water break

Luke dribbles through traffic

Ethan, the defender

Luke always finds a hole and gets a break-away!!

Kate (who apparently dressed herself this day) taking a cheering break to watch a quick cartoon on the i touch.

the highlight of the season is the last game when we buy the kids an icecream from the icecream truck. That truck tortures them each week as our family walks by the line of happy children eating icecream. Each week our kids hear the same few words, "we'll eat ice cream at home guys" I'm cheap, what can I say!!

BLOG WEEK!!

(starting on this rainy, hurricane Irene Saturday - nothing better than blogging on a rainy day...I think I'll go get some hot chocolate...)

Yes, STRAWBERRIES - which means MAY - all those months ago

We went with our good buds, the French Family and we picked some major berries!!

CUTE and cute

notice the fingers??

Ethan: mission perfect strawberry

Noel: mission grab strawberry

I desperately wish I remember how many pounds of berries we ended up taking home. All I know was that this year, all the kids actually picked berries that made it farther than their mouths, which gave us a load!

We took them home and mushed 'em into 16 quarts of yumm-o freezer jam!

Dear Irene, I would like to keep my freezer jam freezer jam, so if you would not mind keeping my freezer up and running... thanks!

and my kids, lead by Ranger Ethan, can't go anywhere without searching out every living thing on the premises:

butterfly

flowers

"there's gotta be som'n in the pond to catch!"

The blog...

This is a topic that I have been milling over and over the past year. The questions that are on the forefront are: is the "Smith'sonian" important to me?? Why?? Is it accurate to my real life or is it a place that I can transform the dents and scratches of my life into... bloggy perfection?? Is that bad?

-come on now, I can't be the only mom blogger out there that pushes all the toys, crumbs, and miscellaneous household clutter to the side to snap a picture? Tisk, tisk-

This summer I have come to the conclusion that YES, "The Smith'sonian" is indeed very important to me. My reason for blogging has definitely developed over the last few years - at first, maybe to keep up with friends, delight my distant family members with pictures and stories of the Q-utest kids, maybe a place to showcase, say, the stripes I painted on the wall that I love so very much.

Now, looking back at all the posts over the years, I can say that I treasure each picture, story, project...every moment documented and forever living on the world wide web. Always there for me to walk through and just remember...

Now onto my bloggy perfection that I try so hard for...I will continue to move the dirty diaper and sweep up the smashed graham crackers. I will continue to make my kids move for a photo shoot so they are not surrounded by the laundry that I have not yet folded. I will continue to do this simply because I enjoy my bloggy perfection - But know that it is there. My life of rousing, playing, messy, crying, laughing, screaming children, and my personal need to buy and implement "Large Family Logistics" is there.

And I, as I peruse from blog to blog, reading your stories and enjoying the moments you have captured forever, will imagine that there is a crunched gold fish or perhaps a bowl of dried cereal that has not made it's way to the dishwasher just outside the frame of the perfection - sorry, it's just the way it's got to be! :)

Snapshots of a

Whirl-Wind Summer

-blog a day week is comin' your way!!

stay tuned...