The Best Kind of Busy

The start of Mac's very first field trip!

We have a full house, but life isn't as crazy as you might think for our party of five. We're slow-movers, we Smiths, and tend to build a good bit of rest time into our week.

That said, this past weekend was a doozy - and so, so fun.

Psyched for another photo op, obvs.

Friday morning was Mac's first field trip ever, a perk of being a "big kid" in K4. The whole family joined his class at Fisher's Orchard, and it was the warmest, sunniest October morning to be there!

The orange made Mac (and Bradley, for that matter!) easier to spot.

We saw goats, chickens, baby bunnies, a turkey and a cow. We picked apples out of giant crates, as we were about a month too late for the real deal, and left with armfuls of kid-approved pumpkins.

With my boys after our wild rompus of a hayride

Our gang enjoyed a hayride during which Mary Brooks and the younger brother of Mac's best buddy held hands behind his big brother's back. Eep! There was wind in our hair, enough bumps to make me thankful Chappers was strapped to me, and more screaming giggles from the little people than I could count.

Please note the hand-holding preschoolers and tiny cowboy boots.

We drove home with two extra passengers, Mac's best pal and his younger brother, grabbed some pizzas and let the combined five children wear themselves out before naps and quiet time.

At our old stomping grounds cheering on the Tigers

After stashing a few things in suitcases, we headed to my in-laws' near Clemson for Homecoming weekend. Bradley and I spent Saturday tailgating and catching up with friends while Mac, Mary Brooks and Chapman had whatever their hearts desired courtesy of Nana and Papa.

Burning off a birthday-cake sugar high.

Sunday morning we scooted back to Greenville for an early afternoon birthday party, after which we all collapsed into our beds.

It was a fast, filled-to-the-brim weekend, and while B made me promise next weekend would be homebound, I know he'd do it all over again. Plus a few naps.

In the Meantime

Last year was our hardest yet, but there were unbelievably sweet spots, too.

Bradley rolls his eyes at the iPhone growing from my right arm, but that faithful companion records moments my addled brain can't recall. I'm so thankful to have captured the lighter bits of 2012!

It doesn't seem fair, after unloading my heavy, healed healing heart, not to point out how much joy there is here, too.  Enjoy an overload of Smith snapshots!

Sibling sweetness as Bradley read Luke 2 on Christmas Eve.

Trying out his new "drinking glasses."

Testing out some gifts in Columbia.

In the glow of Mimi's Christmas tree.

All my favorite little people in one place.

There was a fire in the living room...

I can't stop laughing about this!

MB, with a sinus and ear infection, lost over a pound and went back to the 1st percentile. But that reflection!

An ornament from halfway around the world! One of my favorite gifts.

After a year without movies, B and I saw two in one weekend: Skyfall and Lincoln.
(Ask me how we left Anna Karenina after 90 seconds and went to watch ol' Abe...)

If I ever put my phone down, who would capture this?

A second Smith baby makes friends with Curious George.

If I'm feeding MB her lunch and one of us is dressed, it's a victory.

An ornament for my little fireman.

Mac and I got matching tats.
(Ask B how the one on the right, inside my forearm, came to reside on his ribcage.)

The handsomest boys I know.

MB learned to sign "more" and is just as proud of herself as we are.

Christmas night we snuck away for our third and final movie of the year: Les Mis. One of us bawled through half of it.

We rang in the New Year, after a big Tiger victory, with our best friends in Atlanta!

Baby hands - those dimples never get old.

Mary Brooksie wants to stand. Break my heart already!

For I am about to do something new,

See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?

I will make a pathway through the wilderness,

I will create rivers in the dry wasteland. 
Isaiah 43:19

Candy Cane Survey

1. What is your favorite Christmas Movie? Love Actually or It's a Wonderful Life

2. Favorite Christmas Song? O Holy Night

3. Favorite Holiday Memory? Long long ago, before I had a digital alarm clock, I used a Minnie Mouse watch on my bedside table. I knew that once her hands were on 6 and 12 it was 6:00 am and I could wake my younger brother up for Christmas morning. (This was before the previously mentioned 7:00 am rule was enacted.) I probably woke up every twenty minutes, but when the hands were finally on the 6 and 12 I got him up. Sadly, we were told that it was only 12:30 am and we'd have to wait another five and a half hours to see what Santa dropped off. Longest night of our lives!!

4. What kind of cookie/treat do you like to make? Iced sugar cookies shaped liked stars and stockings. Don't forget the sprinkles!!

5. Have you ever made an igloo? I have! In Quebec City, 2006. It was so fun for the first twenty minutes and then I was just too cold to get excited about it. Let me tell you, that thing took forrrrever to make! Very cool photo op, though. You'll have to ask Bradley about his memories of the experience; he had to pick up my slack and has a slightly different tale to tell. It was memorable nonethless!!

6. Do you love Starbucks? I don't. I do love Diet Cherry Coke, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Coke and (my latest addition) a delicious honey vanilla chamomile tea. Not a coffee girl, but I'm glad to avoid the pricey addiction!

7. What makes the perfect Snowman? Snow! Around here we don't usually get it - especially around Christmas. You never can tell, though.

9. Best gift you have ever received? I have to say Bradley. Santa didn't leave him under the tree exactly, but we started dating in the fall and got engaged before the holidays the next year, so Christmas has always been a really wonderful time of year for us. Our first Christmas as Mr. and Mrs. was fabulous and I don't doubt this year will be the same. Having Blue as part of the package makes it even better.

10. What is the snowman's name on Rudolph? Ooh. Don't remember.

11.Silver or Gold? I like both in jewelry and decorations, but silver looks better on me.

12. What is your favorite Christmas decoration? A big wreath and a tree

13. What's your Christmas decorating style? Simple and traditional.

14. Do you hang stockings? Believe it or not, we haven't. We have stockings hanging at my parents' house, but Bradley and I haven't gotten our own. I think he'd prefer to wait 'til we have kids, because it feels like it's a relatively little-kid tradition. I, however, respectfully disagree and wrap all of his "invisible stocking" stuffers instead. It's such a fun tradition!

15. How many days do you celebrate Christmas? As many as possible! I love to listen to Christmas music just before Thanksgiving all the way to New Year's.

16. What was your favorite ornament on the tree as a child? A beautiful Clara from the Nutcracker.

17. Where will you be spending Christmas this year? Christmas Eve with Bradley's family, Christmas morning in our house and the rest of Christmas Day with my parents. So excited!

18. When do you open presents? This year will be a little different, as we're exchanging gifts with B's family Christmas Eve. So I'll have two back-to-back days of present-opening. The ten year-old in me is super thrilled.

What about y'all??

My Christmas Quirks

Emily at One is Not So Lonely tagged me to list six holiday quirks, which would have been a lot harder to think of before I finally got into the Christmas spirit this morning with Bradley and Blue. All I needed to do was crank up the holiday tunes, put up the tree and unbox our ornament collection - it's always a walk down memory lane. Now I have plenty of holiday traditions to share with y'all:

Six Random "Holiday Facts" About Anne:

1. There is a definite ornament hierarchy on my tree. My favorite and more memorable ornaments are gingerly placed at the top. Pretty but slightly less meaningful ornaments stay in the middle of our tree. Less valuable and more Blue-friendly ornaments are hung towards the bottom.

My very favorite ornament is a beautiful Clara ballerina I got after a performance of the Nutcracker in elementary school. She's always the first ornament to go up and the last to come down, still kept in her original box. When we got engaged, Mom and Dad sent us up a number of family ornaments "on loan" until we could put together our own collection. Clara, however, is one that will be staying with me!

2. My mom makes an amazing hot holiday punch every year that makes the whole house smell like Christmas. I always try a batch or two a year myself, if just for the scent of it. It tastes delicious, but mine is never quite the same as hers. Mom's perfect proportions of apple cider, cranberry juice, orange juice, cloves and cinnamon make all the difference.

3. Christmas Eve candlelight service is my favorite of the year. The hymns and carols, the candles, the completion of the Advent story, the Scriptures read, the excitement of everyone. When I was old enough to hold my own candle, I knew I'd really grown up.

Because we travel and aren't at my home church each year, I don't always get to attend. If I had my way, though, we'd be in that pew every year. Such a meaningful service to me.

4. Growing up, my family read the Christmas story out of Luke every Christmas Eve before we went to bed. I loved how quiet everything was, that no one in the world seemed to be out doing anything else but spending time with their families. I always remember Dad's voice reading it, but when we got older he would ask us to read as well. It felt like such an honor!

After we read the story, which we could probably recite by heart, we would place baby Jesus into the nativity scene our family had made. My brother and I rotated who got to put the figure in the nativity scene (of course) to keep it fair. Another small tradition that felt like such an honor as a child.

It was really important to me, too, that Jesus not be in the nativity scene until Christmas Eve. I mean, isn't He what everyone was waiting for? It didn't make sense to see him in there the day after Thanksgiving. So our family's wise men, angels, animals, Mary and Joseph were gazing at hay until Christmas Eve.

5. After some creative lobbying from my brother and me, we were allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve. And it was always pajamas. Brand new pjs wear on Christmas morning.

On Christmas morning, we had a very specific routine my parents created to prevent 5am chaos. We couldn't come out of our rooms and go downstairs, where our tree and presents were, until 7am. Even then, my brother and I had to make our beds, brush our teeth and put our robes on before we came down together.

That drove my brother crazy when I got old enough to want to fix my hair before Christmas morning photos. Poor kid. I can't decide if my parents were trying to prevent wide-open kid craziness or just torture us a little bit.

The Christmas pjs did come in handy, though, as I always had cute candy canes or Merry Christmas in six languages written across my new Christmas morning outfit. Just in time for a photo op.

A few years ago my mom handed me my Christmas Eve gift and, as I was about to open the box, snatched it away in a panic. I guess her system for subtly labeling gifts isn't entirely fool-proof. :) She handed me another box and held her breath that it was, in fact, the correct Christmas Eve present. It all worked out the second time around and I still have the flannel snowflake pj pants to prove it.

6. In our first Christmas together as Mr. and Mrs., Bradley and I decided to start a tradition of our own. We're fortunate enough to have both sets of parents within driving distance, so we decided to have time with just the two of us on Christmas morning.

We spend Christmas Eve with one family, have time Christmas morning to exchange our gifts for each other, then drive to the other family's house for Christmas day. It worked perfectly in 2007 and I'm excited to do it again this year. Why wait 'til you have children to have "family time" on Christmas Day? Bradley, Blue and I have a fun mini family Christmas and then get to spend time with the bigger group - it's perfect.

I'd love to hear your favorite Christmas traditions! Feel free to share. And I'm tagging Kristen, Elizabeth and Ashley.

It's really Christmas!

I got my very first Christmas card of 2008 today- and from one of my favorite people on Earth, Kristen. Their card is unbelievable and the photo sets the bar insanely high. Hopefully she'll post it on her blog so you can all marvel at the gorgeousness of the Watsons. (And their ability to get two dogs and two humans to look great all at once!)

How behind am I on Christmas, you ask? Well, so far I've put up a wreath and a Christmas garden flag. No tree, no gifts under it, no ornaments on it, no batches of cookies or punch, no indoor decorations at all. (If I was reading this aloud, I would pronounce it "uh-tall" just for effect. FYI.)

Shopping, however, I am clearly all over. Of course. I feel great about the buying - it's the wrapping and placing under the (currently invisible) tree that's got me a little concerned. Thankfully it's only the 4th, right?

So the game plan for this weekend is to put up a tree, decorate it, take a phenomenally beautiful picture of all three Smiths and pick out a card. Oh, and collect addresses. Wow.

I'm going to stop the list now...I do enough of that at work. So I'm off to enjoy some "holiday" breakfast for dinner with my husband. Ahh, the things we eat when work wears us out too much to cook a grown-up meal.

Hope your Christmas preparations are coming along a bit better than mine! While I'm bonding with my grits and eggs, feel free to brag about how far ahead of the game you are in Christmas preparations. I can't wait to hear how woefully underachieving I am in that department.

Love y'all! 'Night!

A few of my favorite things: Holiday edition

The weather outside is (approaching the Palmetto State's version of) frightful, Bing Crosby is serenading me in Target and visions of vacation days are dancing in my head. That can only mean one thing: it's Christmastime!

So what does Christmas bring? Around here, usually not much snow. It does bring lots of quality family time, silly Christmas sweaters, reasons for impromptu gatherings with friends and time to remember what's really important.

A few of my favorite things each Christmas:

Amy Grant's original Christmas album. Grew up on it, still love it, not ashamed. Seriously, try to find something better than "A Tender Tennessee Christmas." No, I'm not joking.


If anything could possibly be better, it'd be James Taylor's Hallmark Christmas album. I'm a huge JT fan. I could listen to him sing about the latest stock market crash and feel comforted.

A favorite Christmas (-ish) movie from my childhood.

A recent addition to the holiday lineup. Happy endings are always a favorite.

I have probably seen this movie 10,714 times. By year's end I imagine we'll add at least a dozen.

As a thank you to Bradley for tolerating so many viewings of Love Actually, during which I tear up no less than six times despite knowing it word for word, I'll throw in a favorite of his.

Because I quote "Santa! I know him!!" all year round.

It's just not Christmas until you catch up with George Bailey and family.

A socially acceptable reason to eat more mashed potatoes than should ever be consumed.

The Nutcracker ballet, music and my favorite Clara ornament that's now almost 20 (!) years old.

Christmas cookies. Yes, please. Can we squeeze more icing and sprinkles on there? Goes right along with the elves' favorite food groups, as listed in Elf: "We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup." Delish!

A fully decorated Christmas tree. Forget Martha Stewart's version - show me the preschool macaroni ornaments, mismatched creations from elementary school, old parental purchases and some multi-colored lights. The brighter, the more festive, the more personalized, the better.

What are you looking forward to this Christmas?