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

Day 15: Sweet Cheeks

I can't get enough of these. Nothing makes a gray Monday better like taking a gander at my "underweight" little doll's cheeks. And eyelashes.

Gracious, I can't believe she's ours!

*This post is day 15 in my 31 Days of What Matters.

Ob-la-di

Life goes on.

Cupcake face - he gets it from his mama.

Two months after we brought Mary Brooks home (again), life is going on. Cupcakes and crying and collective fits of giggles are going on.

Some days moments I feel like I'm treading water, but for the most part I am soaking in what our new normal looks like: grateful, messy, mindful, sweet and a little crazy.

Date night at Zac Brown. Watch out, world!

And also covered in hair - mine, Blue's and Mary Brooks'. The dark hair just keeps on a-fallin'. Two of the three of us are practically balding at this point; the other is just shedding his winter coat. I think we're about to see Baby Bangs: Part Deux, so get excited for that little sequel.

Mac wraps up school this week, taking a much-needed three-month hiatus from the rigorous academic schedule that is preschool. He has learned so much and grown by leaps and bounds this year; it breaks my heart to look back at the "first day" pics from last fall.

Two-thirds eyeball, one-third cheek. Love her.

But time marches on even if my brain still thinks it's mid-February. (The temperatures are sweltering and Labor Day-like, which you'd imagine would remind me it's no longer winter, but alas...)

Mary Brooks is cooing and smiling so infectiously that I morph into an unrecognizable caricature of myself when she beams in my general direction. Bon Jovi must have been watching his newborn grin when he scribbled his "shot through the heart" line, because this little bean sure knows how to get to us.

This fool is plum crazy.

(Actually, I'm playing the rest of that song in my head and I'm quite confident he wrote it about someone decidedly NOT a newborn.)

In feeling a lot more like myself, my brain has returned to its usual deep pursuits: celebrity gossip, mindless internet browsing and avoiding chores like a pro. Case in point: I've watched this trailer for the upcoming Great Gatsby remake more than a few times. How will we wait 'til Christmas to see it on the big screen?

I am currently working on a proposal that has me like:



My ability to laugh at myself has emerged unscathed, and I've found middle school humor never goes out of style. B doesn't share my enthusiasm for the Tumblrs that share these images, but I could amuse myself for hours there. Hello, procrastination!

And Kate Middleton FTW is back en force, too, which makes me giddy.

In other news, we had a little celebration last Saturday to thank some of the friends who took such wonderful care of us, both near and from afar, when MB was in the hospital. We have a few more of these to throw, as the number of people who carried us through that time couldn't fit into our house and onto our patio at once, much less find room to eat barbecue.

And we really want time to thank every last friend, hug them and make non-hospital-based conversation. To truly, fully transition back into post-trauma life.

I was so 'busy' hosting last Saturday that I took no pictures. Not a SINGLE one. It's a crying shame! Thankfully our friend Erin took one and posted it on her blog today.

My best bloggers: Lyndsey, Megan and Erin

We're hosting our small group early next month (I believe the date I quoted in an email to everyone was the @th, further proof I've "done lost my mind") and I promise to take pictures then. I want to remember all of this, for our sake and for Mary Brooks'.



This is the first song we heard after returning to church with a healed MB a while back. Tell me that's a coincidence; it's my life mantra. I'm okay, but I'm not okay. More than anything, I am not the same.

I still can't sing it without choking up, but this version is on constant repeat nonetheless chez Smith.

I have so much to tell you and a lot of news to share in the coming week or two. Once I get into a summer groove, I hope to be posting regularly and reminding myself through these written words that I'm still me. Different, but still me. And although I'd take back what happened in a heartbeat, I wouldn't change how we've grown.

It hurt like all my thousands of words could never say. And it still hurts.

But we're here, breathing and happy. May I never stop singing His praises for it. We've been called to tell this story and to live out our lives in a way that puts this pain to good use. I can't wait to tell you what that looks like and ask you for help in doing it!

Thank you for being here, sweet friends. xoxo

The Four of Us

Let's take a brief intermission to look at some shots of my three favorite people on Earth. The photo shoot that began in early March with Mary Brooks' first signs of sickness got a redo two weeks later, just days after we were discharged.

We were so thankful to celebrate our family being whole again! I can't get enough of these beautiful pictures Christy Hollywood Photography captured for us.

This is a bittersweet shot, taken just minutes before MB first became ill. I love how sweet Mac is to his baby sister, and how tiny she looks here at just two weeks old!

If you look closely, you can see a raised incision mark on her abdomen.
Our little four-week-old fighter!

Mac likes to tell us we're big, he is "wittle" and Mary Brooks is tiny. He's demonstrating this with his "tootsies" right here. It's one of my favorites!

We're thrilled Christy could come back when we had even more to celebrate than the first time.

I wondered after Valentine's Day how I could ever feel so happy in 'real', non-newborn life. Coming home from the hospital the second time, however, was even sweeter.

You can see more of the first shoot here and the second shoot here at Christy's blog.

Wordless Wednesday: Cover of Preschool GQ

Wordless Wednesday: Booster Seat Joy!

Wordless Wednesday: Front Seat Rider