Merry Christmas, from the Smith's

In typical fashion, I am updating the blog months after my last entry. 

Go figure. 

Anyway, we are wising all of our wonderful friends and family a very merry Christmas and a blessed New Year! 

Stay tuned for the annual 2012, year in review blog!

Happy Easter, from the Smith Family!

We don't get gussied up too often here at the Smith house, so while the kids were in their Easter outfits, I thought it would be a good time to take pictures. Soooo here are my sweet, adorable babies. I know, I know, I'm THAT mom. Who isn't?

 

All this cuteness is all well and good, but let's get real for a second. We have NOTHING worth dressing up for in this world. We enjoy this day and treat it as special because we have a sovereign God who sent his son to die on a cross to endure the wrath of God that OUR sin produced. While we are spending our time and money celebrating, eating candy and enjoying friends and family let's not let go for a second that we are a people doomed for disaster. We are full of sin in our own ability and Jesus Christ came, willing to sacrifice, so that we might see freedom from that sin. That very freedom is the key to a life filled with joy, knowing the alternative. Let His joy, His peace, His sacrifice, His love seep way down deep in you, then run and make His glory known to all the world!!!

2011 Smith Family Year in Review

A lot has happened in the last twelve months. Kids have gotten bigger. Life has gotten crazier. Lives have been altered. God has moved. And we are all better for it. It seems like forever ago that I wrote Smith Family Year in Review 2010, but it's only been a year. I guess so much happens in a year it can feel like a small lifetime. So, what were we up to in 2011?

In January, Rob and I celebrated five years of marriage and Xzayvier turned eight. We got some pretty significant snow, by Tennessee's standards and enjoyed a few snowball fights. In February Rob and Mekyla attended the Father-Daughter Purity Ball for the second year and it was the highlight of Mekyla's year, for sure. She and Rob look forward to the event each year and they always have so much fun. In March, we celebrated Mekyla's 8th birthday and the coming of the Spring season. I never thought of it this way before, but it doesn't seem like a coincidence that Mekyla's birthday is the second day of spring. Her birth was not only new life for her, but for ME. Becoming her mother changed everything for me and I treasure everything that has brought us to where we are now. April brought lots of fun as we celebrated our first Spring Break family vacation. We went to Gatlinburg and had a blast! So much so, that we intend to make it a tradition and go every year. We are looking forward to this year's trip. May carried celebration and sadness as we celebrated Rob's birthday, but we also sent him away for deployment. While I would venture to say there is never a great time for deployment, summer break is probably the "best" (I hate to even use that word) time. Xzayvier spent the summer in Texas, at his biological mom's again, so Mekyla, Kreid and I spent our summer swimming, hanging out, playing, visiting friends and family in Cincinnati and waiting for Rob to come home. In June, we went to Cincinnati and had a great visit with some of our most favorite people. I also realized (for certain) that I was being called to go on a mission trip to Ethiopia in August and started fundraising. Yes, I had just two months to fundraise $3,000 and God showed up and provided! No surprise there. July rolled in with a bang, and not just from fireworks. We celebrated my nephew, Deryck's 11th birthday and Rob returned just days before Kreid's 3rd birthday party. Rob's return meant Charley (Rob's daughter) was able to come for a visit. We had such a great time having her here and Mekyla and Kreid loved spending time with her. August was a big month. You'll laugh, but the first big event was Kreid's first haircut. Silly, I know, but it had never been cut and it was a crazy-wild afro. And we just trimmed it...but it was still craaaazy. That haircut led to cutting it all off about a month later. After that, Xzayvier returned from his summer trip to Texas and he and Mekyla started third grade. Just a couple weeks later I was headed to Ethiopia. I can't even begin to tell you all that God did during those nine days, but I will never be the same, that's for certain. If you haven't already and you're interested in seeing what we did while we were in Ethiopia, check out the blog I posted here. It was overwhelming, exciting, heart-breaking, joy-filled, and precious. I am going back this summer and HOPEFULLY, Rob will be joining us. I can't wait! August also introduced a new ministry that little did I know, would change everything. Minivan Mayhem is a discipleship group for women and it has been incredible. I could go on and on about it, but it's awesome. My small group from this group are some of the most incredible women I know and it's been such a treat to get to do life with each of them. September was weird. I returned from Ethiopia the first week of September and literally could have slept for a week straight. I thank God for my incredible husband who picked up the slack while I was gone AND when I returned, because I was no-good. I was weak, exhausted, emotional and crazy. THEN, if I wasn't crazy enough, we celebrated my birthday. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my birthday. I mean, love it. But this was the most difficult birthday ever. It is really hard to accept celebration after returning from a place that you want to leave everything you own. Just having a home, car, more than one pair of shoes, even, seemed like plenty of lavishing, so celebrating anything else seemed excessive. October was uneventful. Rob had to leave for a school, so that was no fun, but we were able to skype with him regularly, so we made the best of it. Him being gone allowed me some extra time for the my newest form of fundraising for Ethiopia...photography. Another crazy-awesome God adventure, but basically I do photography as a hobby and some super-awesome people were willing to PAY me to do family photos, children's photos, and engagement photos to help me fundraise for my trip. It's just crazy. And awesome. And crazy. God blows me away. Alot. November was a lot of photography. A lot of Minivan Mayhem. And a lot of eating. Yay for Thanksgiving! December was fun. December is always fun, in my book. There is just nothing more exciting than celebrating Christmas. I celebrate Christmas, pretty much as soon as Thanksgiving is over. I love everything about the Christmas season. Yes, we buy into the hype. Yes, we put up a beautiful tree and yes, we buy gifts for friends and family. But most importantly we praise, worship and celebrate the coming of our King! Mom came down for the long weekend and we had Sam, Kim and Deryck over for Christmas dinner and then some other friends joined us for dessert. It was a wonderful day of celebration. I love that about Jesus. He calls us to great (and sometimes hard) things. We cannot just wander through life, say we love Jesus and "act right", but the work, the hard times, the growing pains are all worth it when we can literally celebrate and feast for all that He accomplished when he came to earth. That's why I get so excited about Christmas! God is good!

When asked what was their favorite thing about 2011, the Smith's said...

Rob: Settling into a new church home, Gatlinburg Spring Break, Charley's summer visit and staying home with the kids while Delilah was in Ethiopia

Delilah: Gatlinburg Spring Break (and more great family time in general), Minivan Mayhem, Ethiopia and just falling more in love with Jesus than ever before

Xzayvier: Gatlinburg Spring Break (especially the fudge shop!) and a trip to Chicago (during his summer vacation with his bio-mom)

Mekyla: Purity Ball, Gatlinburg Spring Break, Visiting Cincinnati and Charley's summer visit

Kreid: Hanging out with Daddy, hanging out with Cross and Mercy, Meadow and Brooke at church, my birthday party at Chick-fil-a, and playing with Zay


So, all-in-all, 2011 was good! We were blessed beyond measure, challenged like never before, and enjoyed all that God had for us. It wasn't always easy, always fun, or always predictable, but it was for sure blessed and covered by God. Now, on to 2012 to see what it holds!

Happy 9th Birthday, Xzayvier!

Nine. Wow. I mean, we're one year away from double digits. It feels like we just became parents. Not like we should have an almost ten-year-old, or two almost-ten-year-olds for that matter!

I could easily say that nothing has really changed in the past year for Xzayvier and EVERYTHING has changed and both would seem true. He's maturing more and more each day and he sure makes this momma proud on a pretty regular basis. He still looooves school. He's a great student and he works really hard on his school work. He's reader. Big time. The 3rd grade reading goal is 175 points (based on a point-tracking system) by the end of the year. At Christmas break, he had 450 points. He's an over-achiever. He wants to be the best. Sometimes to a fault, but mostly just because he wants to do his best. He's a hugger. If you know anything about "love languages", you know what I mean when I say that one of  Xzayvier's love languages is physical touch. His whole entire day can change with a hug or a high five. It's like an easy button. :) He's not an athelete. I don't know if that's a forever-thing, but we've tried a few different things and nothing has really hooked him and we're okay with that...and I think he is too. He's a great big brother. Any time he makes a not-so-great choice, he usually reminds himself that he needs to do better because Kreid wants to be like him. Often times I hear him helping Kreid or playing with him, even when most big brothers would be yelling "get out of my room!" He's just an all-around great boy! He really is. He's kind, he's sweet, he's helpful, he's smart, he's our boy. And HE'S NINE!

Xzayvier loves all things comic books and super heroes. He has always loved loved super heroes, but as he's gotten older one of his favorite things to do is read and write/draw comics. Because of his love for them, we decided to throw him a super hero/comic themed birthday party. We had a blast planning a special day to lavish our sweet boy and we had an even better time celebrating him with friends!

Zay with all of his birthday decor

Throwing a comic book themed birthday party is easy when you're married to a human fact book of all things comics. Rob was a huge help, as you'll see in the photos to come. He knows his comic books, so he had lots of great ideas and skill to put them together. We haven't taken a poll yet, but I'm guessing that since Zay smiled for about 15-hours straight, he enjoyed the party. :)

Cupcake-holder City Building

This was such a fun project! The kids and I used construction paper to make the city skyline in the back and Rob used boxes to create the city building, which also served as our cupcake holder. We printed a ton of old comic book covers and cut them to make these comic-themed pennants.

Pin the mask on the super hero

So, this might have been my favorite thing of the whole party. I LOVED the the cupcake table, but when you have a super-artistic, comic-geek husband that can draw some pretty awesome muscle-y comic book characters, you can end up with a lot of favorites!

I found these spider man flash cards and thought it would make for a great game.

Goodie-cups for everyone to take home

Everyone got to make their own super hero mask

The "Sound Effects Studio"

This was another fun idea. Rob was able to get a large role of bubble wrap from work, so much that we were able to roll it out in our garage, where the kids ran, rolled, and stomped out lots of bubbles. It made for LOTS of sound effects and fun.

I guess now I need to start planning for March. I doubt two months is enough time for Mekyla to forget that we threw a big bash for Zay's 9th birthday, so she'll likely be expecting the same. Wish me luck!