Yep - She's 1!...and other important stuff...

As usual, there has been many happenings in the Smart household this last month. The biggest thing is that our little Ella turned one. Amazing!!! We had such a fun birthday party for her as well as we included mine, my moms and my mother-in-laws in the celebration.

Happy 1st Birthday to our sweet Ella Rose!

Hmmm - this is fun....

You mean this is really OK???

It takes real concentration to be a true master cake smasher!

Hey - isn't there any more?

Success!!!

Ella got lots of fun presents, but her favorite by far was the balloon from Aunt Becca and Uncle Mike.

Ella enjoying some new toys

Happy Birthday to the rest of us too!

Uncle Mike being such a good sport - hehe!

The other birthday cake!

Random picture of Mattie in one of her many outfits of the day.

Everyone in their birthday hats - even Ella wore one for about 2 seconds.

Kate earned a leadership award this year in school. They invited the parents to the year end assembly where she was able to get her award in front of the school. She was thrilled to get that medal and the very cool gift certificate to Applebee's. I am very proud of my Katiebug - good job sweetie!

It was also the end of Basketball season this last month. Thomas did so well this year in improving his ability to play. This team was all third graders and only had one player that had ever played organized sports before. Though the team only won two games, they had so much fun just learning the game. I am very proud of Thomas for giving his best this season and can't wait for these guys to come back next year bigger and even better!

Go GRIZZLIES!

Lots and lots of pictures!

I know, it is true... I am a slacker! Now, it has been for good reason - we have been crazy busy (which is what I always say - but it is so true!). We have done a lot these last few months and I hope to give you just a piece of what we have been up to. Ok - I am warning you ...there are a lot of pictures to look through - but since this blog is also for family and friends we don't get to see very much, I feel justified in overloading you with lots of cute pictures!

I had to start with this one of sweet Ella - I think Andy did a great job at catching her inquisitive expression.

Mattie's 3rd Birthday

Ok - We will start with Mattie's 3rd birthday which was at the beginning of January. We just did a family party for her but she insisted that we drag the family to Incredible Pizza - her most favorite place to be. They start her off by having her spin the wheel of fun (whooo...) to win some sort of prize. She didn't really care about the prize but just wanted to keep spinning the wheel.

During your time there they do all sorts of contests to win tickets - Kate loves to boogy and danced for a good 40 minutes in order to win all sorts of bonus tickets.

Thanks to all the grandparents for showing up to help and to be there for Mattie. They each took Ella duty while Andy and I went crazy with the kids.

(Grandma and grandpa aren't sleeping on the job I promise... they are watching Mattie open presents!)

Not sure if I should be worried or not, but Mattie has this habit of lining up everything she gets. Presents included!

Dora is loved at our house. She picked this cake out herself!

Kate Turns 6

Next we go to Kate's Birthday. I let the kids have a friend party every other year and this year Kate wanted to do a cooking party - it was so much fun! We had 17 kids there (I know - I have a hard time saying no...) we decorated place mats, cooking hats, they made pizzas, decorated cakes and had ice cream sundays. It was so busy and maybe a little hectic but all the kids had a great time.

I think the party was so successful because of all the help we had that day. Thanks again to the grandparents as well as my too great friends, A'Lisha and Misty for all their hard work. It would not have been near as fun without you all!

These are the cakes we let the kids decorate. We have them cute little cake boxes to take them home in. This was definitely the hit of the party.

Katie really wanted a pinata - so we sent all the kids outside while we waited for the Pizza's to cook.

Cake decorating extravaganza!

This cake was decorated by one of the boys at the party - by far the most festive one there!

Happy Birthday to my sweet Katie!

Valentines Day!

We decided to decorate cupcakes for valentines. It was great fun and extremely messy.

Even Andy got in all the fun!

Guess who cleaned up that mess... hmmmm

Puppet show and Zoo trip My mom got us tickets to a cute activity at the zoo for the kids. They had a puppet show and did a craft after. The kids really did have such a great time!

Love the cheeks!! She was not exactly sure what was going on.

Posing with the stars of the show!

The Merry-go-round is probably the favorite part of the zoo for the kids (except maybe Ella - look below at the pic!)

Slightly nervous Ella...

School Award

Kate one an award at school for being such a great kid. The school emailed us earlier in the week to invite us to come to the school assembly but to make sure we didn't tell Kate what was going on. She was so surprised when they called her name and thrilled with her award.

Basketball Season

To all those fans who are baseball fans - I tried to get Thomas to sign up for baseball and he wouldn't do it - he only wanted to play basketball, so we gave it a try. He loves it and I have to say I love going to the games. He is a good player and really enjoys getting out there to run. I have decided that I am one of those loud sports moms - surprise! Not really... Anyway, he came to Andrew and I during his game and said that it was ok if we cheer but we can't tell him what to do because he already knows and really it is the coaches job. Ok - point taken. I still can cheer really loud. I love being a mom!

Slacking... I know!

OK - I haven't been on here for a month or so but for good reason. We have been battling illness after illness in our house... ARGHHHHH!!! Enough already! We have had colds and the flu and just recently RSV. I can really truly say I hate winter! Nothing ever good happens in winter - OK, minus the good stuff like Christmas, Valentines, family parties, birthday parties etc... Anyway, I think we may finally be done with all of this and I will get back to regular blogging. I do have lots of cute pictures from Valentines and from Kate's Birthday that I will get posted here in the next couple of days. So - just be patient with me as I work on getting life back to some normalcy - at least until someone else decides to get sick. I know, I must think positive!