A Busy Day

Big Saturday for the Smith fam, and many fun pics to chronicle the day.

But first, two updates:

(1) Anya did get a call back for Oklahoma. So she auditioned again on Friday afternoon. There were about 40-50 kids that got called back and they all had to do more dancing. Anya admits freely that of singing, acting and dancing, dancing is the least of her skills. She was pretty frustrated by the end of Friday's audition, but still hoping to take part in the musical. We won't see a cast list until Monday night.

(2) Back in late June, you'll remember the post about Anya's broken arm, and a pic of the Barbie VW Van that was demolished as she planted her face in it during the fall. Well, the Barbie Van has made a visit to Three Girls Body Shop...

You can hardly see where the repairs have been made...it's kind of spooky!

Okay, so on to our adventures of the day.

Karen's neice, Becca, and her husband, Randy, and 5 month old boy, Cameron, came to Utah this weekend to spend time with Randy's sister and brother-in-law. We met them up in Park City for lunch, but mostly so we could get our first in-person meeting with Cameron! We loved seeing them and meeting Cam. He evidently loved meeting us, too, as he was happy, happy, happy all during our visit.

The girls got lots of turns holding sweet Cam:It was an unexpected delight getting to see them. Karen was so excited to see the baby of one her babies!

After lunch, the girls begged us to stop at one of their most favorite parks. We haven't been up to Park City in a lo-o-o-o-ng time, especially when it was warm enough to go to the park, so we stopped at City Park for a few minutes and let the girls run wild.

There is the zip line...

The strange pedal-ma-thingy...

And the log roller...

Karen and I sat in the shade. There was a giant spider webish thing that tempted us momentarily, but then visions of front-page newspaper photos of the two of us ensnared at the top entered our minds and we thought better of it.

Once we got home, Jenna took the camera for some clandestine self-portraits. When Karen and I saw these, we about wet our pants we laughed so hard. Had to post them for you all to see, as well. (Jenna said we could)

Oh, my achin' brownies, that girl can make us laugh!

Woefully behind

I'm sure you've noticed that there haven't been too many posts on here recently...sorry about that. I've been in a very busy season, as I'm restructuring the worship ministry, and have been having many meetings, phone calls, emails, and lots of planning & scheduling. When I get home, there's homework to help with and some time for all of us to just be together.

So, this has been pushed to the back burner, quite honestly.

Anya is in the midst of tryouts for her schools production of Oklahoma. Yesterday she performed a vocal audition (she sang about 30 bars of My Favorite Things), and today was dance auditions. Both are required auditions if she wants to be in the play. Tonight, they will post a list of people they want for call backs, and if she makes that cut she'll have further auditions tomorrow afterschool. In any case, the cast list will be posted this weekend.

Here we are having practiced her audition song:

In other news, Brooke has moved to Montana. We miss her greatly! However, she left some room spray that she used, and so the girls have been spraying it every so often, to at least have an olfactory reminder of their summer sister. Here they were the morning she left:

And here's a couple of totally unrelated shots of Jenna and Em goofing off with G'pa.

Too fun!! :)

End of Summer

All the girls are back in school now...sigh...

It's been an emotional few days for them, especially Jenna. She takes everything to heart, and worries that she won't do something right, or will get singled out for some unintentional faux pas. Once she gets comfortable with her new teacher and new class, her nerves will settle. In the mean time, Mom and Dad just try to love on her as best we can.

Just a few pics to end the summer. First, a monumental tower that Emily constructed on one of her last days of freedom.

Next is our girls playing with our "adopted" daughter for the summer, Brooke. Brooke is a college student who's been living with us for the past few months. We've known her since she was in high school, and she used to babysit our girls occasionally. Her family has been part of our church and our small group for several years. Her parents moved to Montana back in the spring, so she's been ours since then. :) She finished her associates degree this month.

It's been so fun having her with us this summer, and our girls have loved being able to spend time with her. Now it's looking like she's going to head up to Montana and finish her degree at a school there. We're so excited for her as she heads toward nursing, but we're so sad for us, because it's been wonderful having her live with us. I'm sure there will be many tears over the next few days as she prepares to leave.

We've stockpiled Kleenex, just in case.

Let the learning begin

So, school is back in session this week. Anya starts Monday and Em & Jen on Wednesday.

Anya is now a 9th grader. NINTH! How and when did this happen? She is now a freshman!(although, here she is still at the middle school; sophomores move to the high school)

This just seems utterly freaky to me; I know I've had over 14 years to get ready, but it feels like it just came out of nowhere. Grades count, for real, now. She's becoming ever more independent. And (please Lord in the name of all that is holy, don't let this happen soon) she may soon think that some boy is actually worth paying attention to. ACK!

Tomorrow begins a new era for Anya and for us.

In commemoration of back to school, some pics of all the girls this summer.

Anya with Paka & Grandma in July:

Jenna & Paka:

Emily with Aunt Evonne:

After this school year, we will have one child in High School, one in Middle School and one in Elementary School.

No wonder my hair is gray...

Back To School Blast!

Our church hosted a back to school party in a local park tonight. Pizza, soda, cookies, a live band, and lots of fun activities: dodge ball, parachute games, soccer, face painting and hair painting, sidewalk chalk and paint. Big fun!

Here's Daddy-o dancing with some of the other kids from church. (Emily and Anya said it was kind of embarrassing when I did this...all the more reason to do it, says Karen and I).

We all had to add a little color to our hair. Here's Jenna with her friend Hannah.You can't really see the blue stripes in Jenna's hair from that angle, so here's the back, plus my head as well.Anya added face paint to her new look. And even Mommy got in on the fun, with some day-glo green.Don't worry, Grandma, it's washable! :)

Anya wanted one more snap of my purple-ness.

All in all a very fun evening! Now just 5 more days of vacation for Anya, and 7 days for Em & Jen!

Let the lamentations begin...

A Giant Hole plus Arrivals & Departures

Our church office was closed Monday, since on Friday of this week (my usual day off) our staff is going to a leadership conference together.

So our fam decided to do some cheap stuff we'd never done before.

First, a trip to the largest man-made hole in the world:

Located in South Salt Lake County, the Kennecott Copper mine is 3/4 of a mile deep and 2 1/2 miles wide. It's so deep you could stack TWO Sears Towers on top of each other at the bottom and still not reach the top. It's an open pit mine; no caves, just one big hole in the ground.

We stood at the edge of the giant hole and looked down and across.

It's WA-A-A-A-Y big...I mean gi-nor-mous! There are these huge trucks the size of a house that carry the rock away and when they're down at the bottom, they look like ants. Here's us next to one of the truck tires.They say it is one of the few man-made objects that shuttle astronauts can see from space - along with the Great Wall Of China. And although both required many years to accomplish and much man power, somehow I imagine the Great Wall is a little more inspiring than an open pit mine. Not that the mine wasn't incredible to see...I just couldn't imagine a John Williams soundtrack playing behind it as we looked. More like Bob the Builder's theme song.

Next we headed to the Salt Lake Airport. To take a flight? No, silly reader, to watch the flights. Emily informed us a few days ago that she had always wanted to go and watch the planes take off and land, so we decided that we would fulfill this deep longing in her soul.Yep, that's the airport behind us as we stand in the parking garage, savoring the delightful odor of jet fuel. It actually is kind of fun watching the jets come and go.

It was a bit bright, and I'd forgotten my sunglasses, but found these in G'pa's glove box. I think these were G'ma's extra pair or something. I can't imagine that G'pa would have bought them, but my Mom always had, uh, shall we say eclectic tastes.Karen said I looked like Eliott Gould in Ocean's Eleven. Not a look I aspire to, but the glasses did keep me from being blinded by the midday sun.

After a time of watching the jets, the girls became enamored with spitting...off the side of the parking garage...from the third level.I was reminded of Jim Croce, "you don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind..." However, they were wildly entertained. Anya finally decided to quit relying on her own glands for liquid and to fill up with water for more distance. The result:It's moments like this that a parent dreams of.

We're so proud.