Sophia turned 1. We had her party on her actual birthday. We rented the bouncer-slide again, and it was a big hit with all the kids. I can't believe she is one already. The year has just flown by. I'm trying to cherish all the baby moments because I know it would last very much longer. She is standing up by herself but will not take a step. When she does stand up she expects everyone to clap for her. She has become quite the little diva. She has her three different crawls that she uses to get around, and she seems happy with that. She says "Mama, Dada, Uh-oh(her favorite), Thank you(dah- do), and what. We are working on bye-bye. She loves to give hi-fives, and raspberries. She is such a blessing to our family. We are so thankful for all our beautiful girls.

For the girls birthday we took them to Libby-Lu's as a present from us. Gracie was a rock star, Isabel was a dancing queen, and Lauren was Hannah Montana. Too cute! Soph already looks like a little princess so no makeover was needed. Gracie also got choosen to do some Jedi training. Which she took very seriously, and carried her certificate everywhere for about 3 weeks. It was a lot of fun and we topped it off with dinner at the Blue Bayou. It was a great family celebration!

I know it has been a long time, but we have been busy! It was birthday season for the Smarts, 3 in 3 weeks. First up was Gracie's, she turned 5. She had a dog party, and we rented a bouncer-slide combo. As you can see from the pictures the kids had a blast. Isabel turned 3 two days later and she had her party at the Sawdust Factory. She got to put her hand print on the wall. It is so special to know it will be there for a long time. All the kids got to make a dog house or barn and choose an animal to go in it. As you can see all the creations turned out so cute. The best part no clean-up. More birthday posts next.

Here are the Easter pictures. Paul took them for me this week. I can't decide which one of Sophia I like better. So if anyone still reads this blog, help me out and vote for your favorite.

On saturday we had the Glitter Glam at Flipside. Lauren was a rock star, Gracie was a movie star and Isabel was a princess. They had so much fun. 107 girls came, only 30 had signed up, it was crazy. Lauren and Gracie are both with their friends named Madeline. After they got all made up, all the girls got to walk the runway. The picture of Lauren is her rock star pose. It was a great night, the girls loved it, and I loved watching them have so much fun.

I know it has been a long time, 4 girls keep you really busy. This is a picture from CBC's winter camp. Kyle was the speaker. Sophia, Isabel and I only lasted a night. Sophia decided see really didn't feel like sleeping in the cabin. She wasn't cranky, she just wouldn't sleep. Normally we would just let her cry, but we were all in one room so we had to keep her quiet or it would have been 4 girls not sleeping. Kyle, Gracie and Lauren stayed up at Camp Care while we came home. They had a great time playing capture the flag and all the other fun camp games. Kyle also helped with the music, so it was a busy weekend for him.

Happy Valentine's Day. Kyle worked till almost 10 on Valentine's day so we didn't do anything. I can't really complain because he gave me a beautiful mother's ring right before we went to New York, and we spent the whole weekend togeather. I did get to help the girls make their Valentines, and give them each a little something. We celebrated by getting McDonalds, which I think they liked much more then some romantic dinner. The pictures are from Gracie's pre-school party, which Isabel and I had a fun time visiting. It was a nice day, and I was very grateful to spend it with my girls.

We went to New York last weekend with our friends Bill and Carrie. Kyle suprised me for my birthday last month.
We had so much fun, I loved New York. I can understand why people love living there. There is so much to do in such a small area. I loved all the old buildings, they have so much character. We did so much, and only scratched the surface of what there is. We stayed at Times Square, right by all the shows. We saw Chicago and Spam-a-lot, went to the Empire State Building, Ground Zero, Statue of Liberty, the Met, Tiffanys, Chinatown, Little Italy, rode the Subway, took a bus tour of Manhatten and Harlem, and we could have stayed a week more and not seen everything. I can see how New York is part of the people who live there, like a family member. We can't wait to go back and take the girls when they get older.

Our good friends Darby and Barnard brought home this sweet baby girl on tues. They named her Bryawna, and we are so excited for them. Kyle and Barnard met as freshman in high school, and have done almost everything togeather. They went to college (first Texas then UCR) togeather, were in Medical school at the same time(on different sides of the country). Barnard was our Best man, and Kyle was his, they did their Internship year togeather at arrowhead. Barnard is now a surgeon and Kyle is F.P. And now they are both Fathers of beautiful daughters. Sophia is excited to have a new friend, and we are blessed to see such a miracle happen to our friends.

Christmas was a lot of fun this year, the girls are at such great ages. We spent 3 days opening presents this year. We started on the 23rd with my extended family, the 24th was my parents and sisters, then the 25th was Kyle's family. On the 26th Gracie asked where we were going to open our presents today. I had to explain that Christmas was over, she was pretty disappointed that it only lasted 3 days! We had a great time being with our families. Some of our favorite gifts were, passes to the zoo, Lauren's doll clothes(for Molly), Gracie's camera(which she sticks in Soph's face and blinds her), Isabel doll that talks, and Sophia's play camera. Here are some of my favorite pictures from Christmas morning.

Before school got out for winter break, the first grade at Caryn put on their annual christmas play, The Littlest Christmas Tree. Basically it is about a tree who is made fun of by all the other trees for being too small, but she is the only tree that knows the true meaning of Christmas, so Santa chooses her to be his tree. Lauren played the littlest tree, and sang a solo. She actually brought some of the parents there to tears with her song.(Not her own parents, but some really sensitive ones.) It was very cute, and Gracie got very upset that the other trees were teasing Lauren. We had to explain that Lauren was just pretending to be sad. We were very proud of our tree!

On saturday the 16th Lauren and I went to Mexico with the Flipside. We got up at 5:00 a.m. to leave by 6. We were actually on time even though Sophia and Gracie woke up multiple times and I got less than 4 hours of sleep. We drove down with Dai, Bekah, Lizzie, my sister Debbie, and Devon. Now I'm not a drive a long way just to drive back the same day kind of girl. Claremont is a long way for me. Kyle and I have always talked about exposing the girls to poverty and mission work, and Kyle couldn't take Lauren, so I had step up and put my money where my mouth is. I like my trips to be well organized, with a list of things that are going to happen, but due to unforseen events, I had to let that go.(and it was very hard.) It took 3 tries to get insurance at the border, but we finally got it and went across. When we got to the town, we found the Pastor's house only to find out he was not there. So we decided to head to the church, after a few circles we finally figured out the church had been destroyed. Apparently in June the ground under the church had erroded and the building fell down. So we were looking for something that wasn't there. By accident we ran into the Pastor's wife, and she had us go to the community center. We found out that the Pastor had left his family and gone to the States, we didn't get all the details, just that it was bad. Aaron had talked to him via e-mail, and he had indicated he would be there so we didn't know exactly when he took off. He never mentioned anything about the church either. So it seemed he didn't want to tell us what was really going on. They weren't able to open the community center, so we gave out the presents and did the whole barbeque outside. It was very cold and we had to use a toilet that was a step up from outhouse, (it was one of the nicest in the town) but it was a good chance for Lauren to see how other people live. The girls handed out juice(jugo) at the barbeque, and Lauren and I got to see two of our boxes be opened. We meet the new pastor and made some good contacts. We left at four and spent about 2 and a half to 3 hours at the border. At one point we thought we would be stuck because no one would let us merge. They would literally rather hit the car in front of them then let us in. But Dai manged to get in, I would have been there a lot longer if I had been driving. The girls did great the whole day, I was very proud of them. We finally made it back to the church at 10, six hours later. Next year Dai and I decided Kyle and Mark get to go.

Here are the christmas pictures. Paul took them, and I am so happy with how they turned out. There were a lot of great ones, so it was hard to choose one for each of the girls. It was the nicest picture session I've ever had. Paul came right to the house, set everything up, and we were ready to go. It was so nice not having to deal with some unknown photographer, who would miss all the good smiles.

Rub-a-dub-dub, four girls in a tub.