that we got a new roof while we were away in Hawaii?  A hailstorm in February (which happened to occur on our Gourmet Club Brunch day) caused major roofing issues all over town.  Enough for our insurance companies to declare them “totaled”.  We chose to have them come replace it while we were away…much easier on…

My mom’s husband, Steve, loves to take the kids on adventures.  He sends them invitations via e-mail to special “events” and outings and they love every bit of it.  On Saturday, he took them to the Heard Museum, where there was a butterfly exhibit.  He brought us all McDonald’s for breakfast (which I love…shamefully).  And…

On Friday night, Jacob had scheduled an outing with Derek as part of his “Faith in God” program.  A goal-oriented program from the Church for kids aged 8-12.  This particular goal was planning a parent-child activity.  It was no surprise to me that he chose Derek and that he chose fishing.  He made a checklist…

You may remember that I have mentioned in previous posts, that we have been having bunny “issues”.  They’ve been eating our plants, and our tomatoes.  They poop in our yard.  And there’s several of them.  We don’t have a pool.  We don’t have a dog.  So I guess that makes us very vulnerable.  You’ll remember…

Wednesday, July 16th The morning started with an early tee time for the guys at the beautiful Princeville Golf Course.  I drove them over and was thrilled to see this rainbow over the course…end to end.  Isn’t that spectacular?! Meanwhile, Dana and I got ready and headed down to the pool at their resort (Westin…

Yesterday we went over to Highland Village where my brother, Michael and his wife, Olivia, recently bought a home.  After living in Austin for 5 years, they decided to move up here.  And we couldn’t be happier!  We’re so excited to have them close (only about a 40 minute drive – shorter when they finish…

Tuesday, July 15th We started out the day early with a drive down to the airport.  We had been told by everyone that the BEST way to see Kauai was to take a helicopter ride.  Leading up to our trip Derek was convinced that he would let me go, but sit the helicopter out.  But he…

I know what you were expecting – you were expecting me to blog about my whole trip in one nice little blog post.  But I can’t do it!  We packed so much in – took so many pictures – have so many stories to tell.  I just can’t do it all in one big post. …

Some more fun pictures of the kiddos.  These were all last Monday night.  We were working out in the yard.  Samuel was sweeping.  Jacob was the water-boy.  Caleb was giggling.  Derek was mowing/edging (working hard).  I was pulling weeds taking pictures. 🙂  A normal Smith summer evening. In this shot of Samuel, he had seen a…

**Warning:  Get a drink and settle in…this is a long one… 🙂 As usual, we had a plan.  On Friday of last week we had packed up and had the Suburban packed to the gills, including the bike rack.  We were headed to Austin, where the kids would be staying for the week.  We were…