Myopes

myope+myope = family of myopes. So while our children may be genetically predisposed to understand higher math they will never be pilots in the air force (at least until they relax the perfect vision requirement, but by that time all the interesting flying will be done remotely anyway and the kids whose parents let them play xbox 10 hours a day will get the job). We've known for a while that Max's vision was going but put off getting him glasses just to preserve his glassless freedom for a little while more. But it finally reached a point where it was time to give in. So we took him down to the local eye doctor and got him checked. Sure enough he needed -1.0 for each eye. We debated for a second whether we should get glasses as Costco, Walmart, Pearle, strip mall eyeglass place, etc. But once you've started buying glasses online from China for $8 a pair (lenses included) it's hard to pay anything close to a retail price. As some of you may know Max busted my glasses when we were living in Berkeley and while I was searching for a cheap replacement I stumbled across Zenni optical. While many of the styles are a bit funky to say the least and it takes a while for your glasses to arrive since they literally are on a slow boat from China, the price can't be beat. So for a quarter the price of one pair of glasses we picked up four. Max is thrilled and I feel no panic about him breaking or losing his glasses. Now if only I could find a cheap Chinese importer for orthodontics. But enough talkie talkie. It's the pics you really care about.

Max with his new glasses

Max demonstrating the features.

Don't call it a comeback

. . . I've been here for years.

So as is pretty apparent, Jennette has fallen way behind on the blogging lately. It's not because she has abandoned blogging or moved on to twitter, over to facebook, or just offline. While I think the decline in posts began before she became president of the women's organization of our congregation (AKA Relief Society for the majority of you) or before her work as membership chair for our community pool picked up I can't say that those two extra jobs haven't contributed. Throughout all this I've been on the sideline debating whether or not I should jump in and try to help keep things current. I've been conflicted because I don't want to interfere with the "mommy blog" all in Jennette's voice (who is a much better writer than I am) but this really is our preferred way to keep grandparents and friends current and chronicle some of our family goings on. So for Father's Day I am exercising carte blanche and jumping in. I'll try and keep my posts in a different font/color so it's obvious when it's me and hopefully avoid any confusion that way.

Adam

In Short...

In short,

This girl

would starve

without these foods....

And for the record, there is absolutely nothing cut on her face-- 

merely the bandage location du jour.

He's one!

Saul turns one!

Happy birthday to the boy

who might just be the sweetest baby ever.

He had balloons.

He had a bath by himself.
(free from a big sister complaining about his excellent splashing)

He had a free-for-all with a tissue box.
(you know, the magical kind where the tissue just reappears!)

He was allowed to play
I-will-keep-dropping-this-toy-from-my-highchair
over and over.

And he discovered sugar.
(in a very delicious piece of cake that was very quickly devoured) 

If he could talk, I have no doubt that he would have said
that this was the best day of his entire life. 

Still Learning

Even though so many of you were so complimentary on my fantastic good looks in the previous post's family picture, there are some days when I feel like maybe I could use a lesson or two in how to be a mom to daughters.  I mean, my own learning curve in figuring out the what's and how's of modern American womanhood has been especially (and sometimes embarassingly) late and long.  And while I'm infinitely grateful for my eventual education in underwire, and the roundbrush, and the tampon, not all of modern American womanhood has been a happy discovery.  Little did I know that ignorace was bliss when it came to figuring out that not all eyebrows are created equal.  I can't help but feel sorry for poor Susan Boyle, because no one tells you that once you start some kind of plucking regimen, that you have to do it again; like the next day. And then again....and then again....and then again...and again.  And that from then on you will stop looking at people in the eye when talking with them because you'll be too distracted and frustrated by wondering how they get their own eyebrows to look so symmetrical and clean, when save for a pact with the Devil, you can't.  Maybe she rues the day that someone forced her hostage with an incredibly sharp pair of tweezers aimed only inches from her eyeballs, or perhaps the millions of dollars in royalties has eased the pain of that transition; but personally, I'm doubtful. 

I'm thinking that I eventually I'm going to need a much bigger grooming budget when my own daughters come of age to have to learn this stuff, because it might be better for all of us if I could just hire it out to a well-equipped professional. Until then, I will own up that I still have not the first idea about how to properly apply any kind of eye makeup (or that I am usally trying to learn in the car on the way to church), that I deliberately keep Olivia's hair short so that I'm relieved from a daily, grueling hair-fixing duty, and that most days find Isabel with her hair fixed from the day or two before when she had her last bath giving her that overall orphan appearance.  But I have to document the times when I at least try. Even when the braids turn out as asymmetrical as my eyebrows.

or

Family Pic

Because it still makes me crazy that I missed getting even our own family picture at Chris and Erin's wedding last summer (yes, I've griped about this before), and even though Adam's not in a Calvin Klein tux, and even though it was crazy bright outside so there was some massive squinting going on, I still had to at least attempt at a family picture!

So, ta da!!  Here's the clan as we basically look these days.  Never mind that I'm pretty sure that I married Benjamin Button.

Justin and Michelle

We went to Utah at the end of January to be there for my very youngest brother Justin's wedding.  Justin is the youngest of us seven Smith kids, and somehow he managed to come away from that experience (i.e. my bossing everyone around for a good portion of their memorable childhood) an upbeat, happy, friendly, and charming guy who genuinely seems to like everyone and every situation that he's in.  There are plenty of times that he can be on the goofy side, and he has a real ability for losing/misplacing/forgetting/accidentally destroying items like coats and bicycles and laptops and skiis and four-wheelers (and more upsetting is how he has managed to pass those exact qualities on to Max), and so we're all wondering how he convinced a beautiful, with-it, talented, driven, and charismatic woman like Michelle to marry him.  But she sure looked happy enough, so she must know something that we all don't.  Or maybe it's that she sees the Justin that we don't give him enough credit for. 

When I got married, Justin was only 11 years old.  He came to our wedding in a borrowed suit coat looking a couple of sizes too big for him on his stork-like frame, and he was very much still the eager little boy who would cry tears of joy when he received a Nintendo 64 the following Christmas.  Not so long ago Max and Olivia were looking through my wedding photo album and Max asks me, where's Justin?  When I point him out, Max is shocked because "Dad is taller than uncle Justin!"  And since I moved away from Utah only days after my wedding, in lots of ways Justin is still frozen in my memory as that little boy.

A couple of summers ago while our family was on the way home from a beach vacation in Cape Cod we decided to take a small detour through central Connecticut and surprise Justin who was then serving his mission there.  We planned our trip so that we could spend the night near the city he was in and then go to church in the ward where he was assigned the following Sunday morning.  That Sunday morning when we pulled into the church parking lot, there he was, now 6'5" tall, still somewhat stork-like, but with his huge smile and his huge Polynesian companion, out waiving to welcome everyone in.  One look at him waiving at us as merely an unfamiliar car that needed to be welcomed to church, and you could see that he was happy.   To see him out there doing what he was doing, and so incredibly happy about doing it, and there because he wanted to be, not because he knew that family members were checking in on him, was an ineffable experience in understanding the person that he had grown up to become.

So it was my pleasure to be there to see that same overjoyed smile as he got married.  And besides all of that, they were such an adorable couple.  Wow, they were cute.  I'm pretty sure that Adam and I were never considered adorable.  It was such a great day I say let's do it again next year. Well, not really....but I think that you know what I mean.  We love you.  Congratulations!