Seattle

Since the kids had two days off from school, we decided to fly to Seattle to explore the city and to go to an Imagine Dragon's concert.  We did the city pass and fell in love with this beautiful city! 
I love traveling with this cute family of mine and love that Sarah captures everything so perfectly in her videos!

SEVENTEEN

This beautiful young lady had a birthday!  We started her day off with opening presents and unfortunately,  we didn't get a picture of everything she got.  She got money from grandparents and a fancy new camera lens from her parents.   

Sarah wanted to go out to Waffle Me Up for breakfast and then we did a bit of looking at the Saturday Market.  She had lunch with friends and then went boating with the Woodard's and more friends.

Seventeen amazing things about Sarah...

she loves being a BRAVE!

she is super good at making videos!

she needs her "down time" to recharge.

she loves to go to the Co-op for lunch with friends.

she surrounds herself with fun friends!

she still works at Page One Power.

she loves to go boating!

she likes to watch Netflix!

she very good at keeping her room clean and clutter free!

she likes to eat yogurt at Menchie's.

she LOVES to travel and hopes to do a lot in the future!

she and Andrew have a really close relationship!

she made a video which was shown at the Overland Theater.

she's very allergic to dogs!

she was a mentor for a family from Syria.

 she's really good at finding great places to eat when we travel!

she knows what she wants and works hard to get it!!

Happiest of birthdays, Sarah!  We love you so much!!!

June

We began our summer with taking a trip to Bend to see Sophie graduate. We love that she's coming to Idaho to play basketball and thought it would be fun to add an "Idaho" theme to her graduation party. Sarah made a fun video of celebrating Sophie!!

sophie's graduation from sarah smith on Vimeo.

We attended a fun Smith family reunion.  This year Aunt Debbie and Uncle Laurence were in charge and they chose to have it at Ball Manor.  We were happy to be able to sleep in our own beds and enjoy all the activities that had been planned.  We ate lots of yummy food, visited with lots of family and loved all the fun games!

Benjamin made a pretty cool creation at the Eagle library!  He loves to create!

Sarah and Andrew were invited to go boating with the Woodard's.  They always have so much fun!

Nathan and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary with going out to dinner at Ruth Chris' Steak House.  Everything was delicious and had beautiful presentations.  I feel pretty lucky to be married to Nathan! 

We met Jayna and her family at a Hawk's baseball game.  It was a fun evening with cousins and sometimes watching the game.

Levi and his friend Conner got to go to Kid Planet one morning.  So much fun!!

Nathan took the three oldest kids on a long weekend trip to Banff, Canada.  They all absolutely loved the beautiful scenery, enjoyed many hikes and adventures in canoeing and maybe did a little shopping in town.

Benjamin and I went to Webelos camp and had a really great time!  We did BB shooting, archery, crafting, learning about rockets and loved every minute!

Benjamin got to meet a rubix cube champ.  He's from the Ukraine and was in town visiting some friends.  He gave Benjamin some good advice and showed us his impressive skills.

So, so grateful for long summer days, no schedules and making fun memories with family and friends!

April and May

The month of April began with the Jackson's coming to Boise.  They came so Sophie could sign her letter of content to play basketball for the College of Idaho in Caldwell.  Some of us drove out to see her sign the letter.  Pretty exciting for Sophie and we are excited to have her so close to us!

The very next day, was Eliza's baptism.  It's been so fun having our cousins living in the same town and we loved celebrating Eliza on her big day! So proud of you, Eliza!!

Nathan was again asked to organize and put on an Easter Display at our community barn. He gathered art that depicted the life of Jesus Christ and he did a fabulous job!

They had an area where children could create art and Levi was thrilled that his art was also on display.

The Easter bunny came to our house and let lots of eggs full of treats!  We love the Easter season!

Our neighborhood had their annual Easter egg hunt and we loved that our cousins were able to come.

We spent many Friday evenings watching Benjamin and Levi play flag football.  This was Levi's first season and he did great!  Benjamin remembers every play and is a great player as well!

Sarah made a video and submitted it to local contest.  She made it into the top 10 and it was shown at the Overland Movie Theater.  It was a pretty big deal and we were super excited for her!  The really fun part of it, is that Levi was the only person in the video and so he got to see himself on the big screen.  Way to go, Sarah and Levi!!!  

Nathan and I went on a dreamy vacation to France.  He had served his mission there 27 years ago and hadn't been back.  We were able to see the new Paris France temple and so many other amazing sites.  A big blog post coming soon about our adventures in France!

I was able to go with Levi and his classmates to the Zoo.  Fun was had by all!

We got a call one Friday evening from Sarah that she had been in a car accident.  She had "hit" the sister missionaries as she accidentally drove through a stop sign.  Nathan went and got them all as their cars had to be towed.  Unfortunately, Sarah's car had to be totaled and Sister Rees got a concussion but overall, everything worked out fine.

Nathan with the help of the boys, did some yard work, including taking out this big bush and moving it to the side of the house.  There is always plenty of yard work to do in the Spring!

We went to several graduation parties...this was our only picture, but I think it's pretty cute!!

For Mother's day, we bought some chairs, a picnic table and a beautiful rug from Costco to put on our front porch.  We've been spending A LOT of time on our front porch and I'm loving it!!

Benjamin has practiced his recorder so much that he's the only one in all the school that passed off all of the songs.  His music teacher is super proud of him!!