School pictures

Sorry the school pictures turned out so big! I had no idea they would do that! I just thought that they turned out so cute I wanted to post them. Dallas's turned out good too except that the studio didn't crop them right so as soon as we get them fixed or retakes done, I'll post them. Now I want to take all the other kids to have theirs done so that I can hang them all up together.

Micailey's school pictures

Mackenzie's School pictures

Macie's 1st "bath"

Baby Blessing!

We are going to bless Macie on October 12th at our church at 9 am for any and all who can make it. After Sacrament, we will come to our house for a luncheon for those who can stay. I am not going to post an address for the church or my house on the blog so if you need the address- leave me a comment or give me a call and I will let you know. We hope any and all can make it!

Happy Birthday Dallas!

Dallas is the big 10 ! We are so proud of him! He is such a good kid and is so helpful! He is always mild mannered and good to all of his brothers and sisters! He loves to do art and creative things. Thanks for the birthday wishes! Dallas picked to go to Applebee's for his birthday dinner and Bret and Aubrey joined us. We were kind of nervous to take all 7 kids out to eat for the first time but they did amazingly well, with the help of Bret and Aubrey of course!!! They kept Micailey and Mackenzie entertained while we entertained the littler ones on the other end of the table. At the end when they came out to sing, they sang and clapped so loud that Cohen started screaming and Jordan kept it together but wasn't to far behind Cohen. If the song would have had one more verse we would have lost him too! We had fun though and then polished the night off with our own rendition of Happy Birthday and some yummy "True Blue" BYU themed birthday cake and ice cream. In a few days he gets to go with a friend (and some sisters) to Jumpin Jack's. I'm limited on pictures from years back, but I managed to get a few!

Happy Birthday Dallas! We love you!!!

1 month old

4 months old

9 months old

2 years

4 years

Dallas at his Free Ice Stand- he was quite sad that no one stopped to get any. He sat out there and tried to flag down anyone that drove by for over an hour!

1st day of Kindergarten

Dallas and his dad on his Baptism day

Dallas with his Grandpa Smith and cousin

For Dallas's 9th birthday, His Grandpa Smith took him to the National Guard Armory and let him and his friends see all of the big Army vehicles and then they all got "dog tags". They thought it was so awesome!

Dallas back at the house for cake and ice cream with his friends

Dallas and his sisters at Cocoa Beach, Florida for our family vacation last October.

We love you pal! I hope you have another awesome year with lots of new adventures! Probably not another month long trip to Morocco or 3 new siblings in 3 months, but hopefully a fun and exciting year doing a lot of other new things! We are so proud of you and love you tons!

Macie Meikel - 1 week old

She is finally here!

After being up till 4 with false contractions, the hospital called at 5:15 and asked if I could be there at 6. By the time I got there and all "hooked up", it was about 7:30. The epidural had a void spot on my stomach that wouldn't go numb unless my legs felt like tree trunks! So that made me feel a little claustrophobic, but other than that, we just laid there and waited. At noon I was a 7, and the Dr. came in to check up on me at about 12:25, gave me the "complete" news I had been waiting for, got changed into his "gear", and she was born at 12:34. She looked so tiny!!! All my others were in the 7 lb. range, but she only weighed in at

6 lb 9 oz

18 1/2 "

The kids all love her to pieces beg to hold her! It's nice to finally have her here and be able to take the last step in our crazy journey and move forward. She changes hourly! She keeps getting prettier by the minute! We finally decided on a name! Surprise, surprise! It wasn't easy. We just decided the night before I came home! We decided on

Macie Meikel Smith

All of my kids have a family given middle name from a different line of our family. Meikle is Richie's Grandma Smith's, mother's maiden name. It's pronounced like "nickle" but with an "M". To make it a middle name, we are switching the "L" and the "E" and pronouncing it "Mikell". I hope that makes sense.

We love her to pieces already! She is such a good baby! I just hope she can survive this new family she has! I have never seen us all together before and the "family photo" in the hospital was a real eye opener!!! Holy Cow is an understatement! No wonder everyone is so concerned! :)

A huge thank you to everyone that helped out with my kids while I had my very enjoyable stay at the hospital and bonded with Macie!!! And thank you to everyone that came to visit and called to check up on me! It makes me feel loved! I'm so thankful that I have such good family and friends!!!

Welcoming Macie!

Glad today is over!!!!

I had high hopes of a fun, productive holiday! But, with the weather forecast, we knew not to expect an outside one! With a baby coming in a few days, there were a few things we needed to check off the "to buy" list, and thought that we would do our cleaning and laundry in the morning, and then let the young kids have their naps while we got ready for the day, and then hit the 2 or 3 stores we needed with all kids in tow (what we needed was for them).

Not that smooth! - We started out the day tired and ornery because the kids kept waking up with the thunder and lightning, so sleep was not the best! I started laundry at 7 am and didn't finish until about 2 (technically I'm still not "finished" and don't tell anyone- but I even did a couple loads on Sunday (sshhh!)- but oh well). It wouldn't have been so bad except I had decided to unpack some fall clothes for the cooler weather coming and they all needed washed too. The kids fought, argued, and tattled all morning. Jordan was on a one today and through tantrums pretty much from sun up to sun down. I lost count of how many time outs he had. At one point after threatening for the last 3 days that we would tape socks on Mackenzie's hands if she didn't stop scratching and "clawing" when she got mad, we actually DID! She did not like that - so that was quite the show! We were going to take them all with us to the stores but by the time 3:00 hit- We were so frazzled - the kids wanted no part of shopping, even though it was for all of them, and were begging for a baby sitter! Honestly the thoughts of paying a babysitter have never sounded so good! So luckily their favorite one was available on the spot and me and Richie took off with only one child in tow- Brinley - who had basically been the best of everyone that day (probably including myself!).

We got our couple stops in and returned to the craziness that didn't even seem to take a pause while we were gone. Apparently Jordan need 3 time outs in the 2 hours we were gone for crazy tantrums, and started screaming again the second we walked in the door! Lately Cohen takes one look at me and cries for me no matter who is holding him, and that is exactly what happened with him when we walked in the door! I don't know that he stopped crying till we put him down to bed either (except while I held him while eating dinner, getting his pj's on , etc). Chaos never did settle down until everyone was finally tucked in to bed. I don't think I have been so excited for bed time for a long time as I was tonight!

So yes! There is CHAOS at my house!!! It's not this bad every day- luckily- but today was NUTS!