Life in the Smith Home Lately

What a beautiful day we had today! It was in the low 60's, sunny, and a tad windy; the leaves on the trees are starting to turn and it felt wonderful to be outside.

When I came downstairs this morning I found Thomas poking toothpicks into a wadded up ball of foil. For a long time I have been frustrated with him using up all my scotch tape, cooking twine, or whatever else he could find on his various projects, but Paul keeps telling me "Holly, tape is cheap, relax!"

"Thomas, what are you making?" I ask.

"A prickle ball" he says with satisfaction.


Our day started with Dominic's first official soccer game of the season. So far they have just have just had practices and training sessions. The first real game was supposed to be two weeks ago, but it was rained out. As I mentioned before, it was a beautiful day, so it was nice to be out with Paul and all the boys at the soccer field. Dominic played well and was more engaged in the game than he has been in the past and his team won, 4 to 1. And actually they were playing the team that Dominic was on last season.

Last night I told Paul that this weekend I wanted [him] to paint our stairway going up to the upper level and the upper level hallway. We never painted those areas after we moved in 5 1/2 years ago, and there is a mural of scuffs and fingerprints all over them. So since we need to start thinking about selling the house some day, sooner hopefully than later, I figured that it was time to get that painted. As soon as we got home from soccer, Paul and the boys got to work with taping. As of tonight, we haven't actually started the painting yet - we'll get a little in tomorrow and hopefully finish it before the end of the week. And then I guess I need to find something to hang on the walls, so it looks nice. That's another whole challenge for me - home decorating is not my strength.

Like Dan, I have a lot of pictures I've been meaning to share for a while, so here they are :)

The boys and I had a nice fall walk the other day.


Dominic and Andre look like they are sparring here, but what actually happened was that Dominic was trying to aim his wooden gun, and Andre came along and started whacking it. Dominic was not upset or anything and we laughed when we saw how the picture came out.


Here are Dominic and Thomas on some pieces of sawed up tree trunk in the woods.


And here is Dominic successfully aiming his gun.


And here is "the Sweetie" as we call him, just being his usual sweet self. (In case you haven't heard me talk incessantly about this yet, Andre thinks his name is "Sweetie" and refers to himself in that way all the time.)

In case you can't see how sweet he is in that picture here are a few more :) (Sorry to be annoying.)


He likes the mp3 player. (I don't know what happened to his pants - I think Dominic took this picture.)


Andre is taking a drink out of my glass here during pizza making, thus the flour he has all over
himself.


And here he is all dressed to go out in the rain.

Every year Paul enjoys taking the boys to an event at the Dulles Airport called the Dulles Plane Pull, which is a fund raiser for something, although I can't remember what. This year, Bill and Linda flew in just in time for Paul to pick them up at the airport and bring them to the plane pull with them, which was nice for them. There are various teams who try to pull a plane, and the kids get to try to pull a school bus. This is a cute clip of the boys pulling the school bus (sorry it's sideways).




Last, but not least, these are some pictures Paul had asked me to post a REALLY long time ago; Easter, in fact. This is a cool project that Thomas and I did on Holy Thursday, while Paul and Dominic were at the Mass of the Last Supper, and the Sweetie was sleeping.



If you are interested in doing this craft, you can find the instructions for it here. It is based on Leonardo Da Vinci's rendition of the last supper. It was fun because while we were doing it, and afterwards, we were able to memorize and identify the twelve apostles. I think we must have made some bread too, which is why you see Thomas breaking the bread (like Jesus broke the bread at the Last Supper.) We were very proud of how nicely he colored the apostles and I think he enjoyed the project too.