Settling in

I've never seen an apartment in such a mess. One of the sofas is covered with "stuff"....you can probably see it in the background of some of the pics I'll post.

Wednesday night we went by to visit GranGran before heading out of town. The girls found a new friend there, a black kitten named Lucky.





Riley & Maddie actually sat still for a picture with some of their church friends Wednesday night.

They'll certainly miss seeing Reagan, Kailey, & Molly (and Isabella & Alexandra, not pictured) every week!!







The girls and Norma. Ms. Norma had a hard time letting us leave yesterday. She has kept them since they were each 12 weeks old.

The following are some pics of the girls with the other girls at daycare. Their friend Maggie wasn't at Norma's, but we got some pics of Reagan and Cailey.














Riley and Cailey will be sad to be apart. Cailey kept asking me why Riley wasn't going to be there anymore and if we'd EVER come back.

Just a test post

And it looks like I CAN post on blogger from Jeremy's laptop! Yay!!! I got some "last day at Norma's" pics that I'll share after the girls go to bed.

Moving Day #2

Looks like tomorrow's the day for the girls and I to make the transition to Sherwood. The girls are excited to go live at their "new house with stairs" and I'll be happy to finally have us all back together again. We've spent too much of 2006 living apart! Jeremy is working out of town, and he'll be excited to be able to come home to a family instead of an empty apartment.

Jeremy's apartment has a junior olympic sized pool, and the girls will LOVE that we have access to it. Maddie got to swim with Daddy once, but Riley slept right through it.


I thought I'd share this book that the girls have grown to love to hear. My mom's friend, Mary Lou, told Mom about this book that her daughter loved. Mom says Mary Lou could recite the lines from memory. It's a really cute story about Miss Twiggley, who lives in a tree and sleeps in a hat. All the townspeople think she's an odd bird, so her friends consist of a dog named Puss, bears, and who knows what else!

There came a flood in Miss Twiggley's town, and the people who had disliked her so much were forced up into her tree to get away from the water. Miss Twiggley took them in, kept them dry and showed them how to be kind to people even when they've been less than kind to you. This book was first published in 1966!



I don't know how long it'll be before I'll update my blog again. For some reason, my home computer and blogger don't like each other :-( I'll try from Jeremy's laptop, but if that doesn't work, I might think about switching over to typepad....we'll just see!

New Car Time

Well, we said "buh-bye" to the old Ford truck this weekend. It's been a lemon ever since we bought the thing, and found out the hard way on Saturday that it'd been through more than we knew. It's been wrecked and repainted and we didn't know it! I guess if we ever buy another used car, we'll do a little more research before we sign on the dotted line!!!!





We moved on to something bigger and better......well, better anyway. It's certainly smaller!! We bought a 2006 Toyota Corolla S. Jeremy's had his eye on them for a while. It's small, but seems to have plenty of room inside for us. Best of all is the gas mileage!! It's rated at 30ish in town and 38 on the highway! That's double what J's truck got, so I can only imagine how much $$$$ we'll save on gas!



**Notice in the picture above that Jeremy quite promptly had them put his Hogs license plate on the new car. He wasn't about to drive off the lot without it!

Pigggg Sooouuiiieee!!!!

Riley's T-Ball Photos

I picked up Riley's T-Ball pictures today and I'm SO pleased with them!! I'm so proud of her for playing the whole season! She only complained a little and really had a great time!!!!

Won't be adding much journaling here since I burned the phooey out of my finger last night at VBS!!






I realize the last few pics I've posted have only been of Riley, so here's my Maddie Bug!! I remember loving this picture because it was taken JUST after she started sucking her thumb. ***Aunt Angela, do you recognize this outfit??

Way back when...

My mom has a lot of older pictures on her computer....pictures I would've LONG since burned to a cd, but I thought it might be fun to show some of them since some of the people who look at my blog regularly didn't know my kiddos "way" back then. This first picture is of Riley at 6 months. I remember this being one of my favorite of her 6 month set because of the way her little toes are curled up. Mama loves those toes!!!!










In most of Riley's baby pictures I think she looks nothing like she does now, but this one to the left couldn't be denied. Her little disappearing eyes (that she inherited from her Daddy & Papaw) and her beautiful little mouth can't be mistaken!

Mama sneaking a smooch!

Smith family update

Has it really been 19 days since I've posted? Thanks, Christina, for reminding me! :-)

Ok, so we're moved......sort of. Jeremy is all moved to Sherwood and I'm all moved into Mom's. Aside from the fact that all of the girls' clothes are in stacks on top of a cardboard box, we're all settled. When people ask me for my address, I really have to take a pause and think about the answer. I'm homeless!!!

It's looking like I'm going to be able to do my current job from home once we hire someone to do Jenn's work. Her secretary quit a month or so ago with no notice (well, maybe you could consider all the mysterious backaches and stomach bugs notice).....How very special is that? I'm reminded of the rudeness of it every day when I have work that was said to be done and then I find it unfinished buried in a stack of papers!! The primary reason the girls and I didn't move with Jeremy was to avoid putting them in daycare since I knew they'd have to be pulled out and put into another in a few months. They're at an age where they aren't dealing with change very well and I knew swapping daycares would really be awful. The transition we're in right now is hitting them hard enough. So......if I can work from home, they'll be able to be home with me. I really want Riley to have at least one year of preschool before Kindergarten, but that wouldn't have to happen until after we get transferred to wherever Jeremy's account will be.

On the topic of Jeremy's job, he is really enjoying it! He's gotten to travel to a few places in the state already to visit various locations. He went to Dumas, Hot Springs and Springdale last week and is spending this week working in the terminal at Maumelle. Everyone keeps telling him how easy his job is going to be once he learns the ropes. He ***LIKES*** the sound of that!

The girls and I had big plans to leave shortly after work on Friday to spend the weekend with Daddy, but his POJ (piece of junk!) FORD is giving him lots of problems, so looks like we're in for a car shopping trip this weekend. I decided to leave the girls at home with Memaw.....Car shopping with a 2 and 3 year old is neither fun....nor easy. We found out that J.B. Hunt employees get a discount on GM products, so we're leaning toward a Saturn Ion. We're really looking for something great on gas. Another one we've looked into is a Toyota Corolla.....Small, GREAT on gas. I think we could fit a Toyota Corolla into my Nissan Quest :-) Of course, Jeremy's first choice is a Jeep Wrangler, but...we'll see.

VBS has started at VV Church of Christ! So much fun! The theme is "Pulling together as part of God's team," and everything is decorated in a wintery theme. Lots of snowflakes hanging around the place. I have pictures on my camera, but not uploaded yet. I got a great pic of Brother David "Rolling his Gospel Chariot" along..haha! I'm helping with crafts and it's really fun. I know Riley is enjoying doing the crafts. She can't wait to get home at night and show Memaw what she made. She sent Sunday night's craft home with Daddy so he could hang it on his refrigerator.

That's all I can update on for now since everything's pretty much up in the air! I'm sure I'll have lots of VBS pics to share eventually!

Boxes, Boxes and More Boxes

We made our trip to UHaul last night to pick up our "moving supplies." We packed until bedtime and we finally just collapsed into bed.....and we're not even 1/8 of the way through our house! I did get all my china and stemware unloaded out of the china cabinet and put safely into a special box for those things.

Jeremy and I both cleaned out our closets and dresser. Two huge piles of clothes are ready to go to Goodwill. I had NO idea how much stuff we had until we're ready to clean it out. While I was working on the china cabinet, Jeremy went through and packed all of our dvds and cds. He'll be bored with all those dvds in his new apartment if we can't get our big screen TV up the stairs :=)

Couple more pics of the kiddos from the weekend

Riley came into the bathroom while I was flossing Sunday night. She asked if she could have some. I gave it to her and she walked away. I had no idea I'd find this when I walked around the corner into her bedroom to check on her!

Guess she thought Ivan had some cleaning to do :)





Maddie had gone on to bed and Riley and Ivan decided they needed a snack. Here they are sharing Ivan's puppy dog blanket eating some goldfish crackers!