A Slice of Smith Life: October 2013

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Our Little Pumpkin is 3 Months Today!

9:50 PM | Posted by asliceofsmithlife | Edit Post

Our little cupcake, or should I say our little pumpkin, turned 3 months today! One of my faithful blog followers, A.R., sent us this ADORABLE pumpkin hat when our sweet Cupcake #5 was born! Thank you A.R.! We have been getting so many compliments on the cuteness! :) At 3 months, our little bundle of joy is gaining more neck control, smiling, giggling at her siblings, ~~babbling~~ talking up a storm, and brightening our lives each and every day!

Labels:pumpkin | 4 comments

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Wordless Wednesday: We Love Our Happy Girl

12:00 AM | Posted by asliceofsmithlife | Edit Post

Labels:Wordless Wednesday | 1 comments

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Happy 12th Birthday to Cupcake #2 !!!

12:05 AM | Posted by asliceofsmithlife | Edit Post

12 years ago today, our bouncing baby boy blessed our family, friends, and all those he meets with his adorable personality, beautiful smile, his dark curly hair, and above all, the special way he nurtures and loves all of God's creations! I found some of my favorite pictures of our son from the past when flipping through our photo albums:

He loves his Mommy!

He loves to laugh, but he sometimes says he doesn't love his curly hair :(

He loves nature, being outside, and dirt!

He loves playing/watching sports, especially soccer, flag football, and football!

He loves special outings with Dad! Go NC State Wolfpack!

He loves to smile! :)

He loves ALL his sisters!

...and he is quite smitten with his newest sister, born July 30th! (OK, so she is the fifth child, that is how I can get away with dressing my daughter in blue :) )

He loves serving God and we hope and pray he always will!

We had our son's 12th birthday party last Friday evening, Oct. 11, because today we have an especially busy schedule with soccer and flag football games and a dinner for my 20 year high school reunion. (Yikes! 20 years?) Here are some photos from last week's birthday celebration:

My son and his friends played some flag football games in the backyard and then had a Nerf war until dark. Then it was time to roast some hot dogs and have cake!

I found this idea on a Facebook image and my son enjoyed drawing the face on the pumpkin and then my daughters and I put fruit on the skewers. The kids enjoyed eating the fruity pumpkin while eating their hot dogs by the campfire.

For my "Cupcake's" cake this year, my son wanted a "Funfetti" cake, but I'm trying really hard not to buy boxed cake mixes anymore so it was off to Pinterest to find a homemade Funfetti cake recipe and I found THIS one that turned out yummy!

Below isn't the best picture of the inside, but it was colorful and my son and I had a lot of fun baking it together. In fact, he said more than once how much fun it was to bake his cake this year! That made me smile :)

Here are the two finished cakes that we made (I doubled the recipe to make 2 round cakes as the recipe is just for one round cake) The icing was THIS homemade cream cheese icing that we love and I used green food coloring to make it green.

Now you may be wondering what the brown "footballs" are made of...Don't worry the kids at the party were wondering the same thing. :) Well, to go with my "from scratch" birthday cake ideas, I thought I would make a healthier version of the traditional Rice Krispy treats and I found a recipe HERE. I went to a local Whole Foods store to find One Degree Organic Foods Brown Rice Cacao Crisps and then followed the rest of the recipe. The brown rice cacao cereal wasn't that bad, but why does the healthy stuff have to cost SOOOOOO much???!!!???? The kids thought the healthy version of rice krispy treats was "OK" and I think I loved them more than they did :)

I will say it was very hard to form the footballs since this recipe didn't stick together like when using marshmallows, but it was fun trying a new recipe :) Oh, and I had to keep the cakes in their pans because I used non-stick spray and the cakes crumbled when I tried to take them out of pan. Next time, I'll use Crisco and flour to make pans more non-stick.

It's been a great ~~day~~ WEEK celebrating our special son's 12th birthday!

Happy 12th Birthday! We love you!

Labels:happy birthday | 2 comments

Thursday, October 3, 2013

A Slice of Smith (Camp) Life

10:15 AM | Posted by asliceofsmithlife | Edit Post

Last Saturday night, our family decided to take advantage of the beautiful Fall temps and go camping...in our backyard! My brother-in-law and nieces stayed in one tent, while my husband stayed in our tent with my 4 older cupcakes. Baby Cupcake #5 and I camped in our house :)

We are blessed with a big backyard and my husband cleared out an area near the edge of our woods so that tents could be pitched and he built a fire pit out of garden stones in the middle of our Smith Camp campsite.

Here are my children with some neighborhood kids as my husband roasts a hot dog over the fire. This particular hot dog was for me (not for the kids drooling over it) and it was oh so delicious! :)

After the simple hot dog with some chips and fruit meal, we all had fun roasting marshmallows for S'mores. Yum!

My mother and father-in-law, who live in a neighboring county, came to Smith Camp and sat around the fire pit with us along with my brother-in-law and his wife. While the adults chatted, my kids and their cousins and friends ran around the dark yard playing games and working up a sweat. At one point, my son, who is 11 exclaimed, "This is the funnest night ever!" Ahhhh...it's the little things in life that mean the most to our children.

When the neighborhood kids went home, then the adults and my cupcakes sat around the campfire and told stories and laughed alot. The "spider scare" got us all laughing hard and was a memorable moment for sure!

Here are pictures taken the morning after the camp out.

We definitely plan on doing this again with our family and friends, especially since it was convenient, makes wonderful memories, and it's an inexpensive camping "trip".

I'm linking up this week to Hearts for Home Blog Hop