An Education

Moving in early summer has its advantages: family time, freedom from schedules, family time, an entire summer to think about all the things you miss about the place you used to live... it's been a long summer. Real long. But my son is now at the top of the elementary school in 5th grade. My daughter is a 7th grader at the MIddle school, and My two oldest (at home) are attending the high school together. The toddler is officially toddlering at preschool whilst our oldest is now in his second year at UVU in Orem.  The family vacillates between missing our college student and wishing he was here to being crazy jealous of his Utah resident status and wanting to live with him in his dorm. Even though school just started, let it be known that our move to Pullman has already been an education. We're learning to trust in each other and God a little more, and learning to take life a day at a time.

Preston - UVU - Musical Theatre major. He'll be a star on Broadway in just a few short years. Fact.

Calvin starting his junior year in Pullman Highschool.

Q: Who makes their child entering the junior year in high school move to a new small town?

A: Mean parents.

Simon Smith, a fabulous Freshman in High School.

So... how are you doing, Simon, with the move and all?

Oh, I'm good... and he is.

This was the only picture she would let me take of her on the first day school. Let's not discuss.

7th grade. Boom.

5th grade. His school's mascot is a fox, and Owen is.

Norman is now going to the Yellow House Preschool.

His teacher, Mrs. Megan Welling, is fabulous.

We got a dog. More details to come.

Her name is Ginger. She's a goldendoodle, and just seeing her fluffiness brings me joy.

2018-2019 school year. Let's get er done.

Homeless

Due to the timing of the sale of our home in Bountiful, Utah and the purchase of our home in Pullman, WA, for a brief few days, our family has been homeless. 6 days in hotels has been a party. 2 days in Bountiful, giving us time to load the trucks. Yes, that truck was plural: we ended up filling up two Uhauls. That also gave us time to clean up the place for the new owners, which are bound to be fabulous. 2 Days in a Boise hotel... nothing says happy 20th anniversary like Boise! We talked about hitting Paris for the big 2.0., but we hit Zoo Boise with the kids, which was also totally lovely. Paris can wait a little longer. This morning finds us in the last of our 3 hotels, and in a few hours, we will move into our new house in Pullman.  In short, it's absolutely beautiful here. The air is clear, the weather is crisp and cool, and the people have all been exceptionally friendly. That being said, after over a decade of living in Bountiful, it's been hard to even picture another location that would ever feel like home. The reasons for my love for our Utah North Canyon Neighborhood and congregation would fill a book. Also, as any parent knows, making a place feel like home is no small task, and since I'm the stay-at-home parent, the task falls pretty heavily on my shoulders. In my darkest hour a few days before we moved, I found myself alone in my car, tissues in abundance, bawling. Tears streaming down my face, pouring out my heart to God all of my frustrations about this move: helping sad and angry kids adjust to a new place, getting to know new neighbors (and hoping they like us and vice versa), meeting a new congregation, navigating a new grocery store, leaving behind my cooking group, no longer doing television demos for Studio 5, etc.) I let every thought and fear and worry and emotion float up to God for over an hour. I had no requests for God, no plan, I just wanted to empty the contents of my aching of soul. I sat in silence for a minute, and then finally turned on the radio... and I found myself in the second verse of the song "Home" by Philip Phillips.

Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you’re not alone
'Cause I’m going to make this place your home

It was a direct answer from God. It was exactly what I needed to hear, exactly when I needed to hear it. God is good. Pullman, here we come. Thanks to everyone who has helped with our move. Know that your servise and love have carried our family through this transition.

Matching Moving Memorabilia

Because we are moving to another state, and we had loads of things to get done all week (packing, cleaning, contacting utilities, finding lost library books, etc) I decided that a better use of my time would be to make family t-shirts.  I'm not sure if this is a Holman thing (my maiden family name) or just a woman born in the 70's thing, or a Mormon thing, or a Lindsey thing, but I simply love matching family t-shirts.  I think the idea of having all of us in the same shirt, even though our oldest won't be joining us on our move, is somehow comforting. For years I've thought how fab it would be to have a shirt with all of our names on it, linked together through a shared letter, but everyone gets their own color; everything about it screamed winner, winner chicken dinner.  Yes, being June, it is Pride month and rainbow flags are often flown in support of our LGBT brothers and sisters, but that's just a happy coincidence for the Smith Family 2018 T-Shirts since I think this design has been in my heart for at least a decade. Once I let Ryan in on my plan, he questioned the timing, the method, the priority status and the success of my t-shirts. "Don't you want to help me realize my vision?"* I queried... In the end, the house still got packed up, the utilities still got called, and I even found one of the missing library books. But more importantly, we all have matching moving memorabilia. Clearly, my mother priorities are in the right place.

In all our glory! I like that Owen's name is red and he's wearing red.

Unintentionally perfect.

I accidentally bought Ryan a shirt that was a little snug. Look at those muscles!

The boys. I think it is so fun to see My oldest son next to my youngest son.

6 boys in my family.

And just 2 girls. And one of us is crazy. Guess which one isn't!

I didn't want to printer iron on bc they don't look that great after being washed. And I didn't want to do iron on letters bc it's expensive and I couldn't get the variety of colors I wanted. A friend printed out a pattern which helped me figure out my plan of attack. I eventually decided on mixing my own fabric paint, making a grid, and using individual stencil letters to whip up 8 t-shirts with 9 words. It took forever, but I am very happy with the results. (and by "happy" I mean it was a solid 5 hours where I wasn't crying about leaving my friends and neighborhood and schools and grocery stores and congregation in Utah.)

*10 points if you can name the movie.

Why on Earth We're Moving to Pullman WA

My handsome husband (Ryan) is an Architecture Professor. He's bright and talented and like many careers, the path up the ladder can necessitate a change in location.  He's been the Associate Dean of the Architecture department at the University of Utah for 3+ years, and has been there for 14. He's been invited to apply/headhunted at some great places over the last decade. We've made a few trips to explore job offers, but nothing has felt right, the timing has been off, we were in the middle of bigger fish to fry in UT. Noteworthy is that jobs in academia often take 6+ months from the initial "putting together and sending in your CV" to the "you're hired." So, about forever ago Washington State University contacted Ryan and asked him to apply. In looking over the job description, he said that it precisely matched his interests, his academic desires, and seemed like an excellent fit. Several months later, he went through a series of interviews, and he was just as impressed with them as they were with him, and he got the job. The last step in making it a done deal was flying Ryan and me out so that "we" (really "me" bc he'd already been there) could fall in love with the place.

We were there for 4 days. Day 1 in spite of great effort to keep an open mind (I'm not even kidding here) I went to bed in a panic that I was going to have to play bad cop, and talk my spouse off the "moving to the random small town in the middle of no-where with nothing to do and see" ledge. Small towns don't all look like Northern Exposure; some of them have dilapidated buildings, telephone wires that are never going to be buried, and movie theatres that make the Kaysville Dollar theatre look high class. Yikes. But to WSU's credit, they worked hard to impress us. They put together a schedule of people to meet (who were just so lovely and kind), restaurants to hit (which were local, unique and fabulous), and most importantly they got us an appointment with the principal of the (only) high school in Pullman. It was even on a Saturday, during Spring Break. The school is brand spanking new (50+million dollar build) and the facilities were incredible. We got to hash out educational concerns and goals during our 2-hour tour. When we wrapped up the meeting and hopped into our car, Ryan and I had tears in our eyes. We both agreed that this was going to be a great fit for our kids. I think he was misty-eyed bc he was so happy, and I was bawling devasted, sad, don't want to come and live here but feel like we should tears. It was an ugly cry.  Later that afternoon we were taken on a pre-arranged tour with a realtor, giving us the chance to get our bearings. We mentioned a desire to build our own home and so part of the tour included driving by some of the potential lots...  

It's time for a flashback: Several months prior I woke from a very vivid dream. Typically my dreams are unremarkable or shifty, but this one was clear and vivid. I told Ryan about it: In my dream, I was standing in what I knew to be my kitchen. It had white tile for the backsplash and a farmhouse dining table with different colored chairs. And I was looking out over rolling green hills. "I don't even know where it looks like this", I told him. "East Coast?" And then I told him it looked all rural, and we both laughed and laughed. Our plan is to eventually retire in a downtown condo and we are hoping that if an apocalyptic catastrophe hits, that we'll be the first to go (we promise we'll help out as angels on the other side.) I tucked this little dream away somewhere in a dusty corner of my mind and didn't give it a second thought, until...

The realtor takes us around, shows us the town, we part ways and Ryan and I drive back out to the place he cruised by. We drove up the hill to the area he said had some nice lots. I hopped out of the car and took a look. The view was literally a snapshot of my dream, rolling hills and all. This dream I'm positive that God knew I would need a few solid tender mercies if I was ever to agree to leave Bountiful*, and my prayer to know what we should do was answered. God is good. Our trip to check out Pullman WA ended with the decision that it was time for the Smiths to move.

* Many of you either grew up in small towns or frequently visit small towns, or have dreams to move to a small town. No offense intended. I too hope to be a defender of the splendor of small towns in just a few months.

Leaving... On a Jet Plane

After almost 14 glorious years living in the great state of Utah, the Lindsey and Ryan Smith clan will be embarking on a new adventure in June. We are moving to Pullman, WA where Ryan has been hired as the Director of The School of Design and Construction at Washington State University. Basically, he's an academic rock star, and if I weren't already his wife, I would definitely be that groupie that security keeps their eye on. Our caravan will include our turtle, *5 of our 6 children, and honestly a boat load of tears. More details about the decision to leave shall be forthcoming, but for starters, I want to document the first step in the exit: selling our home. Below are some pictures (many of you have already seen these on our MLS listing.) I love this house. In the course of living here over 11 years, we have re-done the roof, the flooring, the kitchen, all three bathrooms, painted everything, replaced all 33 windows (half of which are custom sizes), re-done the driveway and sidewalk, landscaped the front yard, and built a small fence to hide our trash cans so that our neighbors believe we don't generate trash... but we don't just have trash. We also have dirty laundry, and all of it is coming with us when we move to Pullman in a little over a month...and now it's time to cry again.

* Our oldest is forever welcome to join the crew, but as a Sophmore in college, who is happy with his living arrangements and University, he's staying behind. The others have no choice:~)




I loved the way our realtor described our home. Usually, house listings are boring... but our realtor, who loves Midcentury Modern Homes cranked out the following:

Much like Joseph Eichler, who developed some of California's most celebrated tract residences, Ron wanted to create community; he wanted to build homes for the creative modern family. Ron Molen-designed homes are all about the spaces. The public, or gathering spaces, are joined together with the private areas of his homes by what he liked to call "open, free, and spontaneous space." His belief was that, "a true family house offers a vital, imaginative, productiveenvironment.... a place for creative family living." Okay, so not every kid who grows up in an Eichler is going to become Steve Jobs (like Steve Jobs did), but it's safe to say that Ron has also influenced his fair share of creative kids over the years. This home is located on the Bountiful bench, and is well-sited to take advantage of the lake views from the back. The main structure balances like a delicate bird perched atop a brick wall, with the carport extending like a wing, held up by thin posts and beams. When approaching the front door, a small row of Japanese maples reach their arms up and beyond a cutout in the roof, bridging the indoor and outdoor spaces. The interior of the home puts the gathering spaces on full display. A gourmet kitchen that seats 24 is unlike any other Ron Molen home you'll find. My seller just happens to be a professional chef, who designed her kitchen to be a place in which she can teach. Just like the hearth in a Frank Lloyd Wright house, the kitchen has been the pulsing heart of this home for her family. The open living space and family areas sit just below the kitchen. And, in a home full of windows, the conversation pit is a great place to hide from it all. It's a space where families can play Chutes and Ladders, or dream big while building their Monopoly empires. It's also a space to simply huddle, quietly, in front of the fireplace. This home has been built on some enviable core principles. This home is about freedom of expression. This home is about finding common ground, and each other. But, most of all, this home is about family. 

Saying Goodbye to Cricket

Last week the hearts of our family broke a little as we said goodbye to our beloved Cricket.  Just four years ago, sweet Cricket came into our lives. She was born and bred to serve. Her bloodline provides some of the nations greatest seeing eye dogs. As a puppy she spent her first year of life, growing and displaying her gentle ways with her foster family, who named her "Cricket." From there she went to her training with Guide Dogs for the Blind. Over several months, and at the price of several thousand dollars, she proved her natural abilities necessary to be a successful guide dog: intelligent, loyal, focused, obedient, both a leader and a follower.  After 7+ years of being a guide dog to an incredibly amazing woman, Becky Andrews, and after both giving and receiving an abundance of love, it was time for Cricket to retire.  Becky is a member of our local Mormon congregation. By divine providence, we caught wind that she was hoping to place Cricket in a home for what she called an "open adoption," meaning that when her family came into town and wanted to snuggle Cricket, they would be welcome, and when we went out of town on any trips, Cricket would stay with her whilst we were away. To say it was idyllic would be an understatement. Our children immediately fell in love with her kind, gentle ways.  She regularly was overfed and over-treated by the family, all 8 of us being guilty of attempts to spoil a dog who couldn't spoil.  In her last few months, it became apparent that her age was starting to show. She slowed down, panted heavily for no apparent reason, and couldn't kick a very persistent cough, in spite of medication and excellent medical care. After a few meetings with Becky and her husband, we determined that it was time to ease Cricket's suffering, and send her to receive her well deserved Heavenly Reward. In truth, I always thought it silly that my sweet dog was named after another animal. I used to joke with visitors when I introduced her by saying "This is Cricket, but she's a dog... not a Cricket." A few days after we put her down, I was reading Pinnochio to Norman, and it occurred to me for the very first time that Pinocchios conscience is named "Cricket," with the job to guide, direct, and help. I now appreciate the name my dog carried. She will be missed.

What a classy dog.

We went over to the Andrews to say our goodbyes and got to be there when she passed.

Not related, but somehow important, this is 4 days after Becky ran the Boston marathon.

Becky and Steve are simply high-quality individuals. Becky is the most active, positive person that I know, notwithstanding being visually impaired.

She wrote an incredible book about her journey with losing her sight, becoming a therapist, and the guide dogs that have helped her achieve independence. It really is a wonderful read.

 https://www.amazon.com/Look-move-forward-journey-resilience-ebook/dp/B01GPAIIRA/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524874981&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=becky+andrews+Looking+up

Becky gave these little ceramic paw heart tiles to the kids.

About 1.5" big, they're perfect for a jewelry box or nightstand; 

a sweet reminder of our Cricket. We called her our Dog Hero, and indeed she was.

PJ Masks Pajama Pancake Party

Norman Harold is no longer n his terrific two's. He's officially three now that the beloved (not often celebrated) "Pi" day has arrived. My last, youngest son is now three. His birthday is also a special time of reflection. During his delivery my handsome husband was battling cancer, and so I can't help but celebrate these two boys; both my husband who has lived to see more birthdays of this little guy, and my little Norman, who's birth was a bright light in a pretty dark time. How did we celebrate? Why with a PJ Masks Pajama Pancake Party. This was a winner for several reasons. We didn't need to get dressed for the day. I didn't need to make a cake or pie... yet (I made a chocolate silk pie on his actual birthday since his party was over the weekend.) We got to wear masks. It was was short, bc three year olds are just as happy with an hour and half party as they would be with a 4 hour party... in fact, probably happier with the shorter party! My little man child is silly, officially potty trained, loves the movie Boss Baby, enjoys doing anything that his big sister is doing, and loves a good tackle with his brothers. What a guy.

I love three! Old enough to open their presents. Young enough to love everything they get!

We played a rousing game of "Hero, hero, Villain."

Pancakes and fruit kababs.

Happy Birthday!

On real birthday we went to the zoo. It was pretty rainy, except for the hour that we were at the zoo (yeah!) Which meant the zoo was virtually empty of other animal lovers, and the animals were all out and eager to show their stuff. 

Gotta love the carousel.

What a pie Ryan brought home! It was the largest (incredibly delicious too) pizza I have ever seen.

My adult woman size hand is in this just for comparison... it was like 4 pizzas in one.

And finally we had his real birthday treat: chocolate silk pie.

I love that sweet little smile... on both of them.

3.14.15...on 3.14.18

Choir Concert!

Simon decided to turn in his clarinet so that he could pursue other musical opportunities: he's now in concert choir. He loves to sing, is loud and I personally believe that now that he's singing with them, the choir has now idea how they ever made do without him. 10 points to the powers that be that planned the concert, bc the music was lively, the choir sounded great, the program was well organized, and the whole affair was an hour. It was a lovely night. I love my Simon!

Simon: so good he didn't even need to wear his tie (that he had in his pocket.)

He put it on after the concert, to great his fans.

I'm his biggest fan. He's easy to love.

Tuesday, March 6th, 2018

Basketball

Annie and Owen both played Jr. Jazz basketball this Spring. Both of them had a great time and both had kind encouraging coaches.  Some of the games were at 6-7 pm. Others were as alte as 9:00, which was just total silliness. Annie enjoyed herself enough that she's kicking around doing a basketball camp this summer. I was never any good at basketball so they must get their ball skills from their Dad.

Annie is #3. She's totally fast and can get to the other side of the court in no time. She admits that once she's there, she has no idea what to do:~)

Owen made several baskets during his season due in part to his cool basketball socks.

Winter 2018

Bouncing Castles

A rare Saturday morning found my older three* at a churchy opportunity, leaving us with Norman and Owen. Q: How do we entertain the a 2 year old and a 9 year old, when the weather is lame and we're sick of the house? A: Kangaroo Zoo, a bouncing castle place. Fun.

I love me a good bouncy castle... not really but my kids sure do, and since I was still 39 in this picture, I wasn't too old to participate.

RYan, being over 40, decided to just stand by and watch... not really, bc he was actually all over the castles with the crew, but in this picture, he's just offering fatherly counsel on how to properly slide down.

Saturday, February  24th, 2018.

Bowling

I totally love bowling. I"m not that good at it, but I've always enjoyed it. On the regular, when I'm throwing out family activity options, bowling is listed and frequently looked over. How lucky for me that Owen's pack meeting for Scouts had a family bowling night. I still bowled as poorly as I usually do, but I think the whole family had a great time.

Owen made a great ball.

Part of the fun was that the carts the kids sat on actually didn't go in a straight line at all.

Not sure if we even got to 20 points!

February 21st, 2018