Monthly Archives: May 2015

Happy 40th Birthday Dominic!!

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DSC_8158Today is a special day in the Smith home because my husband has FINALLY reached the glorious ranks that I have been living in since January. Yep that’s right…he is 40 today! 😉

I know that he isn’t as thrilled about turing 40 like I was….I did however get spoiled to a fun surprise weekend away. And while we aren’t wisking away for a fun filled adventure…I did want to take a moment and honor my man.

Dominic, I know we have different thoughts about how birthdays are celebrated…but I couldn’t start my day without telling you how much I love you. We have walked through difficult times but we have grown so much through them. We have laughter now. Sometimes at the most peculiar things…but it is a joy to be able to share life with you.

I was afraid what would happen when we started working together. Yes I may have quit 6 times in the first year…but you stuck with me in spite of my drama and today we make a great team. You work so hard for our family. I know most people don’t see the time, the hours, you spend so that our clients feel like they have received the best plan they can get. You truly care about each of the clients we work with. What an honor to be a part of the legacy you are leaving.

You love our kids well and I am so grateful that we have the opportunity to be parents together. You said once that our kids are one of the best things about the two if us together and you were right. They are amazing. They have a little of you and a little of me in them…and watching their personalities grow and develop has been fun.

I wouldn’t choose to do this life with anyone else.

You have taught me that life can be falling apart and yet we can still trust God. You had faith at a time that mine was failing…you were my rock. Thank you for continuing to work out your own faith so that you can be an example to me and our kids.

And while life isn’t and can’t be perfect, it is better than I could have hoped for when we first met. Yep we argue at times and we mess up…but I have never doubted your commitment to me. Thank you for always being steadfast in that.

I know that at times 40 feels old…but my prayer is that we have another 40 together. (Oh boy can you even imagine us at 80 together?!) 😉 Today I celebrate you. I thank God for allowing me to be a part of your past, present and future and I pray that you would be showered with blessings today and in the coming year.

I love you, Happy Birthday!

Mom Confessions – Smiths in Real Life – Part Seven

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Mom ConfessionsWhat fun these “confession” posts have been….are you loving them like I am? There is something freeing about laying it all out there. And even though I would love for you all to go on believing that I have it all together, that isn’t my reality. At all. So I am joining up with my friend Anna over at Girl With Blog and sharing some of my Mom Confessions.

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It is raining A LOT here today (Sunday) and I am sitting under a blanket, feeling like it is winter all over again. Got me a taste of the warmer weather a few weeks ago and now 50 degrees feels painful. I am such a whimp! And I know the rain is good but it has been raining for hours. I have not idea how much rain we have gotten either because last summer our dog ate the rain gauge. We have yet to get a new one…so I suppose I will be guessing from here on out.

I was doing laundry yesterday and as I pulled out a fresh load from the dryer I noticed smutchz all over the dryer. This smutchz was on the clothes, everywhere. I know it is hard to tell exactly, but it was greasy and needed to be cleaned.

dryer

As I grumbled to myself about which child must have left something in their pocket for me to wash, I pulled out a pair of my own pants and to my horror found the object of my smutchz. The melted, gooey remains of a uneaten Starburst. Drats, all my fault and no one else to blame. After some soaking, another wash and some serious scrubbing…the clothes are back to clean and the dryer is shiny again.

The upside is that the dryer smelled fruity for a day! 😉

That same afternoon we decided to go the easy route and get a Papa Murphy’s pizza for lunch. My 11 year old can’t eat pizza…it makes him feel like he is going to throw up. I can’t imagine not loving pizza, but we have stopped trying to force him to participate and come up with something else for him to eat.

Ragu

We didn’t have much to choose from so he got leftover noodles and a can of Ragu Alfredo sauce. Simple, easy and made him happy. I felt a little less than because I didn’t even have chicken for him to go with it – but he was happy. Sometimes easy is better!

Karlena says several words wrong but it is so adorable I have a hard time correcting her.

Mudder’s Day = Mother’s Day

Uticorn = Unicorn

Smookie = Spooky

Shark knife = Sharp knife

Dominic took the kids out to get me a “Mudder’s Day” gift the other day. He told them to keep it a secret from me. The first thing Karlena told me when they walked in the door was she picked me out a purple card. It was hilarious.

And then on Sunday I got to open my gifts…Dominic and the kids wrapped “daddy style”. I couldn’t have loved it more.

Mothers Day wrapping

And finally I have a real “first world” problem when it comes to the car I drive…for some reason I have a hard time seeing the gas gauge.

Gas Gauge

The way I sit, once the gas gets down below a little over a 1/2 a tank, the turn signal knob blocks my line of sight and I forget to check the level of gas that I have remaining. Inevitably, I let it get so low that the dummy light comes on. This has happened several times. Several. Clearly once it hits a 1/2 a tank I should stop, but it never seems to be a priority. Does anyone else struggle with this?

We are in the last few days of school here…and the big graduation is Friday night!! Our actual “party” isn’t until next week and I can’t wait to share the wall of Isaac we have. I love it. I may leave it up inevitably….or not because that may seem creepy. But it is really cool! 😉

Have a wonderful rest of the week!!

When Community Looks Like a Rally Cry – A God-sized Dreams Post

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Community-Stronger

Community has been on my heart since I attended Allume in October. I have always had a longing to build community, but I hadn’t yet felt the calling to really implement it in my own home town. It is scary and exciting all at the same time. We are introducing some really fun things at our church here in MN and I wait in eager anticipation to see what God will do with and through all of it.

I thought that was what I was going to write about this month, until I experienced community in a completely overwhelming and different way recently. It was unexpected and born out of a trial, but sometimes community looks like a rally cry. And through this I have learned that we are stronger together.

I felt desperate.

But even with the people that I am most comfortable with, I want there to be the appearance of having it all together. (<====Click to Tweet)

Especially as the “leader” of this fine group of women, if I shared my reality…what would they all think?

But God has been showing me all year that I must have full dependence on Him, and sometimes it means that I need to be willing to ask for help.

So I sucked up my pride and sent a message to the women on this team here at GSD’s.

Honestly, I just got chills again as I think about what happened next…..

I am sharing the rest of this story over at God-sized Dreams today. Will you join me there?!

Mom Confessions – Smiths in Real Life – Part Six

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Mom ConfessionsWhat fun these “confession” posts have been….are you loving them like I am? There is something freeing about laying it all out there. And even though I would love for you all to go on believing that I have it all together, that isn’t my reality. At all. So I am joining up with my friend Anna over at Girl With Blog and sharing some of my Mom Confessions.

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It has been a doozy of a few days around here but we have been bound and determined to make the best of it. Sometimes that is all you can do and I can tell you that having a positive attitude whenever possible sure makes a difference!

I baked some peanut butter M&M cookies the other day. I had ordered this big bag of easter colored M&M’s from Amazon and they came all crushed and broken into pieces…there is something about shards of M&M’s that just don’t taste as good as the full ones. So I found the “best” recipe on the interwebs and got to baking. For the record they aren’t the “best”…they aren’t terrible (as evidenced by the large number of cookies I have eaten in the past few days)..but I am still searching for the best recipe.

Anyways, the last pan was in the oven and then for some reason I walked away…..for waaaayyy too long. So the last batch looked like this.

Burned Cookies

Baking perfection don’t you think? And it is clear that I need some new cookie pans!

I washed a kleenex in the laundry the other day. It was everywhere. EVERYWHERE I tell you. When I cleaned out the lint tray it looked like this…

Dryer lint

It caught most of it, but my black towel didn’t fair so well…I was picking off white specks of kleenex for 3 days.

This weekend we had big plans.

We were supposed to go to Sioux Falls on Saturday after Karlena’s dance dress rehearsal. On Friday night I went to our first ever women’s event at our church (which was amazing btw)…and came home to Karlena with a 104.7 fever. Not good.

I figured it was strep…this is how it always goes down. Fine one minute, really really sick the next. So I took her in on Saturday morning and yep, it’s strep.

Karlena sick

Poor thing was so sick. And then with regular Tylenol and IB dosing, she perked back up. But our plans had to be cancelled because she was contagious.

So we decided to do something over the weekend that I didn’t think would happen until after graduation….

Garden 2015

We planted our garden! I am so excited. We have tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, eggplant, zucchini, carrots, onions and potatoes!! Oh and we threw in a couple of pumpkin plants in a different area of our yard. Maybe we will get  a few of those as well.

And on Monday last week we played hooky from work (thankfully we can do that when we are self-employed) and we built this amazing hanging basket holder for our front lawn. It takes the place of the birch tree we lost last year. I love it and so we also got our flowers planted as well!!

hanging baskets

It was nice to take a bad situation and make something good out of it! Sometimes that is all we can do right?!

How was your week? Did you have an opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons?! 🙂