Nine Years!

Happy 9th Anniversary, Babe! Love ya!

A Star is Born.....

All I can tell you is that she was One. Cute. Mouse.

I feel like we have many more dance recitals in our future. She loved it!!!

I'm Sorry.....

The next time you want to find me, I'll be the one in the grey hoodie. Just like this one.


Someone please buy me a grey hoodie. I'm sorry. I just couldn't resist. It's been one of those days. I needed a fun photo. I found one. And Holy Cow, the ticker says SIX days till Eclipse. Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggidy dog.

Our Daddy!

Happy Father's Day! Dad would do anything in the world for us-even let's us do stuff mom doesn't want him to.

This daddy really loves his kiddos.

We think you are one of the best ones around!!!

XOXO, Slade & Finley

Round Two.........

Well, let's see. The story this week began when Brandi decided to over-achieve at her job and won a trip to here.....



Maui. Are you jealous. Me, too. So her and Shane left on Sunday after dropping Campbell off with me. All goes as expected until Monday when my broken armed gal needed to take off her brace for a minute because it itched. She was sitting at her little art table and I went outside to find my car keys. She followed me outside..........

And fell on the concrete without her cast. Back to the ortho on Wednesday morning for a re-ray. She has a tiny little crack in another bone because of the second fall. Ok. Super. Cannot believe she fell again. All is well as they extend her brace wearing stint another week. Mom and Nana are up here by now to help out and we continue on with Wednesday doing some of this.........

Playing in the sprinklers. Swinging outside. Jumping on the trampoline-well, not Finley. They also played a lot of dress up, like this...............................

Cute, huh. Wednesday was fine. I even snuck away for an hour to use my pedicure gift card. When I got back to the house, Campbell was crying. What was wrong? She had jumped off of this........

A little bitty sand frog that was flipped upside down. Maybe 7 or 8 inches off the ground onto the grass. She was making quite a fuss. And her left arm looked a bit strange. So mom and I decide to load her up and make a run to the ER. We discovered soon after that she had done this.......

A broken arm. Left arm. Both the radius and ulna bones. Two bones. Green stick fractures. Oh, and she's not allergic to morphine we discovered. Finley's ortho set it back into the splint. We like to give him money evidently. He will pay his house payment this month thanks to our family. Can one really break two arm bones jumping eight inches off the ground? The answer is yes. Yes it's possible. The break was totally freakish, strange, crazy, seeing that she has jumped off of really high things like this.........

A king sized bed. Onto pillows in the floor. That's her and Finley's top rated game. But we've never had an accident. She also jumps off of this..................

A wooden playset. Yes, I do admit, this is what took Finley out, but Campbell has managed to escape injury. Even jumped off of this...........................

A trampoline. I cannot even tell you the crazy things all the kids have done on this device. No broken bones here. And please let us not forget that during all of this, Brandi is here.........

In Forks. Not really, just the jungle of Maui, but it looks alot like Forks. She didn't run into the Cullens nor Laurent. She just hiked a mile up to a really beautiful waterfall and then sent us the photos. Yep, still jealous. So there are several morals to this story....................

1) Cousins can both break their left arms within nine days of each other. 2)You go away on vacation and something is bound to happen. 3)Green moss on rocks in Maui looks just like Forks. 4)An eight inch off the ground sand frog will take you down.

Bling Helps Everything!

As you know, my baby fell off the top of the wooden swing set at Brandi's house. It was quite a ways down. And I was asked by a certain member of this family to not blog about the actual "fall". So I won't come out and say his name. But I can tell you that some medium sized member of this family might have been on top of the slide at the exact same time. And this unnamed person might have been tired of waiting on a blond headed girl that intentionally wouldn't go down the slide. And him/her/it might have just given her a shove to get down the slide. And it might have backfired and she actually fell off the top and missed the slide altogether. And this certain individual might have been very distraught and guilt ridden and cried like a baby when the girl went to the hospital. I will leave this individual under "anonymous" and follow the special request not to blog about the incident. But you get the gist..........

And here is the splint and ACE bandage after it was x-rayed at the urgent care center at 9:45 last Monday night and was confirmed by a very nice doctor that is was broken. He wrapped her up, and gave us instructions to do Tylenol/Motrin all night, ice, and call our pediatrician first thing the next morning. To our surprise, nobody will cast you anymore. The urgent care place doesn't do it nor does the pediatrician. We had to be referred to a pediatric orthopedic surgeon. Hmmm, sure has come a long ways since the days when Dr. Franks applied a big white cast to every child in Iraan, myself included. Funny enough, I broke my left wrist when I was five or six. Thought that was weird-thank goodness Finley broke her left and completed the dance recital!!! The right wrist would have put a damper on the art princess. We do lots of coloring, drawing, beading, cutting, etc.

To our excitement and relief, the ortho fitted her with a "fracture brace" that can be removed during swimming and bath time. She can see if it will be completely healed in about four weeks! We felt so blessed that she will be able to swim. We do have to put bike riding, gymnastics, and scooters on the back burner for now. She officially has a break called a buckle fracture. Very common in children when they try to catch themselves.

And of course, we had to bling it all up!!! Pink rhinestones and super glue will do a black brace wonders! She has acted very well and it really doesn't seem to bother her much. She's a trooper.

And we took the doctor up on the swimming option this afternoon. We took the brace off and put the splint and bandage back on while they played in the sprinklers. Summer has never been better-broken bone or not! ACE bandages seem to dry out really quickly when placed in the 100 degree heat............

What a Week!

This has been an unbelievably stressful week. We've had lots of extra things going on with some family things and have acquired some extra house guests this week. I'm too pooped to load my pics tonight. Promise I will get that done. I do have some really cute dance recital photos to post. Finley was fabulous! So in the meantime, I've decided to pick three things that you really must know about the Smart Family this week........


1. Finley fell off of the wooden swing set and broke her wrist. Yes, broken.


2. Slade got his first real black eye at football practice tonight.


3. We will now be buying quite a bit of BLUE this fall because my beat-up, broken boned kiddos are having a little brother!

Dancing Queen

Here's a preview of what is to come this weekend.

Introducing Tippy Toe Mouse. Tomorrow's dress rehearsal will also include pink bows on the shoes, makeup, lipstick, white gloves, and a top hat!!! Then we have two shows on Saturday. Should be quite an exciting weekend!!!