"i am a child of god"

riley is a child of god and she knows it, well at least we are trying to teach this to her anyway. we are getting to the really fun stages now, although i've felt like that for the past year it always seems to be getting more fun with her. we sing to riley every night before bed & for a while now she's been singing with us & i love it; one of her favorite songs is "i am a child of god" but of course she won't sing when other people are around so i had to record it for people to see.

another thing riley has been doing lately is saying prayers she starts with, "dear heavenly father and thank you dat, and thank you dat, and please dat, and um please dat......" i'm not leaving anything out from her prayers she doesn't usually actually ask for anything or actually thank for anything but i will list some of the things that she actually has prayed for, i must note that she doesn't ask heavenly father for what she wants just once it's typically at least 5-6 times in a row, over and over and over and over.... ian and i typically look up at each other and the first time kind of giggle, the second time we roll our eyes and shrug our shoulders because we don't know when she'll stop. typically the third time that ian and i look up at each other one of us will offer assistance and to this riley says, "i'm tryin my hardest okay!" and will continue to plead for her request. the list is as follows with no spelling errors it is what she really says:

1)and please dat bum (ben sarah's husband)

2)and thank you dat baby blake (keri & spencer's baby)

3)and please dat keri and spencers

4)and please dat duba (little einsteins) and strawberry shortcake and yo gabba gabba and doodlebops.

5)and please dat santa bring me a baby.

6)and please dat one horse open slay (yep jingle bells)

and last but defiantly not least!

7)please dat present hinckley,

(when i tried to explain that the prophets name in president hinckley she got upset and said, 'no santa wants to bring me a present not hinckley!' i'm glad she still prays for him even though she was a little threatened by the thought of having him take away some of her glad tidings on christmas morning.)

my smith girls

so you want to see the girls, here they are.

one of my favorite stages to take pictures of our girls is when the like being on their tummy and hang out on their elbows, so easy to capture them i think. that's our peyton, she had to go into the dr. last week because she was wheezing, a bad sign especially for her, and we found out she has r.s.v. she's amazing she has still been so happy and smiling through the whole thing!

okay so it's not the best picture with santa but at least we documented the occasion, i guess ward santa's aren't used to posing themselves and the baby for the camera. i think he was having to much fun talking to her instead.

yeah, remember how peyton looked fine being with santa especially just being able to hold on to his facial hair, well this is rileys attempt and telling santa what she wanted for christmas. ian and i knew for sure this wouldn't work at the mall so we thought the ward christmas party, you know a little more quiet, intimate.... well that didn't work either. if it's a male and not her daddy she is not having it!

it was emily's 23rd b-day on sunday and riley was dying to take a picture with her aunt, i really think she just wanted an excuse to get some snuggles from the birthday girl.

(p.s. that nasty mess rileys is holding on to is strawberry shortcake, who would have guessed?)

so there are our girls, they are keeping me busy and challenging me often, and for that i am grateful.

TA DA!!!

i know some of you are probably wondering what happened to the smith's, well i'm happy to announce that we're alive. what have we been up to you ask...... well we've been painting, we've all been sick once, well we're all sick right now and this is riley's second go round with it. we have been trying to navigate our way through dallas, trying to map out the closest target, old navy mall etc. you know all of the important things. so why have i not blogged in forever? well you try to find descent Internet and phone service in Forney i kept trying to explain it to my beloved sister sarah and she, who lives in atlanta, couldn't understand how we could possibly have no options for providers out here, finally we decided on the one that has slower service in but only a 135.00 hook up fee instead of the 300.00 hook up fee that we would have to sign a 3 year contract for, we really do live in a VERY small town.

here are some pictures of what we've done so far in our house, it's been fun and very overwhelming with two children, now i feel like i have gained more of an appreciation for keri and spencer for flipping homes, wow what work and we aren't even close to being done!

the girls bathroom before

after, i tried to get the color in there as best i could, well it's pink. i don't know if i love it so we'll wait for awhile and see.

the living room before, plain white like the rest of the house.

after, we painted the whole living area down stairs this color minus the t.v. room. merry chirstmas.

the 1/2 bath down stairs. ian said he wanted to pick everything out for this one because i called the master bath as mine.

okay so i did pick that the black and white photos he wanted in there to be flowers, but other then that it was all him, i'll have to admit i was very impressed, good job to my boy!

the kitchen. not riley

after, i love how it turned out, all we really have left is the microwave, i really like it. have i ever mentioned how much i appreciate my bum, ian? he was so patient and hardworking redoing the cabinets and putting the hardware on etc. this was basically what took our whole first week before he started work and he did it all for me. in our condo i always told ian that i wanted to redo the cabinets and light fixtures in the kitchen but we never did, in this house he did everything i wanted and he made it a priority even though it was no easy task, just one of the many reasons for me to love him.

i'll be sure to keep the photos coming if you guys are interested in what we do to our house as we do it, just let me know. let me know what you think so far. not that it really matters but feedback is always nice.

hope everyone is doing well and forgive the lack of blogging. happy holidays, we are finally off to buy our christmas tree today!