Halloween, 2011

What a fantastic Halloween!  Perfect weather, over sixty degrees! Stefanie and her best friend Sarah decided they wanted to go trick-or-treating on their own this year, and Braden went to a party, so for the first time in 18 years, Kent was free of trick-or-treat chaperoning responsibilities.  He sat on the porch with me and helped pass out candy to my neighbors and primary children, it was delightful. 

 

The Carving of the Jacks

The annual tradition continues...

Fun With Photoshop

So a few weeks ago was picture day at my school.  The faculty are required to get our pictures taken for the yearbook.  I had forgotten what day it was, so I was surprised that morning just before school started when the announcement came that all the teachers needed to get to the gym for pictures.   I was a bit sleepy, had my hair in a pony tail, hadn't taken much time on makeup, and just didn't feel very pretty, so I wasn't too excited about getting my picture taken that day.  Hooray for photoshop!  As soon as I got my picture back, I scanned it and fixed my fly-away hair, lightened the circles under my eyes, evened out my skin tone, whitened my teeth, fixed my lipstick, and removed all the lines from my face.  Much better!  Too bad we can't use photoshop in real life! 

BEFORE

AFTER

Kindred Family Newsletter Article

This week I wrote a family update for The Kindred Konnection.  It had been several months since my last update, so I had a lot to catch up on!  I wanted to include it here.  Enjoy!
 

A Bountiful Harvest for the Smiths

Hello everybody, it is good to get caught up on everyone's doings!  We are all well and thriving here in the Smith household.  Our most significant events of the last few months have been all about Rachel!  First was her high school graduation ceremony in the Marriott Center down at BYU.  It was a wonderful event, and we were grateful to those of you who were able to attend.  

After a summer of working many hours at the Thanksgiving Point movie theater, she was off to her freshman year of college!  She is now at Southern Utah University in Cedar City and doing great.  Thank goodness for texting and facebook which allows us to keep in touch every day.  She is living on campus in the dorms, eats all her meals at the on-campus cafeteria, and has a full schedule of classes.  She still hasn't decided on a major, but she loves her sociology class, and has been leaning in that direction. She has had fun cheering for the SUU football team, she even took a road trip to Las Vegas with a group of girls from her dorm when they played--and beat--UNLV.  Go Thunderbirds!

   We continued her graduation celebration by taking the family on a cruise!  We left from Long Beach, California to Catalina Island, then on to Ensenada, Mexico.  What a great trip, we all agreed it was our best vacation ever!  We loved all the activities on board:  mini golf, ping-pong, pool, waterslide, basketball, shuffleboard, musical shows, comedy acts, trivia gameshows, karaoke, and food...so much food!  Unlimited, all day and all night.  The two ports were also a lot of fun and so beautiful, we went on some amazing excursions.  It was our first cruise as a family, but definitely won't be our last.

On to Braden, he is a junior in High School this year.  Since our last update, we were so proud when he earned his Eagle Scout award.  A big thanks to everyone who came to support him at his Court of Honor, what an outstanding event for our family.

Braden's summer and fall have been filled with club soccer and cross country.  Both have been a huge success for him this year.  His club soccer team came in third place in the state tournament.  He played so well that another soccer club took notice, and invited him to go to San Diego to play with them in a Thanksgiving tournament.  So that is where we will be spending Thanksgiving this year!  The tournament coordinators reserved a hotel right on the beach for all the players and their families.  We will pick up Rachel at SUU and continue on our way.  Rachel's 19th birthday lands right on Thanksgiving Day this year...so we're not sure where we will eat Thanksgiving/birthday dinner, but it will be a fun weekend for us.  As for Cross Country, Braden was the #1 Varsity runner for LHS in every meet but two, and the only member of his team to quality for State.  His personal record for the year was 16:14.  Wow!  That's fast!  

Stefanie has left primary and elementary school behind, and is now in middle school and Young Women's.  She is not a little girl anymore!  She is very busy, she plays the violin in the middle school orchestra, goes to a dance class once a week, runs in the middle school cross country team, and will play junior jazz basketball next month.  She also has her own cell phone now, and often has boys texting her.  Oh, no!! 

Kent has hit a major speed bump in his life...he no longer has perfect vision.  He finally succumbed to his old age and now wears reading glasses!  He still can see much more clearly than me at a distance, but when I noticed him struggling to read anything closer than arm's length, I knew the time had come.  I think he looks cute in them!  He had a great time coaching his Cross Country team this year, and scheduled many of his meets to coordinate with Braden's XC schedule.  He looked a little strange wearing a Copper Hills Coach shirt, and cheering for a Lehi runner at every meet!  He also had fun coaching Mark (my nephew), who he said is a solid runner.  Both his boys' and girls' team made it to state and did well.   He is getting excited for the basketball season to start in a couple of weeks.

As for me, I am up to my elbows in grape juice!  Yesterday I bottled 30 quarts.  It started at 8:00 in the morning when I sent Kent and the kids out in the back yard to pick, and finally ended at bedtime when everything within sight was stained purple.  The record-breaking wet spring worked wonders on our vines, they produced four times more than we've ever had before.  We ended up with three large laundry baskets filled to the top with bunches of large, plump, sweet, juicy grapes.  I still have a couple of batches left to do, but enough is enough! 

We also had great success with cucumbers and tomatoes.  I bottled eight pints of salsa last weekend.  And our crowning garden achievement is the enormous pumpkin sitting out on our front porch next to a hay bale, corn stalks, and a scarecrow.  This was a good harvest for us!  

In other news, I am loving my primary calling!  I recently finished writing our Sacrament Meeting program, which includes speaking parts for all 120 of my primary children.  It will be held on November 20th, the weekend before Thanksgiving.  On top of all that, I still love my job as an elementary music teacher!  I am getting so comfortable with it that I rarely think about it outside school hours.  It is still my dream job.

And that gets everyone caught up with us!  Things are good for the Smith family, and we hope the same for each of you.  We look forward to seeing everyone during the holidays.  


Love, Kent, Janeal, Rachel, Braden and Stef

Region XC Meet

Pre-race team prayer.

 

Waiting for the gun.

And they're off!

 

 

Kick to the finish.

 

Time:  16:46.  #1 for Lehi, #20 overall, headed for State!

Lehi varsity XC team and coaches, 2011.

Albion Basin

OK, this is my last post on our hiking adventures of last summer...but I wanted to include our journey to the Albion Basin in Little Cottonwood Canyon.  This was one of our last hikes of the summer.  Kent had picked out a hike he had researched and was all excited to see the incredible abundance of wildflowers and mountain scenery his hiking book had described.  But it was not to be.  We drove through the canyon a few miles and turned onto the road that leads to the trail head when we were barricaded by a heavy locked gate and a Ranger who told us that that part of the canyon was closed due to snow.  In August!!  It was over 90 degrees but this past winter and spring they had gotten over fifty feet of snow and certain areas of the canyon had been closed all summer.  Bummer! So we found a little parking spot on the side of the road and got out to get a better look at Little Cottonwood Creek and the incredible granite mountain peaks.  We didn't do much hiking that day, but I did get some awesome pictures.  We'll try again next summer!