A Boy and His Buddy - January 19

Matthew and Riley have always had a close bond...and still do. Riley often sleeps on Matthew's floor at naptime, and occassionally makes it up onto the bed :-)

Catching Up - White Point, January 15

Wow - the time has flown by and I've been neglecting the blog! Here is me starting to catch up! Back in January the entire Smith clan spent a weekend at White Point and had lots of fun. The kids enjoyed seeing all the rabbits everywhere and Matthew especially liked feeding them right out of his hands! The games room was a big hit with arcade games, shuffle board, and pool. We enjoyed a mussel bake on the beach Saturday afternoon and a nice visit with Bonny, Harley, Sherilan, and Nanny after supper. Here are a few pictures of the weekend festivities :-) Anna being ever so careful to observe the bunnies without touching them...she gets that honestly!

Matthew was very patient...learing the bunnies to him with all the food...

A pool table for pool?? No way - it's for shooting balls really fast!

Game on - Shay and Anna versus Grammie in shuffle board.

Anna is a cheater :-)

Hockey Night in Beaver Bank!

2-3 weeks ago Chad and Brian began to construct the Lane Rink! I was a bit skeptical not knowing what was involved...but I shouldn't have doubted them!

Tonight was the first night to try out the ice pad...here's Matthew getting his skates on!

Game on!! The rink is full of action!

Matthew did pretty good and was moving around the ice quite well. You can tell from his pants that he took a few spills though!

Matthew looking back for the pass he just missed...

More ice action! I think skating will become a regular event on the Lane :-)

Happy New Year - Winter Classic!

Matthew and I are all ready for the Winter Classic tonight...except that game time was bumped to 9:00 pm so he'll now be in bed! Oh well, he'll enjoy watching the highlights tomorrow morning!

Chad and Brian have been working on a rink for the Lane, so Matthew will be skating in no time! Just needs to get a bit colder...but not too cold :-)

Merry Christmas 2010

It sure has been a busy and eventful year!! Chad and I have enjoyed some extended time off over the Christmas break and were able to spend some time just hanging with the kids and visiting with family and friends. Nana and Grampy came in for Dec 23 to Christmas Day and on Christmas Eve "Eve", we all enjoyed some lobster! The picture above is my boy sucking the meat out of the lobster legs while wearing his Penguins shirt - love it!!

Our little princess in her Santa dress.

We were joined Christmas Eve by Terry, Sean, Cathy, and Shay! Here is the best picture of the three Smith cousins...next year there will be one more!! (Sean and Cathy - not us :-))

Matthew ready to dive into his sock Christmas morning.

Anna loved her new tub for her babies...so much so that shortly after opening it she got naked and got in it herself!

Anna was also fascinated by Nana knitting socks and wanted to help.

A highlight of Christmas was the arrival of Grampy S, Great Nanny, and Great Aunt Sherilan joining us for Christmas Supper. Matthew loved playing air hockey with Nanny and Anna was Sherilan's shadow all evening.

Unfortunately we did not take our usual family picture for Christmas cards this year...next year for sure though! We did take a Christmas Day family picture...all members of the family were not terribly cooperative, but we did the best we could!! Merry Christmas everyone!

Tis the Season

The Smith Family has been way behind getting ready for Christmas this year with a extra busy travel schedule since November. Now that Chad's last trip for the year is behind us, we were finally able to go get our tree. The kids were super excited and Matthew insisted on helping Chad carry it into the family room.

All smiles while getting out the ornaments!

Anna's job was to pass Matthew the bulb ornaments so that he could put them on the tree :-)

The finished product - photo courtesy of Matthew Smith Photography!

Harvest Run - Matthew's First Race

Matthew ran in his first race on Saturday at the Valley Harvest Run. It was 400 m - one lap around the track at Raymond Field. He was very excited!

And he's off!

...going so fast on the back stretch that his hat flew off...

Matthew post race with his medal - we are so proud of you big boy!