Smith Family newsletter

This year has been one of our craziest years so far. Throughout the year we have had our ups and downs; welcoming life and saying good-bye to a dear friend and some family, but overall it has been a pretty good year.

Brodi is enjoying medical school (as much as he can) and thoroughly loves learning, but is ready to get out there and start practicing on real people. He has been a TA (teacher’s assistant) for his surgery class and has been teaching his fellow classmates how to tie surgical knots and all sorts of things. When he gets a free moment (as they are rare) he enjoys playing some tabletop games and his video games. He has been teaching the 12-13 year old kids in Sunday school and loves being able to work with them (he is a really great teacher).

Dana has been keeping herself busy (as usual). The most time consuming is being a mother, but it is worth every minute. She has also joined the board for SOS (Significant Other Support) through DMU (Des Moines University) where Brodi is going to school. She is in charge of the craft club, so she gets to teach and learn all sorts of new things. She has been knitting quite a bit and truly loves doing it and being a part of the knitting club through SOS. She has also joined a cooking club, photography club, and a couple different play groups. At the beginning of the year she started working with the young women (12-18 years old) in her church, and has loved every moment of it. She has a great group of leaders to work with and a great group of girls who teach her so much.

Atticus has been growing like crazy! He has hit almost every milestone to be expected in the first year. He started rolling over when he was just two months old, from his back to his tummy; he has never liked being on his back. Then when he was about four months old he started sitting up on his own. At six months he started crawling, but it was a weird “army crawl” that I called my “wounded soldier” because he looked just like a wounded soldier crawling to safety. He finally started crawling for real about a month later, and not much after that he was pulling himself up and walking along furniture. He is now babbling like crazy and pushes toys around to walk, so I don’t think it will be too long before he starts taking a few steps on his own, but we’ll see. We have been struggling with getting him to eat solid food, but he is finally starting to get the hang of it.

Throughout the year we have hit some milestones worth mentioning. First, and most important, was the birth of our son Atticus Bradon Smith. At a whopping 8lbs 11ounces and 21 inches long, he was a big boy! We were so happy to welcome him into our family.

He was given a blessing in our church in Waukee, Iowa in March and both sets of parents were able to come to that, along with our friends the McGee’s (who also welcomed a son, Colton, into their family just three weeks before us). Also in that month Atticus got his first cousin, Elijiah!

For Easter Colton (the McGee’s son) and Atticus, got dressed up in the same outfit and took some pictures with the Easter Bunny. In May our good friends Dave and Brandy got married and were able to be a special part in their day as an usher and greeter. This was the first wedding Atticus ever went to. Our other friends, Mike and Angela also got married in the same month, so it was a great month for us and our friends.

We spent June in Idaho with Brodi’s family and had a great time. We did so much it is hard to put it in words. While we were there we took a Smith family vacation up to Glacier National Park and had a blast. We loved the hiking and wildlife and got to see all sorts of things from waterfalls and elk to BEARS (that was Dana’s favorite). It was fun to let the cousins play together and to be with family.

While in Idaho, we also got to see our great friends Scott and Roberta White (and their son Logan) and Mike and Jenny McCullough (and their daughter) it was great being able to catch up with them, I just wish we had more time.The month went by way too fast.

At the end of our trip we made a detour up to North Dakota for a family reunion/50^th anniversary (on Dana’s side). We met her parents there and enjoyed seeing almost all her family.

On the way home we stopped at the Mall of America for a day of fun and the world’s largest ball of twine!

We didn’t get to celebrate the 4^th of July much because we were traveling on that day, but lucky for us, the fireworks back in Iowa were postponed due to rain so we were able to see them about a week later on the 9^th and our friend Brandy joined us. Surprisingly, Atticus really enjoyed them.

Brodi started school back up at the end of July, it was really hard getting back to “real life” after having over a month to just play as a family. We also celebrated our 4^th year of marriage on July 7^th. In the beginning of August, Dana and Atticus traveled back out to Idaho for the funeral of our dear friend Mike McCullough, who died unexpectedly. It was nice to be around family and friends again, but a very trying time as well.

Brodi and Dana celebrated their birthday in September, but there is not much to be said about that, just another year older and wiser too. For Halloween this year we dressed up as Star Wars characters! Brodi was Anakin, Dana was Padme, and Atticus was our Yoda.

They were great costumes and I suspect we will be doing this for many years to come. We spent Thanksgiving at Dana’s parent’s house with the missionaries and a friend of her parents’, M.L. and that pretty much brings us to today. We are excited for Christmas and Atticus recently saw Santa for the first time! He and Colton McGee got their picture taken with Mr. and Mrs. Claus together dressed alike again, we had so many people ask if they were twins! We will be leaving soon for Christmas in Idaho and can’t wait! We look forward to seeing friends and family again when we get there. This year the whole Smith family will be there, except Morgan, who is currently serving a mission in the Czech Republic. We look forward to an even better year to come with new milestones and love in our lives…

Love,

The Smiths

Daddy and son

I took these pictures for the photography class I was doing. I LOVE the way it turned out.

Update

So, we are all doing well. As you can see Atticus is sleeping through the night, which means so am I! I! I never thought this day would come. We officially have a thumb sucker, he almost never takes his pacifier, but he loves his thumb. It is sooo fun being a mom. Everyday we work on sitting by ourselves, standing, playing with toys, and so much more. I love watching him grow and develop. Yet, I am almost sad to watch him grow so fast. I feel like my baby is going to be gone before I know it, so I am treasuring every day with him.

I am currently staying very busy. I have a new calling in church, that I am loving, I am the Young Women's Secretary. I think my other calling in life (other than being a mom) is to be a secretary. I was the Relief Society Secretary in our last ward and I had a job as a secretary for about 2 1/2 years in Rexburg. I love it so I am definitely not complaining. I am still participating in the knitting club at DMU and loving that. I have learned so much already and hope to continue learning more. I started getting more into photography again and there is a girl in my ward who is teaching some classes which is great. I NEED the refresher, I feel like I have forgotten almost everything. I have also been working out more (trying to lose that baby weight). I do aerobics on Mondays and Wednesdays and I go walking about a mile or two almost every day. I am still having a hard time with losing it though. I want to start learning sign language, but I need to find/make the time. There is a deaf woman willing to teach me and I can't wait to learn, but I am just now feeling like I might be able to make the time with my son, so I think I will email her soon.

Brodi is doing well. Not a whole lot to report with him. He is doing very well in school and I think he is enjoying it, at least as much as he can. It's hard to believe he is almost done with his first year. He is finished the last week of May and then we are going to head out to Idaho for the month if June. We are very excited for this trip :)

That's our life in a nutshell for now. I will write more as things change.

Sleeping

Atticus has started sleeping through the night!!! This is how I see him pretty much every morning when I go to wake him up to eat. He is so precious :)

In the hospital

These are the professional pictures we had taken when he was 5 days old.

Becoming a mom

This first week of being a mom has been really tough, but very worth it.

Atticus Bradon Smith was born last Sunday, January 31st at 2:32pm. He weighed 8lbs 11oz and was 21in long. My water broke around 1:00am and we headed for the hospital. We have a fantastic friend who was able to be my nurse the whole time, which meant a lot to me. I don't know how I would have done it without her. There were no complications so we were able to go home on Tuesday. The first thing Atticus and I did at home was take a nap :)

He has been a really good boy for his mommy, other than sleeping at night. Most nights I get about 3 hours of sleep and that is at half hour intervals. Last night (Monday night-Tuesday morning) I was able to get 5 1/2 hours of sleep and 4 of the hours were consecutive. I finally felt like I could do this. As much as I love sleep and miss it greatly, I wouldn't take it back for anything. I love my little boy more than anything in the world and would give up everything for him if I had to.

I am trying out this blogging stuff because everyone seems to do it. We will see what happens, but my goal is to update at least once a week. We'll see how that goes...