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.
We didn’t get to celebrate the 4th 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 9th 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 4th year of marriage on July 7th. 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…
