The Seven Smiths: February 2010

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Happy Birthday Sam!

This cute little bug is 39 today. We love you Sam! Happy Birthday.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Chad Smith - Chef Extraordinaire!

Chad is taking a Home Ec class this semester and is loving it. At first he whined that there were only about 5 boys in the class, but he has since come to appreciate the extreme manliness that comes with being able to cook an omelette properly, grow yeast, put out a kitchen fire and wash your fine linens in temperature-appropriate water. He even questioned me this morning about why we do not have a supply of clarified butter in the refrigerator. :) Last week, Grandma and the aunts came to dinner and Chad volunteered to make dessert. He of course chose Aunt Sandra's cream cheese pound cake because - well, it's Aunt Sandra's cream cheese pound cake. Here he is holding the finished product. (We may need to work on the greasing and flouring of the pan part a little bit more.) It was magnifique! Unfortunately, following his great culinary triumph, he misplaced this most prized recipe. I didn't notice it was missing until Monday when I was called upon to make the pound cake for another important family dinner and could not find it. This was clearly a first class emergency that called for tracking down Aunt Sandra on her trip to visit her Daughter Stephanie in Utah. Luckily, I got a hold of her and even luckier, she has made the cake so many times that she has memorized the recipe and could thus quote it to me verbatim, thereby saving dinner. Yes, it is that good! Here is the recipe.

CREAM CHEESE POUND CAKE
3 cups sugar
3 stick butter
1 8 OZ. package cream cheese
6 eggs
2 tsp. valilla (preferably Mexican vanilla)
3 cups cake flour

BEAT SUGAR, BUTTER AND CREAM CHEESE, THEN ADD EGGS ONE AT A TIME AND BEAT WELL, ADD VANILLA AND FLOUR AND BEAT UNTIL REALLY FLUFFY. PUT IN GREASED AND FLOURED BUNDT PAN. BAKE AT 325 DEGREES FOR 1 HOUR AND 2O MINUTES. CHECK WITH A TOOTHPICK TO MAKE SURE IT COMES OUT CLEAN.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Bethy Smith, Shooting Queen!

Bethany made 5 baskets today and she insisted that she deserved to be on the blog. (Although I must say she doesn't look too excited in the above pose.) I asked her what her super secret hoopster tricks were and she said this. " It was a combination of things. I got good passes, my team set good picks and my defender just wasn't as fast as me." So there you have it basketball fans. What a funny girl!

Monday, February 15, 2010

The Difference Between Boys and Girls Episode Two

This was a weekend of dancing / rebelling against dancing for the Smith family. Chad rarely has a weekend night free and even when he does, he refuses to attend church dances because they are "so lame". Well, this Friday night Sam and I decided that the time had come for him to give it a try so we forced (I mean gently persuaded) him to go for at least an hour. Chad whined all the way there, he stayed for about 45 minutes and then he called our cell phone 5 times trying to get us to pick him up. When we didn't hear the phone, he called Aunt Becca and asked her to drive all the way across town to pick him up. I guess we may not try that again for awhile. :) I would have taken a picture of his first dance/nondance experience but he's as tall as me now and frankly I was a little scared to ask him to pose.

Saturday night was our ward's Valentine's Day Luau. Unlike Chad and Aaron, Bethany and Miranda love to dance. They cut a rug all night with their peeps. I thought it was hilarious how the girls all got into the whole activity but the boys just kind of stood off to the side. No wonder when they get to be Chad's age, they are still the ones hanging out in the hallways rolling their eyes. Chad is going to have a better attitude about this whole thing in a year or two though, right?

Friday, February 12, 2010

Poor, Bald Miranda!

Miranda has a terrible habit of twisting, chewing & pulling out her hair. She started doing it a couple of years ago and by the time I noticed she was doing it, she had pulled out about half of the hair on the left side of her head. So, we cut it short and pulled it into rubberbands for several weeks until she got out of the habit. Since then, she has wanted desperately to grow out her hair so that it could be as long as Bethany's. It was all going fine until a few weeks ago when I noticed her chewing on her hair again. I reminded her that if she started to pull it out, we would have to cut it. She assured me that she was only chewing - not pulling. Well, yesterday when I was fixing her hair for school, I noticed that she had a big bald spot at the crown of her head. When I asked her about it, she broke into tears and admitted that she had pulled out the hair and told me that she knew I hated her. Poor thing! I assured her that I did not hate her but that we'd have to fix the problem before her hair started to look really bad. So, this is how Miranda spent her school lunch yesterday.

Luckily, Miranda loves Mop Tops, so it wasn't quite as traumatic as it could have been. They feed her lollipops, let her pick out the color of the rubberbands for her net hairdo and entertain her with "The Chipmunk Movie". But it any of you have any advice on breaking this habit, please let me know. Otherwise she may have short hair for the forseeable future. (Although truthfully, I think a chin length bob looks darn cute on her, so that part wouldn't bother me at all.)

Castle Cake!

The Young Women in our ward had New Beginnings last week and they decided to go with a castle theme for the program. The girls all made paper castles for the table centerpieces and I think they even had a castle skit. They asked me to make a castle cake for the dessert and this is how it turned out. It was cute, but my cakes are never quite as cute in reality as they are in my head. This is why I can never make wedding cakes, even though I would totally love to. Alas! The sheet cakes in the background actually turned out better because it was easier to get the icing smooth.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Rude!

Amber is going through a new observant phase and I'm not sure I like it. Sometimes it's not so bad. I changed the sheets on my bed yesterday and Amber came running down to tell me, "Mom, somebody changed da cushions on your bed. What da heck?" But sometimes, she's kind of mean. Pictured above is my handsome husband who likes to keep his hair very short. I cut it this weekend and when he came down after the haircut, Amber looked at him and said, "What da heck is with dat ugly hair?" Oh boy!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Hummingbird

Last weekend was the annual weekend at Hummingbird Music Camp in the Jemez Mountains. This year Chad and Aaron both got to go and of course Sam chaperoned. I think he's addicted. Hopefully he can talk Bethany into taking up the flute next year.

Our fearless chaperones kicking back at the lodge. You rock Matt!

Chad was not quite as enthusiastic about attending camp this year. I guess now that he's in 8th grade, he's just over it. He actually went up late this year because the Hoosiers were in a bad spot this weekend with Chad, Aaron & another player all away at camp. Since the coach's son broke his arm over Christmas, the team was left with only 5 players - most of whom are 6th graders. So, Chad decided to take one for the team and go to the Friday night game. Unfortunately, he wasn't feeling particularly well Friday night and the other players were not used to playing every quarter. They did great until the second half at which point you could see the exhaustion setting in. They ended up losing by something like 20 points. Now, I will tell you that while the Hoosier's win-loss record is not great, they rarely lose by more than 2 to 4 points, usually in overtime. (As a matter of fact, their coaches laugh with a tinge of bitterness about how they are within about 18 points of being first place in the league). So needless to say, there were 6 majorly demoralized boys after the game. Bummer! Anyway, Chad and I got up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and drove up to camp. Judging from this picture, I'd say he was either still thinking about that awful game or he just didn't get enough sleep.