Smith Family

Our first 4th of July here in Houston! We had a low key chill day. We decided to grab burgers at Sonic to make things easy, we made some special red, white and blue drinks, Ellie helped me make the fruit pizza, we did our own firework show and ended the night by watching the Patriot. It was a simply yet perfect day for our little family. After watching The Patriot I was curious if we had family members in America during the Revoltionary War and we did! I've only gone through one line, my Grandpa D's mom line and found 2 guys who fought with the South Carolina Militia for the Revolutionary war, an ancestor who was hung in Salem during the witch trials and a slave owner. I going to continue through all my ancestrors to understand more of my American history that I didn't know. As I was looking through these people I was wishing I could hear their thoughts and perspective, especially the women.  We seem to be going through a pretty historic time with ...

For Christmas my parents gifted us a stay at The Great Wolf Lodge with the whole family in Scottsdale. We had been looking forward to this all year, then became a bit concerned whether we would be going or not with the pandemic. We toyed with the idea of renting an RV and driving but ultimately decided to risk flying. Numbers were sitting at about 1,000 cases a day, which isn't great but also not terrible. We were required to wear a mask in the Uber and the entire time we were in the airport and airplane.  While our flight was completely full the airport felt like a ghost town. Most shops were closed and because airlines have limited flights it didn't feel crowded at all. We kept our distance and frequently slathered on the hand sanitizer. Once we landed we picked up our rental car which was a life saver! Last year I didn't have a rental and felt a bit stuck at my parents the whole time, so it was nice to have Pete there the entire time with us and have the ability to...

 We made it! Who could have imagined that we would have experienced a global pandemic and end up homeschooling this year. I normally like to make a big transition from school to summer however since we are transition from staying at home all day... to staying at home all day there isn't much of a transition. We still had a little family party to celebrate and Audrey picked the theme of pineapples and we had fun making it happen.  All of the kids finished strong with good grades. Hildebrant had an award show and Audrey made the A honor roll and was chosen by her PE coach to get the PE award for the year. Out of all the 6th grade girls only 2 were chosen. Never would have thought a child of mine would be earning an athletic award but way to go Audrey!