Welcome baby Enoch

Well he is finally here: Enoch David Smith

Weighing in at 7 pounds and measuring in at 20 inches long! Born on Thursday, December 10th at 7:45pm in Provo. We are excited to have this new addition to our family. Eden is a good helper with Enoch and dad couldn't be prouder of his son.


If you ask me, he looks a lot like Aaron (at least Aaron's baby pictures), so that means he should grow-up to be just as handsome.

Two-year old vocabulary

Eden is talking more, but sometimes her words don't sound exactly like what we would call it. For example to Eden, a flower is called a "sasow". I don't know where she got that from flower, but that's what it means to her. In the following video we tried to get her to say "ketchup," but again, her idea of ketchup comes out a little differently. It was quite entertaining...but she's getting better now at calling it the real thing.

So we learn that 2-year-olds have their own language, and the only ones that really understand what they are talking about is mom and dad. Thank goodness for parents.

A little Duck

Halloween is come and gone, but I had to post these cute pictures of our little Halloween Duck.

She loved this costume, as you can tell. I loved it because it was warm, and it was the best deal ever at the D.I.


Here is Eden and Aaron with our beautiful pumpkins. It was a fun Halloween. It took few houses of trick-or-treating before she understood that all you do is knock on a door, say "treat" and they give you candy. I'm sure if I let her, she would have gone all night, but I was tired after 30 minutes and I figured we didn't need more candy than what we had, especially for two-year-old teeth.

Growing fast

Our little girl is almost 2 years old, and we can't believe how much she's learned. She talks to us now, not full sentences, but we understand better what she wants, she loves to practice her alphabet and her numbers. But most of all she wants us to read to her. I've got about half of her books memorized now, so I can read them without having to look at them, or just quote them in the car if it's been a long drive. But one book, Eden has got down, that is "Moo, Baa, La la la."

Her growth has amazed us, and we know we must enjoy every moment now, because soon she'll be fighting for attention with her little brother. Until then, we'll just sit back and be amazed.

Our growing little girl

We can't believe how fast Eden is growing and changing. It seems that just yesterday she was learning to crawl and now she's her own little person and with personality and everything. We know that we only have two more months with just her and then a new little addition will be here. Here are just a few cute pictures of our sweet little girl:

Eden loves to climb up on the piano bench and play her favorite song she calls "God", which is "I am a child of God."

Grandpa Smith gave her a bike this summer, it is so cute to see her on it, but she still doesn't quite reach the pedals. Next summer I'm sure she'll be going everywhere on it.

Eden loves her doll, her baby. She wants to make sure it's fed, and wrapped up warm in a little blanket. She is all girl taking care of her toys.

Eden also loves to play dress-up, we take our few little pieces of cloth and wrap her in them and she loves to run and dance wearing her new dress-up clothes.

Too tired to eat

Eden is growing up so quick and changing just as quick. She decided not to sleep through the night anymore, so I decided that she didn't need her afternoon nap anymore either. This has helped her fall asleep easier at night, but she still wakes up in the middle of the night. But an unseen consequence of the "no nap" decision is that dinner is not quite the same.

We'll figure out a good balance soon, I hope for her sake and mine.

Trip to Logan

It's been a while since we took a family vacation, so we decided to go on a little trip over Labor Day weekend. We didn't go far, but it was worth it to see the cousins. We went to see Aaron's sister Mary and their family. Eden really enjoyed spending time with cousins that she doesn't get to see too often.

We went to a really fun park and here Madelyn, Ethan and Gabe can sell lemonade.

Here Eden is armed as "Sir Laughs A Lot"

Ethan and Eden flying in an airplane. We hope to get out to Logan and visit again soon, this was a very fun family trip.

Summer's now over

Well, we've enjoyed our summer together as a family. It was nice to have Aaron home for the summer and is now weird to have him gone all day. Eden and I are slowly adjusting. But here are a few fun things we did over the summer:

After a very wet June, we were able to see some beautiful skies, including this double rainbow.

We celebrated Aaron's 30th birthday, with the ONE candle we had.

We went camping in Manti with Grandpa Smith.

Eden loved the flowers at the Manti Temple.

Eden and Karla at the Temple.

Lots of room for Eden to run!

We spent part of the fourth of July with Grandpa White as well.

We did a lot of fun activities this summer, but what I'm learning is that I need to bring my camera with me more often. Next summer we'll have two little ones and pictures will be twice as important.

It's a boy!!

Hello all family and friends...we don't know how many get a chance to look at our blog (since we don't seem to update it as much as we should), but for those who didn't know the exciting news, let us share it with you all: We are pregnant and are having a baby boy sometime in December! He is due 4 days before Eden's birthday, so hopefully he'll come earlier than later. As far as a name for our son, we're still working on it. The goal is to have something long before the labor begins...and once he's here, you'll be sure to see a lot of pictures. Until then, we'll just imagine him looking as Eden did, a lot of soft hair and chubby cheeks.

Playing the piano

Is the hair of Mozart, Bach, Mendelssohn? Or is it just a baby playing her own interpretations on the piano? Each day she gets a little bit better on the piano, nothing like the primary songs, but it's still pretty in it's own little way...

...the only thing that could make this better was if the piano was actually in tune. Maybe when we start paying for lessons we'll invest in a newer piano, until then, this one seems to work just fine!

Pigtails

A few weeks ago I realized that Eden's hair was getting too long for just a clip, so I went out and bought some hair ties. I don't do my hair often, so I'm far from expert level, but I wanted to see her face and eyes, so I gave it a try. She screamed at first, tried to pull away, but I was determined. So I put on a Veggie Tales and with her focus on something else, I was able to get the deed done!
Here is the end result, a beautiful girl with beautiful eyes. (now the trick is to convince her to keep them in)

The Easter Duck

At Easter we went to a few Easter egg hunts, one was with our play group at Autumn Anderson's home. She filled Easter baskets with all sorts of fun treats for little kids, one was this small candy duck. Eden loves duckies and will imitate their sound all the time. But when we put her in her high chair and presented this duckie, it took her a moments of looking at the duckie before she noticed the surprise it held within as it began to melt in her hands. This was by far, her favorite Easter treat.

At the Zoo

A few weeks ago we went to the Zoo in Salt Lake with our play group. Eden had been to the Zoo before, but this time she knew some animals and could imitate some animal sounds.

Eden had to get a picture with the giraffe, both Eden's and Daddy's favorite animal.

We also took a ride on the carousel. This had to be by far Eden's favorite experience. She smiled the entire time as she rode her little tiger.

I tried to take video as much as possible of Eden at the zoo, but she was so excited that I couldn't get her to hold still. She saw the ducks, birds, turtles, and just about anything else you could find. By the end of the day she was exhusted and had a good nap for the long ride home.

Pucker fish

Eden has a talent she would like to show everyone...it is the pucker fish! She started doing this a few months ago, but only randomly, and she couldn't do it on command. She has now figured out how to do it on her own and will pucker up when you do it to her! It's so cute to see this little girl grow up and learn how to use her little body.

Are we ready for this?

For Eden's 1st birthday, great-grandma Smith gave her a cell phone. Of course it is a play princess cell phone, but she loves it. The phones Aaron and I have are not as nice as this one. Her phone is a flip phone and it even simulates taking pictures (accessories that we don't have on ours). She walks around with it and pushes the buttons and takes pretend pictures.

As you can see, she is much more knowledgeable with cell phones than I am...

she can already text message better than me.
What is this world coming to when a one-year-old can text better than her mom?

One o'clock church

We've been at 1 o'clock church for a while now, sometimes it seems as if it will never end. My goal has been to try and keep Eden awake until church starts. My reasoning is that she usually takes a 3 hour nap around 11am, so if I keep her up until 1pm, she should sleep through all of church. Sometimes it works, and other times it doesn't.

This was at about 11:30, I sat her down to eat lunch and keep her awake, she ate a little bit and couldn't take it any more. Sleep over came her and I lost the battle. I tried to revive her by taking away her tray and even cleaning her up (which she HATES the most) but to no avail, sleep was the winner.

Let it Snow!!

So one day it started to snow, it was nice to see it come down...and down...and down...and it never stopped that whole day!! We just couldn't resist taking a chance to enjoy the new fallen snow. We all put on some warm clothes and ventured outside to see how well mother nature did.

Well, as you see the snow was deeper than we thought. Eden here is up to her hips in the snow, and she's about half way through the snow! All she could do was stand in it, she couldn't move!

Here is Karla and Eden standing in the snow in our front yard with matching hats that tie under the chin, they are so warm, we recommend all to get one.

Here is Aaron and Eden in the snow, as you see, even as it go dark that night, the snow continued to fall, it was just amazing.


We were happy to come in and warm up, but it was an experience we all enjoyed, even Eden who couldn't move through the snow.
Since then the snow has melted and come back, melted and come back again, but nothing beats that wonderful day that it snowed all day and all night, it's good to have a Utah winter again.

Naps are a good thing

I think we all agree that we need a good nap every once in a while, but when someone wakes you up unexpectedly, usually we're not too happy. Well, this afternoon, mommy and Eden took a little nap together and daddy wanted to take some pictures and wake us up. Well, because it was daddy, Eden didn't wake-up grumpy, instead she woke-up as happy as could be.

If only all of us could wake-up this happy from our naps!

Christmas...a month later

Merry Christmas from the Smiths...in January. I know I'm a month behind, but we just had to share these memories. This year Eden was actually awake for Christmas (unlike last year when she was a week old, and all she did was sleep all day, and cry all night). So we took her to meet Santa for the first time, as you see, it was a very enjoyable experience:(Give me back to mommy!)

We then decided that Christmas wouldn't be Christmas if we didn't go up to Temple Square and look at all of the lights. It was cold, but very pretty:

Christmas morning was fun. When Eden woke up Christmas morning she could see a big difference under our Christmas tree...and she walked right to the presents and began touching them. She then woke-up daddy and Christmas began!

It was truly a fun and very blessed Christmas for us. Eden had a birthday the week before so it was presents for her right and left. One of her favorite gifts was her Bob and Larry book, once that present was opened, nothing else really mattered (I'm sure all parents can understand that effect of one good present for a child):

Our 1 year old

Eden turned one year old on December 18, and it was a party! We went to our church building and let all of the cousins run around in the church gym. We had a quick dinner, some presents, and then the chocolate cake! As you can see from Eden, the cake was pretty good. But thankfully everyone else had another cake to eat from. Eden did get pretty messy, but it wasn't has much damage as I had anticipated. As you can see in the video, she was going so slow that a few of the cousins wanted to help her eat the cake. Little Camille helped by eating some sprinkles off the cake, but after a while, Eden noticed and decided that she didn't want to share her beautiful cake with anyone. It was a good birthday, and now our little Eden is no longer a baby, our little Eden is now a Toddler!