i don't know if anyone has followed the story of randy pausch, but it's quite an inspiration. carnegie mellon announced at its web site that he passed away from pancreatic cancer earlier today.

i've followed this story since i first heard it a few months ago. he has a wife and young children. like all stories of lives cut way too short, it breaks my heart.

not that it's been horribly hot at all - it's been fabulously warm for a few weeks now. but today we have a very comfortable, sunny day. it's nice for a change, but a summer day does not go well with goosebumps, and that's what i have everytime i step outside into the coolish breeze today.

we are having a fabulous summer. our vacation to cedar point was just the beginning. i can't wait for the upcoming fun we have planned! here's a sneak peak:

• a visit to our family in Michigan, where we will, no doubt, have fun with water parks, camp out on front porches, cookouts and icecream. because what summer-family gathering is complete without a grill and ice cream????
• a visit to a cabin out east with the smith side of the family. this is still in the planning stages, so i forgot to add it to the list. i can't wait to post pictures of our gathering.
  
• the greater pittsburgh renaissance festival! the boys are still into all things dragons- and knights- and castle-related. i think a live joust just might be the coolest thing they've seen all summer!
  
• a trip to a close-by lake beach, complete with sand-building, swimming, winery-touring, and family sunset photos by the water.
• sawyer's birthday celebration! we're starting school after his birthday so we can concentrate on celebrating him before diving into school stuff. but...
• ...right as school starts, we're going to a local sheep farm (that mom and i recently visited!) to tour the barn, the spinnery, and stay in their guest house! i'm obsessed with raising sheep someday. and they have a bed and breakfast to boot! this place is heaven on earth, in my opinion.

in the meantime, i am spending a lot of time gathering information for our unit studies, organizing my teaching supplies, and then rowan and i get to go "school supply shopping!" i started a separate homeschool blog, and for the future, my homeschool-related blog entries will be posted there in full. this blog will continue to be what it's been for the past 4 years: pictures and stories from the house of smith. if you're interested, our school blog is smithically schooled.

i've become such a big deal in our little town that they've opened an art exhibit and I am the subject of every single piece! ha!

if you want to have fun with your photos, go here.

i rarely talk politics here. i think the last time i did talk politics was during the last presidential election (when my soon-to-be four-year old was just a newbie!).

but...i simply must point you in the direction of yet another favorite blogger of mine. Molly's latest post is precisely how i've felt for at least the past two elections.  however, i didn't vote the way she said she voted. i was uncomfortable voting on one issue (the pro-life issue) because i've always felt that being pro-life was bigger than just the abortion side. i am pro-human-life, whether that be a baby growing in a uterus, an iraqi/afghani citizen and soldier; or a human being sitting on death row. i could never vote the republican ticket because i never felt it was pro-life enough.

molly has much more eloquent words, so i'll just point you over to her blog....and don't miss the comments in her posts - she frequently responds and her readers generally have good things to add, even if they don't agree with her.

we took the boys to the pool this afternoon before rowan's last t-ball practice this evening. it's finally getting to the dog days of summer (can i tell you how much i'm loving it?) and it was HOT today, so we had a great time in the sun and water. at one point, i left kenny with the three boys while i went to the loo and when i came back he told me that there was a pool commotion when i was gone. the lifeguard dove (carefully) into the water after a little girl at the same time her mom ran after her. by the time i got there, the parents were sitting on the side of the pool asking the little girl questions: "are you okay? what's your name? what's your brother's name?" to which there was no reply from the little girl. the dad looked very nonchalant, and finally the mom stood up and took the girl to the first aid room. within minutes the lifeguards ran to tell the dad to pack up all their belongings and then more lifeguards were running to open a gate and then an ambulance arrived. all within 5 or 6 minutes of my getting back to the pool!

i began praying for that little girl, for that family...just for peace and grace and health. geez, i can't imagine what was going on in that mom's spirit during those moments. we found out on our way out of the pool later that they weren't sure if she had a seizure or a mini-stroke or whatnot, but she was virtually unresponsive. i was JUST reading the other day about this thing called "dry drowning" in which a child can die of "drowning" hours after swimming. they can walk, talk normally, etc, but water gets into their lungs and eventually asphyxiates them. there are symptoms (extreme tiredness, acting strangely, a bit of labored breathing) that if caught can be treated and the child's life can be saved. but geez...parents don't need another thing to worry about!

i can't stop thinking of this family and how their day went from completely normal to full of worry and fear. i remember thinking when we lost rowan momentarily at the water park last week, "what are we going to do tonight if we have to get in the car and rowan's car seat is empty? how will we drive home to PA? what will we tell our family?" since then, and especially on his birthday, i've been thanking God over and over and over for the first blessing of his birth, and the second blessing in that we didn't lose him that day, and the ongoing blessing of all three of our boys each and every day. i hope and pray that this family today at the pool gets to feel as i do now.

being a mom is the only thing i've ever wanted to do. since i was little. all through high school, college, and after college. i knew that anything else i'd do in life would be second-rate compared to raising a family. and nothing i've experienced so far has come close to this journey. i think what's so great about it is that i get to share it with kenny. any joys or fears we face in parenting we face together. therefore, the joys are bigger, the fears aren't so lonely. it's made me a less selfish person - a person i can begin to live with.

but parenting is deep stuff. we're responsible for the love, care, and safety of human beings. seriously, what is more scary than that? thank God for grace! the daily grind can take our focus away from the sacredness of raising our children. i'm becoming more and more sensitive to it now. this doesn't mean every day is perfect and without blemish. because i mess up and i get angry or frustrated. but i know that if i dwell on the frustration, i'll regret these years when i look back on them. and regret is not a feeling i wish to have when an empty nest finds me unexpected.

we've returned, quite tired, from a whirlwind trip to the family-friendly Cedar Point where we stayed at the even more family-friendly Castaway Bay. the trip was chock full of twists and turns from our original plans, but it wasn't void of fun, activities and thrills for the boys. it was their favorite vacation yet.

Cedar Point was a popular park when i was a teenager, and that is the last time i was there. the park was fortunately full of activities and rides for the little kids to ride...except for kids adam's age/size. he was stuck with the space ship round-about and the merry-go-round.

the hotel we stayed in had an indoor water park attached to it which was perfect for our kids' ages. they all found a favorite part of the park and eventually got over some small fears of deeper water, or waterfalls and just had fun. our hotel had a private balcony that was completely screened in (with a gate to support the screen), so it was a great place for the boys to eat snacks or lunches (pictured below). it was also nice to have a place to drink our coffee when we woke up earlier than the boys did both mornings.

Pros and Cons of the Trip.
Cedar Point is definitely a great place to take a family for a short vacation. Even for kids ages 5 and under. I think it will be the perfect location in 5-10 years for boys who can swim on their own. I was mildly neurotic about all the water and way too many people at the outdoor water park attached to Cedar Point we visited the second day. If our kids were older, couldn't wander away, and could swim on their own, I'd have been able to let my guard down a little.

Pros

• the boys were never bored.
• the boys had a BLAST.
• they loved the rides and the lines were relatively short inside Camp Snoopy.
• TGI Fridays (attached to our hotel) was really good. Their menu has improved and their prices weren't high like the rest of the hotel.
• the awesome indoor water park

Cons

• even though it was a family-friendly resort, it was more expensive than it should have been.
• we love the beach, and the beach at Cedar Point wasn't all that great. We spent only 15 minutes there.
• we lost Rowan for 10 minutes inside the outdoor water park at Cedar Point. I have bad memories of that outdoor waterpark because of it. it was horrifying.
• no family picture on the beach coast during a gorgeous sunset.
  

Lessons Learned

• always take more cash than you originally planned to take.
• if a public pool looks and feels too crowded, it's not a good place for a family with three young kids.
• Snoopy is so much less frightening than Charlie Brown. It must be that big, round, bald head.
• apply your own sunscreen in the hotel room and not in the parking lot or near the outdoor pool/gate to the amusement park where the kids can wander and you have no time to apply it properly. kenny and i both got burned because we were slapping it on while the kids were way too excited to sit still until we were done!
  

we have amazing tales of thrills rides from the wild state of Ohio to share. but first...we celebrate rowan's fifth birthday!

five years of amazing fun! our firstborn is a loving and caring big brother, a great example to his siblings, and a joy for us to parent.

happy birthday, rowan tucker smith! may we have manymanymany more years of you to come!

FIVE!!!

yesterday, we made homemade pizza. BBQ chicken pizza to be exact. it was delicious. kenny grilled the chicken to perfection with my favorite BBQ sauce (i love making my own sauce, but i love this flavor in the summer months, despite all the prefab ingredients!) and it had just the amount of mozarella and BBQ sauce on the crust.

we enjoyed yesterday's pizza with a local white wine and a bag of potato chips (a compromise between our favorite ways to eat pizza).

let's talk about making our own pizza crust now, shall we? i love sending out requests to you all for your best recipes. (i am holding onto all of your salsa recipes for as soon as our tomatoes and peppers are ripe.) we love to make our own crusts, and kenny's been pretty pleased with the crusts that we've tried so far. but i'm picky. and there's just this little flavor thing in the doughs that we make that doesn't taste right to me. i read this morning that the secret is to use bread flour instead of all purpose flour. i'm trying that next. but i thought i'd send out a request for your favorite homemade pizza crust recipes. i've got all the ingredients for some more pizza (more BBQ chicken and some pepperoni for the less adventurous pizza eaters, namely everyone under 5 in our house).

so, email or leave a comment with your favorite dough recipe as soon as possible. or your computer will blow up.

just kidding.

i've linked to jennifer's blog, "Et Tu?" before, but i absolutely must point you to her article in America Magazine, found here.

it's brilliant and lovely. she takes a controversial, yet important subject and wraps it in grace.

we are keeping very busy being outside. depsite the recent raindrops, we've had some great weather days and have been enjoying some play and outside yardwork. we're FINALLY getting to the front door area that i can't stand. i hope to have before and after pictures eventually, but the work we're doing is minimal since i have big plans to add a big country front porch eventually.

i've been doing a bit of sewing. remember how i got into sewing just a year ago with these fun pants (that's three diffferent links) for our trip to the beach? i found a great tutorial online (thanks to polka dot creations) for bandana pants and i just had to try them out for rowan and sawyer. here is the finished product:

this is what we fight every spring, summer, and fall. the deer tick:

rowan and sawyer had their first, ever outside-the-home-without-mom-or-dad-hovering (well, sort of) learning experience last week in the form of a local Vacation Bible School program.

our church is too small and, well, let's just keep it at that...too small to have a VBS and the older two are finally old enough to attend, so i signed them up at the local church and i can't tell you how much they (and we!) enjoyed it.

i don't remember much about VBS, but i attended it as a student and a helper in my (Orthodox Presbyterian) church growing up. i feel as though i liked it because i couldn't wait for our boys to get involved in one. and i think VBS has changed quite a bit since i was a kid. the church used a VBS package curriculum that really (REALLY!) resonated with the kids. the church was packed with nearly 100 kids every day, and roughly 25-30 adult helpers. the church was barely bigger than our house, but it was doing big things for the families of our little town. i nearly choked up when i saw rowan and sawyer doing all the motions to all the songs the first few times i dropped them off. i think i was the only parent who didn't really drop off my kids: i walked them in and stayed for every opening, and got there early enough to attend the closing "ceremony" each day (like the geek that i am!). I couldn't wait for bible school. and the boys were giddy each morning as we drove the country road to the church. we have a cd of all the songs they sang throughout the week and it's playing nonstop in the house and in the car.

even though we plan to start homeschooling in the fall (with curriculum...a lot of homeschoolers say that they homeschool from the child's day of birth, so i feel the need to clarify), i love how much they loved this experience.  i loved how it changed their "God conversations" just slightly. the theme of the week was God's power, so they were all about how much power and strength God had. i have their daily papers hung up in the kitchen and i plan to go over their daily lessons from last week. am i a homeschooler or what??? :)

one thing i didn't groove on was how much i actually missed them! no doubt the first day was nice as adam and i had lots of quality time together, but by the second day we were both bored. next year, all three boys will attend. if adam ever decides he's not a baby. :)