Swine Flu, Chicken Man, and Cereal

Graham's first Halloween was an eventful one. To start, we were minding our own business watching the Boise State football game on TV when all of the sudden someone in a Chicken Costume comes running into our backyard and starts dancing around. My natural instinct was to grab my gun and shoot him for dinner, but unfortunately I do not own a gun. So I grabbed my camera instead. (See pictures below). Turns out it was my friend Logan. He had won a gift card a while back and used it to purchase the costume...a wise investment indeed.

Later on in the day, we got a call from my mom & sister who told us that there were Swine Flu vaccines still available at one of the local clinics and there was no line. They only offer it on Saturdays from 10 am -6pm. Last Saturday thousands of people showed up and waited hours in line. The vaccine ran out after 2 hours. We had given up hope on even trying, even though we're in one of the top priority groups since we have a child less than six months old in our house. After getting the call at 5pm, we scrambled and got there as fast as we could. Sure enough, NO LINE. Word must have gotten out though, cause as we walked out 15 mins. later a line of around 30-50 people had formed.

Finally, we wrapped up Graham's first Halloween by dressing him up in his first ever Halloween costume. Originally he had requested we dress him up as Graham Harrel, last year's starting Quarterback for Texas Tech. However, given the recent controversy with Texas Tech's coach calling his player's significant others "fat little girlfriends", Graham just didn't feel comfortable donning a Texas Tech jersey. So we went with plan B and dressed him up as a box of Golden Grahams. He lasted about 5 mins in it, which is impressive.

Here are some of our Halloween pics:

And from henceforth, the manchild shall be called....

We have finally picked a name. We had narrowed it down to either Max or Graham, but we decided to take some time to get to know him before making the decision.

But before we make the reveal, I'd like to pay tribute to some of the names suggested to us by friends and family. One of the blessings of facebook, text messaging, etc is that friends and family who otherwise might not get a say in a decision such as this are able to make their voices heard. And now, in no particular order, here are some of our favorite suggestions:

Maximus Decimus Meridius
King Adam
Sister (suggested by our soon to be 2 yr. old niece Macey)
Jesus (with a Spanish pronunciation)
King MJ (presumably meaning King Maximus Jesus, with Spanish pronunciation on Jesus)
Bronco
Ryan the Second Smith
Jordan Jordan Smith
Travis Poopface

Despite all the wonderful suggestions, almost all of which we gave serious consideration to, we have chosen to name him Graham Wesley Smith.

MORE BIG NEWS!!!

Tess won sheepdog regionals!!! Just kidding. Our little munchkin was born today at 10:38 am. He is 7 lbs 8 ounces and 19 inches tall. Everything went relatively well. Tess's water broke at 1:30am, we got to the hospital around 2:15 am, she started having contractions around 4 am, got an epidural, and pushed from 7:15am til 10:38 am. We don't have an official name yet. Unfortunately our prayers that his name would be tattoed on his arm went unanswered. We're pretty sure we're going to name him Graham...now we're mostly just working on a middle name. Here are a few pics...

BIG NEWS!!!

After nearly 9 months of training, Tess was finally named Idaho's Top Sheepdog! She's even ranked 4th Nationally. See link below for full story.
















http://www.idahostatesman.com/woodward/story/940125.html

Oddly enough, this isn't the first dog named Tess that we've known. When I was younger, my best friend Josh had a border collie named Tess. I loved that dog. Maybe that's why I fell for the human Tess so easily.

Watermelon and pumpkin time!

On Saturday we picked all of our pumpkins and watermelons. We ended the season with eight pumpkins of varying sizes and twelve watermelons, also of varying sizes.




















































We even made a cute corn stock bundle from our old corn stocks. Then we hauled everything up to the house and made a cute Fall arrangement.






















Then we got really creative and decided to carve some of the watermelons.






















The finished products.

A baby shower surprise

The morning of my baby shower the doorbell rang and I found this note sitting on top of a car seat with a baby in it.





















Here is little Zac my nephew that came all the way from California with his momma, my sister, Ylfe for the baby shower. We were really excited because we hadn't met Zac yet since he was born in April and we hadn't seen Ylfe in a long time either.

















My sister Jandi and her 9month old Myles, me and my belly, Ylfe and her 6month old Zac.

















I have to give a big thanks to Ylfe and Jandi for coming out for the shower. And a big thanks to my sisters in law Megan and Jamie for putting on the baby shower. It was a ton of fun!

Garden update

The garden is coming to a close. For our first year we felt like we had pretty good success. Our best growers were the tomatoes by far. We still have peppers, pumpkins, tomatoes, watermelon, and cantaloupe growing. Even though that sounds like a lot to me the garden looks really bare without the corn. We took out the corn and a lot of unnecessary pumpkin vines this week. These picture are from a few weeks ago so you can still see the full and complete look of the garden. We loved working in the garden this summer but it has gotten a little more exhausting for me the last few weeks watering, so I'm glad it's winding down.






























































Our harvest: tomatoes, banana peppers, corn and watermelon. The watermelon was still really white inside and only a little pink but we still have many in the garden yet to try.
















Our tiny cantaloupe. It smelled like a cantaloupe but there wasn't much melon to eat to even tell if it tasted like a cantaloupe. But it was still so cute and little.