Seven things for Sunday

Okay, I am so backlogged on posts I will have to catch up this week. But here are seven things to share with you.

1. My anniversary was wonderful. Andrew and I stayed overnight in downtown Nashville at a beautiful hotel. We walked around downtown for a bit and then had dinner at The Melting Pot. Andrew then surprised me with tickets to the Gin Blossoms concert playing at the Wild Horse Saloon. I first heard their music on my trip to Russia 14 years ago and I have loved the music ever since. It was a really great concert and even Andrew enjoyed it considering it wasn't the Beatles. We got back to the hotel late and it was so nice not to have to put kids to bed. Andrew was a sweetheart and let me sleep in the next morning until I wanted to get up. We checked out of the hotel at about 10 and we had some time left to play before we had to go home and face reality. Andrew asked me what I wanted to do and I said "Let's go to Bass Pro Shop!" Andrew gave me such a shocked look, out of all the places I could go to, I picked that. Ha. It was a lot of fun and we managed to buy a fishing rod and reel for Andrew, lots of lures, and a case for my bow, as well as some targets for archery practice.

2. I am obsessed with fishing and archery. My mom purchased a boat a while ago, and on our first trip out, we did some fishing. I have been 'hooked' ever since, in fact, we all have. The kids love it just as much as I do and Andrew loves it almost as much. I will admit that I am the worst at it in the entire family. I have lost more lures than anyone, I hold the title for catching the smallest fish, and the second fish that I caught yesterday was totally not due to my own skill, since I hooked it by its fin. My mom gets a good chuckle every time she sees me fish.
My archery obsession is newer, since I only got my bow 2 weeks ago. It was a gift from Andrew. Brianna has been taking archery lessons off and on all year, and I was fascinated with it. I would have used her bow, but she shoots left handed and I need a right handed one. I was thrilled with Andrew's gift and I am having a great time learning. We freaked out our neighbors a bit, but they were fine when we told them we were not hunters. You can see the kind of bows we use here.

3. We spent 6 hours on the boat Saturday and had a great time. We caught 4 fish I think, but my favorite part was the tubing. Maren and Ty were particularly hilarious to watch and they had me laughing so hard. Good times.

4. My sister, Heather, and her 2 kids are here for 2 weeks. We have lots of fun stuff planned.

5. My brother, Marshall, and his family arrive tonight and will be here for the rest of this next week. They were just in Disneyworld for the very first time, and I so wish I could have seen Marshall enjoy it. Every year as kids are Dad would have us sit down and plan our trip to Disneyworld but we never actually went, so this is a dream come true for him.

6. My sil, Maren, arrived last Tuesday and will be staying with us through Christmas. On Wednesday she interviewed with the Nashville Symphony for a tech support position and was offered the job on Thursday. Yay! What a great start to her stay here. We are all adjusting well to having her here.

7. My new favorite cookie is a homemade coconut oatmeal cookie, delish!

Happy 12th Anniversary to us!

Today is our 12th wedding anniversary, yay to us! I am so excited because Andrew and I are going on our first overnight without kids in 10 years. Andrew is surprising me so you will have to check back tomorrow to find our where we went. My bag is packed and he should be here any minute to pick me up. Woohoo!

Why am I not posting so much?

Okay, I admit, the blog has been low on my to do list. So what has been keeping me so busy? Well the kids are on summer break and we have been doing more stuff together. I am also getting ready for Andrew's cousin to visit us on Thursday night, my brother and his family's visit this weekend, and Andrew's sister, Shelley, coming to live with us next week. My sister and her family will be visiting at the end of the month too. We are so excited to have all of these loved ones visiting. Shelley will live here about 6 months to get a fresh start on life. The kids are so excited to have someone new to dote on them. I am excited too, since she has promised to babysit so Andrew and I can have a weekly date night. Woohoo! We all adore Shelley and we can't wait for her to get here.

In addition to all of this, I have had lots of sessions recently and I have been busy working on my new website, www.amylynnsmith.com. I have been shy about sharing my new website but now it is mostly done. Please check it out and let me know how I can improve it.

I promise this little lull won't take much longer. I do have lots of pictures to upload and some fun stories to tell, I just need to finish getting my house ready and my sessions edited and ordered. Thanks for your patience.

Happy Father's Day!

One thing that I wish my kids understood more is how blessed they are to have Andrew for their dad. He has always been the one who wakes up in the middle of the night to tend to sick kids and clean up after them. Nightmares, no problem, he is up there in a flash to calm them down. He loves to spend time with them and looks forward to seeing them when he gets home from work. His new favorite activity is to go fishing with them and if they could, they would all be out there every night, together. He drives the older ones to school, he takes time off of work to attend all of their little school events, and he loves to take them out for a suprise treat (with orders that they can't tell mommy what they ate). Most importantly though, he tries his best to raise our family with faith. I am so grateful for all that Andrew does for our kids. Happy Father's Day sweetheart.

Skadoosh!

Andrew wanted to add a quick blog post about a great movie we saw on Saturday evening. We got to see a Kung Fu Panda & Indiana Jones double feature at the not-so-local drive in (stixville!). Our good friends, the Stovers, invited us. The price was very right . . . $7.00 for adults and $4.00 for kids 6 and up . . . for two movies! Are you kidding? We pulled our truck backwards and got to sit in the bed with lots of pillows and blankets. We paid $5.00 extra to bring in food from the outside world (Pizza Pizza from Little Caesars!) It was great!




Back to the super-important topic at hand . . . Kung Fu Panda is the funniest movie I’ve seen in a very long time. If there hadn’t been a lot of people around, I just may have busted a gasket from laughing so much. I can’t get the movie out of my mind. It was classic Jack Black without being too goofy. The hilarity factor was way off the charts and I highly recommend it to anyone needing a comedic pick-me-up. I may not be able to wait for it to come out on DVD . . . anyone want to go to a movie with me?

http://www.imdb.com/rg/videos-title/summary//video/screenplay/vi933888281/

Indiana Jones, on the other hand, was pretty disappointing. I won’t spoil it for you, but the car chase through the jungle (which took 8 weeks to film) was amazing (even if it could never happen) but the premise of the film was pretty lame and disappointing for a Lucas/Spielberg collaboration.

Go see the Panda!!!!