congrats!!!

my sister ashley is getting married!!!! congratulations ashie!!! i can hardly believe that my little sister is going to be a married woman... i am still not old enough to be married!!
she called us last night with the awesome news... she and jose were snowshoeing in the colorado mountains and he got down on one knee and proposed! i can't wait to start talking about wedding details! i am so excited for you! congratulations!

Griswalds in Cville

Did your lights flicker last night? If so it was probably because our neighbor was stealing electricity from your grid to power his cornucopia of lights-complete with creepy Santa gnomes which eerily resemble Brandon. Our street is part of the Charlottesville trail of lights and so we are blessed by a little friendly holiday competition of seeing who can force more of their neighbors to buy back up generators for the winter. Lily has been visibly nervous, this being her first Christmas and all, that her parents are the only one's without a neon arrow directing Santa down the roof. For some reason cars don't seem to slow down to look at our 2, 3 foot trees with lights in the front.

We are all very excited to celebrate Lil's first Christmas this year and had a lot of fun picking out her first Christmas tree. Surprisingly she's only asked for Mrs. Potatohead (she's gotten quite advanced with her baby sign language). That only means one thing, Dad is going to have a stressful Christmas eve trying to get that thing assembled before morning. Don't laugh if you haven't seen the new millennium edition. I thought I knew my anatomy pretty well but I'm just not sure about all her new parts. I heard they downgraded the man to just a few crucial, utilitarian parts. This proves once again that women are indeed more complicated. Word is that Hillary Clinton was behind the changes.

Anyway, we only have a few more office parties and a few more nights on call before we get to come home for Christmas and we cannot wait! We hope you all are having a great holiday season and hope to see you soon! Love Court, Ry and Lily


Do you see Brandon?

Who doesn't love a penguin at Christmas time.

The more blow up yard ornaments the better.

Are you feeling woefully inadequate yet?


This house is visible from space!

weekend weekend

this past weekend, duke and steph drove all the way from b'town to come and visit us. it was wonderful to have them here and lily loved having some extra company around the house! they had the pleasure of experiencing her antics and it was just great to have them in town... especially since ryan has been working so much recently. he is in the midst of a killer stretch - he is on call all day today and tonight and if he doesn't have the chance to catch any shut eye tonight, he will have slept about 5 hours in a total of 60 hours. can we have a collective sigh for him?... how horrendous is that? so, christmas break can't come soon enough!! but, we did manage to have a great weekend and get a few pics of the past few days...


steph, duke, ry and lily with her first christmas tree! (thankfully she doesn't seem to take after her dad and the tree is still standing and remains unscathed!)


our happy little one!


mmmm... delicious!

ready for the arctic...

day of giving thanks!

as the rush of the holiday season begins, we are hoping to savor the bits of peace and calm we have as a family... especially amidst ryan's crazy schedule. we had a great thanksgiving, although ryan is currently back in the hospital to work the remainder of the holiday. but, even though it was a short celebration at the smith household, we have so much to be thankful for.
and today in honor of the Biber family tradition, lily completed her first turkey trot! with about a 1/4 mile to go, we passed a man with a stroller who we had been gaining on for a while. my cross country instincts set in and i got a little bit competitive. i knew we could take him and we went in for the pass. i tried to be all friendly as we went by and said, "good job! happy thanksgiving!" but deep down i was thinking to myself, "don't pass him if you can't keep the lead!" anyway, lily was the first baby to finish and it was a great race. although at the end as we were walking through the chute, he came up to us and said, "you are mine next year!" whoa... watch out turkey trot '08!
we hope you all have had a wonderful day of celebration with friends and family! happy thanksgiving!
courtney

"L" is for lily!

how do grandmas get their names??

kathy came to visit us this past weekend and it was wonderful. ryan is unfortunately working like a dog, but she and i got to relax a lot and catch up and enjoy lily. it was a really great weekend. however, she has yet to decide what "grandmotherly" name she wants and it is tricky when referring to her when speaking with lily. a few possibilities have been: mimi, nana, g-kath, gigi. and of course, there are the good ol' standbys of: grandma, gram, granny. somehow we feel like our parents are too unique to have a regular old grandparent name. so, we find ourselves in this conundrum. if any of you have any ideas that seem to fit kathy perfectly, we are always up for suggestions. i suppose lily could just decide as time goes on, but then kathy might end up with a name like "toast" or something... (yeah, whit!)



and speaking of names, if you have a few minutes of time on your hands you ought to check out this website that was recently brought to my attention. it is a sight that has compiled names for the last ten years in utah and it's motto is: an online help for parents looking for that distinctive name that says "i'm a utah mormon!" it is pretty amazing. click on "the cream of the crop" section and peruse the real keepers of names. i think my favorite section is the "names that have food connotations: dianarea, dicey, vindalu, sugarlee, beena, pork chop, kresent, taffilyn, spoon." i guess "toast" isn't sounding so bad now, is it??
anyway, check it out if you have a chance. it might help you name your firstborn...
www.wesclark.com/ubn

numero uno...

so, it has been a big year at the smith household and unfortunately distance separates us from so many people that we love. we know you all love being inundated with thousands of photos of lily, but for those of you who don't have all day on your hands, we thought this might be a better way to stay in touch! so, without further ado, we have begun a blog...
but, how do you even start a blog? we aren't so sure! but, we figured since we've had such a jam packed last year or so, we'd do a little recap of some of the highlights...

some of the big happenings in the smith household:

1) we found out we were going to have a baby!!!! hallelujah!!!


2) ryan matched in urology and graduated! (again, hallelujah!!!)


3) our amazing daughter was born - lily howden smith - 29 january 2007


4) g-kath, muffy, skippy and all the aunts and uncles came to cville to visit


5) colts won the superbowl!!!


6) vacations with the families



7) reading chicka chicka boom boom for the 1,000th time

8) the smith clan heads to italy to visit brandon


9) holiday firsts with lily!


10) court struggles through the chicago marathon (and struggles it putting it nicely!)


so, that's the super quick recap of the last year or so. it's been quite an adventure and we could not be more thankful for the way the Lord has blessed us.
anyway, welcome to our blog. we will see where it takes us!
blessings,
the smiths