Brady Smith

Brady Smith

Hey everyone! Click on the link to see some beautiful pictures of Brady. Adam's mom won a gift certificate to this PB&J Photography so she had some pictures made of her and Brady. I think he is a natural born model!

2010 Mud Run

This morning team "Suck It Up Princess" completed a 5K United States Marine Corps. Mud Run in Pinnacle, North Carolina. I will have to say it was SO fun! It was filled with mud pits, walls, hills you could only climb if you used a rope, and a final mud pit to swim through to the finish. It is definately something I will do again next year. I'm so proud of my teammates!

How long has it been?

It's been so long, that I have so much to catch you up on. This will be a blog of many titles.

Happy Easter!

For Easter, Brady and I made the long trip to Jacksonville FL to see Erin, Mike and their new sweet baby girl Lilah (FYI: she is Brady's future wife, he already asked Mike for permission). It was a long drive, but with the help of a portable DVD player strapped to the back of the front seat headrest and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, the trip was flawless. It was a short stay, but we spent most of it at the beach. The weather was perfect and Brady had a great time running in the waves. Lilah was pretty lazy and slept the whole time which left all the castle building up to all the adults and sometimes Brady. We also got to spend Easter Morning there as well. Brady and Lilah both received a visit from the Easter Bunny.

Future Mr. and Mrs. Brady Smith

Proud father with beautiful baby girl!

I don't think they made a sand castle...I think it was a sand-snowman or something. I guess that would be called a sand-man.

We are now goat herders!

Adam and I have acquired a small herd of 8 goats. 2 nannies and 6 kids. Actually they are just rentals so they will not be staying with us. One of Adam's friends raises goats and offered us a few to help clean up the pasture. We are getting it ready to clear the timber, but with all the undergrowth, it was going to be quite a job. With the goats back there, problem solved. Adam turned into quite a handy farmer as he spent an entire weekend mending fences. We are planning on getting a goat or two to keep Icy company when she comes out here without any other horse friends. I wanted two little nanny goats, but I have absolutely fallen in love with a little buck named Jerry (which is the little goat Brady is petting). He is the only one to seek out affection and he loves a good neck rub.

Brady gets his first haircut:

Ok, so I was finally tired of Brady's hair sticking about 7 inches away from the side of his head. If you every wanted to know what someone looked like after sticking their finger in a light socket, you just needed to take one look at my son. We took him to our family hair-stylist early this morning. We had been talking it up all week. Adam even got his hair cut first so that Brady could see what it was all about. While we waited Brady sat in one of the other chairs and he practiced sitting still while I pumped him up and down. He was quite disappointed the chair couldn't go all the way to the ceiling. When it was his turn he did a beautiful job. He cringed every now and then, and would shoot Suzie some dirty looks hear and there, but I think he really had a good time. And now we have taken control back over Brady's hair, at least contained it a little.

Barn renovation update:

Adam's dad has been coming every week and working a little at a time on turning the Super Chicken Facility, into a quaint little horse barn. Two doors have been cut into the side. One will be accessible from the pasture and will lead into a run-in stall. The other door will be fit with a sliding barn door and will lead into the "lobby" if you will. I will also have a separate tack and feed room that will be accessible from an already existing front door. We are hoping to be finished with it by the end of the summer. I get so excited every time I go down there. I also have to laugh as something Adam says always runs through my head. "Everything that I told you that I would never do, we are doing". Perhaps he is talking about mending fences, feeding goats and clearing trees for a horse pasture to contain a horse at our residence. Love can do powerful things...but so can threats and guilt trips. Just kidding! Nothing but Love here!

Greetings from Wallburg!

Well, Adam, Brady and I have enjoyed our first week at the new house. We are absolutely in love with it. Brady asks constantly on the way home, "Are we going to the new house," as if we had anywhere else to go. If you ever come to visit, he actually gives a pretty good tour, starting and ending with his new room. Our new home package includes: 3 bed room 2.5 bath, full basement, walk up attic, 3 car garage attached to house, 4 car garage detached, barn, pasture, dog lot, and a bigger house payment. The house is completely unpacked, and after this weekend, the garage is cleaned out and everything is in storage. Now, don't get me wrong, we still have a very long "to-do" list. However we have made quite a bit of progress. I have included some pictures, but would love all our friends and family to come out for a visit. Just call first. Here she is.

This is actually the part of the basement up under the front porch. Perfect for storage...or bowling.

Brady's new room. He loves showing everyone this place.

The basement. Brady loves coming down here so we moved all of his big ride-on toys down here. Perfect play place on rainy or cold days!

Our bed room....I love how fresh and bright this room turned out!

Front door and Adam on the phone.

Nice big foyer with coat closet and half bath.

We acquired a very nice wood stove. We cranked this baby up the first few nights during the cold weather. Our room is the farthest from the Living Room, and I woke in a sweat in the middle of the night. This thing works! There are also hook ups for wood stoves in the basement and in the detached garage (Man Cave).

Beautiful wood molding. We are also retrieving an old leather chair of Adam's that we couldn't fit in the old house with the big couch. It will look perfect between the windows!

Living Room

Kitchen...and the best part is....I have a dishwasher!!!!!!!!!

We have a very bright eating area.

The bar over looks the Living Room.

Dog woods are blooming right outside my window.

The barn comes fully loaded with ( chicken poo) an attached goat pasture. It will be a while before we can get Icy out here because we will need to clear the pasture. We will also be extending the pasture up towards the house.

View from the back of the house. You can also see Brady's new play set. Thank you so much to Stephani for giving this to us! Brady is so excited about it.

The old chicken barn will soon be a horse barn. We already have the plans. We just first have to get out all the chicken cages that line both sides of the wall. I hope the chicken smell comes out with them, because I hate chickens. I will hopefully start on the barn this summer.

A lovely front porch. We have a porch swing that needs to be put up, and I have so many plans for this place. It will be the perfect chill-ax place when I'm done with it.

My car finally has a real garage to live in. This is the main garage from the side of the house.

Beau's new pen.

The detached garage, AKA, the man cave. It can fit about 4 cars in it. It also has a back storage room that expands the length of the garage. This is Adam's favorite place! He already has a stove, a sink, and a wood stove hook up going in his favor. Note: to Adam's friends and family...If you see smoke rising from this structure...he's in there.

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House Update

We are in the final stretch. We found out the closing date for our house was bumped up from the 20th to the 11th, as in this Friday. We have been packing like crazy but things have started to slow down. If everything goes as planned we will close on our new house on the 16th. Once that happens I'm going into over drive to try and paint before we move the furniture in there. I'm hiring my volunteer paint crew, so let me know if you are interested. Once we get in there I'll start working on all the before/after pictures to post.

Brady, gets it and is so excited about his new house. He talks about it all the time and is always asking if we need to pack more the new house. He is as excited as we are.

NEWS FLASH!!!!

Ok so all within a 2 week period of time, this has happened:
We sold our house by owner
We looked at 8 homes
We picked 1 of the 8
We have signed all papers and the new house is contract pending

Yes, it's a lot to take in! So many changes are happening in a very short period of time. We are scheduled to close on our house March 20th. Then we are scheduled to close on the new house March 31st (hopefully sooner). We will now be living in Davidson County off Old Thomasville Rd. We will have almost 5 acres, a barn, a pasture, a shop for Adam and lots of room to run for Brady and the pets. We are so excited to move in even though we will have a lot of work to do before we everything just as we want it. I will be posting (in theory) all of the before/after shots as we work on this new house.

Christmas/New Year/ Birthday...so much fun packed into one!

So yet again, I have fallen behind in my blog posts. One would think with the winter break and then all the snow days I would have had time to blog a bit...but no. So instead, you are getting several big events all at once. Let's start with the most recent and work ourselves back.

January 31st, Brady entered his terrible two's...just one year away from the terrifying threes so I hear. His actual birthday was pretty low key. Adam and I took Brady to Chucky Cheese for the first time. Yes, we rode every single ride imaginable..sometimes twice, three, four or even five times. It's been a week and he is still talking about all the rides he went on. Looks like at least one day out of the week during the summer is planned!

We didn't have his actual birthday party until Super Bowl Sunday. We again rented the Doe Run club house as we did last year. This year Mickey Mouse was the guest of honor as every time you turned around his big ears were staring you in the face from balloons, stuffed animals and even the cake. After the pizza had been cleaned out, we hit the gifts; which after just finding places for all his Christmas presents, every time wrapping paper was flung through the air, I was racking my brain for where on Earth would we find a place for one more thing, because it sure as heck wasn't fitting in our little house.

OK...no, Brady did not get a case of beer for his birthday. His helmet for his 4-wheeler was in it...come on, give us some credit!

The Grand Finale came when Brady received his first 4-wheeler. I can't really explain the scene...you will just have to watch.

And yes...I am still trying to figure out where to put all this stuff!

Christmas:

We had a typical holiday this year. We spent the entire holiday travelling between 6 different celebrations. Eating and sleeping in beds that we didn't fit in together, or in the same room with Brady, which means, limited sleep. But between all the road rage/missed turn arguments and sleepless nights, this Christmas was an exciting time as this year, Brady understood that a man named Santa Clause would be leaving presents under his Christmas tree.

Brady became very ill the day after Christmas and sadly he did not get to enjoy the snow that covered our area. You may notice in some of the pictures he doesn't seem to be feeling well. However, he was quite the little trooper and stayed jsut as sweet as ever, even with the fever that woudl eventually turn into a nasty double ear infection. He of course is clear of it now and recently had a great 24 month check up. He is even barely on the weight curve..which is the first time in about 20 months!