Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2012

In an effort to simplify some things this year we have decided not to send out Christmas cards.  I can only hope that my 9 followers on this blog will tell their friends!  I consider Christmas a wonderful time of the year to catch up with people who live out of town and to tell my friends and family how much they mean to me.  So hopefully that is not lost in this letter.

Like any good Christmas letter, it all starts with the kids:

Claire-age 12

Claire continues to grow taller and taller with each day.  She is around 5' 4" and wears the same size shoes as I do.  She is becoming a teenager.  She is noticing fashion, spends more time on herself in the morning, takes showers without us asking (I do realize we got lucky on this one), and can sleep late if given the opportunity.  Although she is becoming interested in teenage girl things, she is not prissy at all.  In fact, she is the most interested in hunting of any of our kids and will get up early to wade out to the duck blind with her daddy.  She played soccer this year, enjoys biking, running, swimming, cooking & baking.  She has developed a love of HGTV and food network which has been good.  She continues to be a joy to us.  It is scary watching her grow into a young woman, but we can see more of more of who God created her to be each and every year.  She will be changing schools next year and even though it is only 7th grade there seems to be this sense of letting go.  I cannot even imaging what college will be like!  

Emma-age 10

Oh Emma!  Emma is in 4th grade and is doing great in school!  She has a love of music and performing as well as just about anything she can do to get a good laugh.  She has perfected her pogo stick skills this year and has developed an exciting new skill.  Emma is now able to unicycle independently for a good distance!!  Emma also enjoys gymnastics, arts and crafts, talking in a British accent, loves her guinea pig and has a fondness for rocks and minerals!  I frequently dream of what Emma will be.  Will she be on TV, movies, stage or the circus?  God knows how he will use her unique and interesting talents and I just pray he will let me in on the plan soon before I am signing her up for the circus. 

Sam-age 8

Sam is all about sports.  He loves to play them, watch them and listen to them.  I could see Sam as a sportscaster.  Sam is easy going and relaxed which serves him well except for when we are in a hurry!  Sam also played soccer this year.  He is currently playing basketball and is already signed up for baseball in the spring.  Once a very chubby baby, Sam is now tall and slim.  He still has his wonderful red hair color which his momma loves!  Sam is our most veracious reader.  He is currently on book 4 of the Harry Potter series.  He enjoys his friends and excels in school.  He enjoys being outdoors and fishing with his daddy, but is not yet sure about hunting as a sport.  Sam also enjoys playing board games, including chess.  

Scott and Lisa

We are ageless, can't you tell?!  

Scott continues to work for and mange his own company, Acuity Anesthesiology.  Being a doctor has it's challenges as well as it's rewards.  Being on call is never fun especially because he is away from us more than we would like.  However, Scott does make the most of his time at home and is a very good Daddy.  Scott continues to enjoy hunting, fishing and being outdoors.  He does less home projects than ever before due to lack of time, but has enjoyed setting up his garage at the new house, replacing some moldings in Claire's room and hanging a TV or two!  He also got his first gas grill this year.  He is a charcoal man at heart, but convenience won out.  

Lisa continues to stay home or rather, hold down the fort.  She is finally finished unpacking and is still trying to set up "house" in a way that is beautiful and functional!  Lisa still loves to run although injury has set her back this fall.  She is hopeful to be able to run some sort of race this spring.  She co-leads a Bible study at her church one morning a week and continues to help out at the kids' school whenever she can.  She finds herself driving to and from Farmington (her home town) more since her grandfather has an aggressive form of cancer.  She loves the summer, vacations and laughing with good friends.  

We have had a crazy year!  2 moves and a lot of change.  As I reflect on this year it seems like a whirlwind.  Like Ferris Bueller says, "Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it." I think we are in a stop phase right now.  I am thankful.  

God has been so good to us this year in so many ways.  I hope that you and your family can say the same :)  We have been increasingly aware of God's grace to us and his protection of our family this year.  Just when we think we are in control God intervenes in huge and scary ways.  He is so much bigger and our brokenness so much more than we want to make it out to be.  I am so grateful to have Jesus Christ as my savior and my hope rests in him.   I am truly resting in the peace only God can give this holiday season.  Merry Christmas!

We love to keep in touch and see faces from a far!  If you find yourself in St. Louis please let us know. We have plenty of space for you.  If you are local, well you know where we are! 

Love,

Scott, Lisa, Claire, Emma and Sam Smout

Deer Camp 2012

We just returned from what we lovingly refer to as "Deer Camp", which is basically a hunting weekend with good friends.  John Kramer is a kind man who loves a good tradition and we are happy to be part of it.  Scott enjoys it the most, but I have to say this year I really enjoyed it too.  I am not so scared anymore of the guns and the knives and the guts and all.  Plus my kids are older and are more responsible with the before mentioned items.  Not that safety is not a major part of the weekend!  Everyone sports bright orange all the time and care is taken by everyone to make it a safe and enjoyable time...there was only a few unsafe "farm" events like little girls driving the Kubota and kids in the back of trucks :)

Men In Orange

the amazing views and clear sky

Our cabin

Rosie, the mini Dachshund who stole Emma's heart.

Naples in photos

We are back and I finally found that cable for my camera!  Here are some of my favorite photos of our trip.

 Emma and Sam on our last night.  

 The view off the pool deck of the beautiful clouds after Isaac was long gone.  What can you make out of the cloud shapes?!

 Naples proved to have crabs too!  We love to run all over the beach at night and chase these little fellas'.  Don't worry, we put them back.

 This is the only photo I got the entire trip with all 3 kids.  This was in Lakeland outside Scott's grandma Lois' place.  It was just starting to rain.  I am so glad I got one photo before Claire had to leave to go back to St. Louis.

 This is us with Great Grandma Lois at Olive Garden where we got the absolute best service ever.  I am laughing just typing this.  I think this waitress would have given us her right arm if we needed it!  It made the dinner enjoyable and hopefully her manager is reading this!!!  Lois is 98 and is doing quite well.  She still has some spunk and I love that about her.  Every time I see her she always tells me how nice she thought our wedding was.  It tickles me every time.  

 Oops, I lied earlier.  I not only got a picture of all 3 kids, but one with me in it.  RARE.  I love the way Sam looks in this picture.  He is standing so tall.  They are all trying to keep up with Claire.

 Emma and Sam play this ninja game which I find hilarious so I had to get a picture of it.  Emma found those gigantic sunglasses in the ocean and they came all the way home to St. Louis with us...Yep!

Here is the backyard view of the house we had for all 8 days!  It was the nicest place I have ever stayed.  I feel so lucky to have won this trip at the CCS auction.  We were only 1.5 blocks from the beach and could walk almost everywhere.

Our top 13 of this vacation (most of these are from Emma):

1.  She found a sand dollar

2.  She found a starfish

3.  She found a shark tooth, or 70 of them.

4.  She got a polish change and got to sit in a massaging chair

5.  She got to eat grouper, snapper, shrimp and scallops

6.  She got to try lobster

7.  Sam got to see an alligator

8.  Daddy got a new FL gators hat

9.  We got to see grandma Lois

10.  We did not get hit by a hurricane and only lost power for about 3 hours!

11.  We found Abbott's custard in Naples

12.  We discovered we need a gas grill

13.  "Even Dad is really into shells!" True quote.

And Claire managed to fly alone back to St. Louis with only one small mishap which all worked out.  I learned that when an airplane begins taxiing away from the gate that doesn't not always mean it is taking off!  

Naples...My questions from the beach chair

We are in Naples.  It is beautiful and so relaxing.  I forgot my camera cable to transfer pictures to my computer so you will have to wait for those.  I still feel the need to blog, mostly because I have the time, but also because I have had time to think.  Time to think gives me thoughts that I want to record before they pass me by.

I have been thinking a lot about the questions I am currently struggling with.  I am asking myself WHY am I so anxious about making decisions for and about my children.  Thy simple answer to the WHY is because I love them severely and I want them to know it, feel it. The more complex answer to the WHY is that I want to be in control of them and their life.  I want them to be successful members of society that don't carry baggage.  I want them to be normal.  I want them to feel normal.  I want them to be self-confident and to be good at something, not everything, but something.  And then I dig a little deeper and my blood pressure creeps up and I check my email again and I am scheduling another meeting in the management of my kids and I just want to cry.  WHY does it seem so hard sometimes?
This brings me to prayer this week on my beach chair.  I cry out to God to just help me to trust him with the little people I am responsible for.  Please guide me.  Help me to stop feeling anxious and to trust him with everything.  This is hard.

Also from my beach chair this week I read a book.  I know this is surprising for many.  I read a fiction book.  One of maybe 4 in my adult life.  The funny thing about this book is that I bought it to read the last time Scott and I took a trip to Hawaii (over 5 years ago) and I never read it on that trip.  However, I never would have appreciated it the way I did when reading it now.  One of the main characters has dyslexia.  As you probably know Emma was diagnosed with dyslexia this year.  There is a great deal of redemption in the book for this character and boy did she ever remind me of my Emma!!  I am constantly seeing Emma in a new light.  Her talents are many.  She is delightful, interesting, fun and inquisitive. In the book the character with dyslexia becomes a personal shopper/fashion designer.  She is good at this and always had been, but never acted on it because she always compared herself to her attorney sister.  She thought that what she was good at, was not good enough.   Claire has been absent from our trip since Tuesday because she flew back to St. Louis.  We have missed her.  She is having fun at 6th grade camp.  I love having 2 girls, but there is and always will be competition between girls. I mean part of the WHY that I struggle with is competition with other women...I means it exists right?  How do I escape it?  Today Emma and I went shopping in downtown Naples.  She was my personal shopper.  She would pick things out for me and give me her opinions freely, she was right some of the time!  It was really fun.  We went in every store that looked interesting in a 6 block stretch.  She and I loved every minute.

I have felt lazy this vacation.  I have sat...A LOT.  I cannot run due to a femoral neck stress fracture.  I am in a bad mood.  It is sort of nice to have an excuse to sit, but I need to run.  I run for my head.  I can work out a lot of the answers to my questions on a long run.  If I don't answer them, at least they don't matter for a short time.  They go away and all seems right.  I know the runner's high exists, and the beach high is only temporary.  I am sort of scared to go home.  I will enjoy it for 1 more day and then I will need to rest in not having all my questions answered.  Rest in not knowing what is best.  Rest in knowing that my God knows and cares.  Rest in knowing that I will never be good enough.  Rest in knowing that Jesus is the answer to all of my questions.  It sounds easy.  It is hard.

A funny quote

We recently took a road trip.  We stopped periodically mostly for me to go to the bathroom.  I am training for a marathon so hydration is essential even on road trips which makes us stop more frequently.  At every stop there would be a conversation like this:

Me:  "I am going to stop here to go potty.  Who needs to go potty?"
Claire: "Not me"
Sam:  "Not me"
Emma:  "I'll try.  It's better to try each time than to feel guilty."

I am not exactly sure why but this really tickled my funny bone.  I mean guilt is a feeling that I really want my kids to understand.  I just never imagined it would come in that context, but yet I got what she was saying.

It's been a while

Summer is half way over and we have been SUPER busy having fun!  We moved into our new house on May 14th which was just part of the craziness of May.  We got through all the end of the year events at school which are always fun.  Field day, talent shows, operas, retirement party for the beloved Mrs. Rahm and the mom's end of school luncheon!  Boxes remain in unused portions of the house, but soon it will be cold and there won't be as much going on so we can finish unpacking then.

Our house has been great.  The picture taken on the header of the blog was actually the kids' first jump into our pool.  We have always wanted a pool and are really getting a lot of use out of it this summer with our triple digit temps.  

We have almost double our previous square footage which gives us plenty of space to spread out.  We have  had a fair amount of company so far this summer so if you want to come visit give us a shout out.  We have space for you and your family or we can put you outside with the dog!  Just jokin'.  But we did make Blitzen an outside dog which is proving to be a good decision...or at least I am happy :)

Here are some photos of our summer so far:

Papa Chas and Grandma Lorene both turned 86 this year.  This is papa blowing out his candles on our patio.  We did not have 86 but we put on as many as we could get to fit.

Here is a front view of our new house

Our cousins, the LeBaron's came to town to visit

 We took a lot of pictures.

I will be posting more this week as we have a lot going on...kids are at camp and my in-laws are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary.  Stay tuned.  I would like to promise I will be better about blogging, but I cannot tell a lie.  I will try.

A very full weekend

We had a very full and very fun weekend.  It started for me about 4:30 am on Saturday when I got up to go to the JBS potpourri sale.  This is basically a huge yard sale that happens at a local private school once a year.  Some fun girls I know organized about 15 of us a trip there that included sitting in line for about 2 hours.  All in all it was very fun and a huge learning experience about what people will do for a  bargain.  I spent $22 and got 2 coats, 7 pairs of pants, 7 shirts, a sweater, a pencil holder, a diary (with a lock and the keys) and a salad dressing container.  I love that sort of thing and could have stayed there all morning but I needed to scoot to get my rental house ready for a showing and get to a 10:30 baseball game.

After Sam's baseball game he headed to the Cardinals game with Scott and 2 of his friends.  They had a great time sitting in the bleacher seats.  It was a beautiful day for a game and the boys were very good game watchers.  After the game they came back to the house for cupcakes and some foosball play.  Sam got a new foosball table from us for his 8th birthday.

Scott had a very full day as then he needed to get ready for the Daddy/daughter dance at school that evening.  The girls were SOOOOOO excited.  I took them dress shopping while the boys were at the game and they looked beautiful.  Scott got them wrist corsages because it was "suggested", he did not regret it.  They have never been so excited!  He took them out to Farotto's for dinner after a short photo session.  When they got home Sam was asleep and I was already in bed, but not asleep so I still got to hear all the details about the evening.  I can't wait until they are older and I get to hear about the dance...or maybe I can!

Happy birthday Sam!  

Tonight for Sam's actual birthday we met Scott in Arnold at Culver's (his choice).  His sister's gave him back massages!  He had a pretty good birthday.

The life of a table

For 13 years we have had the same kitchen table. Here is her story...

I was born Ethan Allen and sold around 1970. In 1998 in Kansas City, a nice couple who no longer liked my look, listed me in the classifieds. I was purchased by Scott and Lisa, these cute young newlyweds, who took me home and jammed me into some apartment. I came with 4 chairs, a bench and a 2-piece hutch. We were so happy together.

I loved the sun and so did that cute newlywed couple so we moved to the beach. They had a cute baby. She loved me too. She would bang on me but did not cause any real damage. I had no idea what was to come.

In 2001 I moved to St. Louis and the top part of my hutch got put in storage. It was just too big for their little house. My cute newlywed couple now had 3 babies. I loved them. They used me for every birthday party. In 2005 they moved to a house with a breakfast nook! How dare they... because this meant my chairs were too big and they, along with my hutch had to be sold! By 2005 the 3 babies were getting bigger and they were stronger and my pine wood is soft. The forks and knives began digging into me and the Sharpies autographed me several times with names as sweet as "EMMA". My finish was starting to bubble and peel. I was not looking so good. I feared they were going to get rid of me.

That cute newlywed couple has grown up too. They no longer like to spend money on expensive furniture. They realize that it will all get a knick sooner or later and that resale is the way to go! They took a trip to look at newer tables and that is when the really wise Scott said to his wife, "You like that table? It looks just like our table." And at that very point my life was saved! I was unaware of the microderm abrasion I was about to undergo, but I can't get enough of myself now!

Scott sanded me down and Lisa beat me with a chain and poked nails into me. Ouch!

They took my legs off. I was humiliated and sent to the garage. I had thought what the kids had put me through with their forks was hard, but this was horrible. Lisa stained me with a gel stain and put 4 coats of poly on me and look at me now...


I love my new look! Do you? I am about to get moved again and Lisa's grandparents just bought me 6 new black chairs. I get to keep my bench although there is talk she might be getting some work done too. I love my family and I am so glad they are going to hold on to me a bit longer.

Bird Museum

Second grade does a wonderful unit on birds every Spring. It includes a field trip to the World Bird Sanctuary as well as a research poster and culminates in dressing up as your bird and doing a "museum" consisting of a 30 second presentation to parents and other classes at CCS.

Sam chose the Atlantic Puffin as his bird. It is in the arctic bird family! Ask him about his bird and he can tell you a myriad of interesting facts! Making the costume was fairly easy because we at least only had 3 basic colors unlike Emma's painted bunting choice last year!

We, meaning I, got a late start on the costume. Sam was getting sort of stressed out that it wasn't going to be done on time and I kept assuring him that I would get it done. He was more than grateful when he saw the finished product yesterday. It was no the most elaborate costume by any means, but he loved it and that made me happy :)

Here is his research poster:
Here is Bradley, the king penguin, next to Sam. Bradley, "Where is your face?"
I am so proud of Sam and really of the entire second grade for pulling this off. I drove on Tuesday to the bird sanctuary and all 5 of the kids in my van would not stop talking about their birds. They really learned a lot through this unit and it was a joy to see them so excited about learning.

Now off to bed. The bird museum is an exhausting week for the parents.

Some new things

I feel the need to ramble this morning so here goes...

We have a house! I am excited about that and fearful all at the same time. I am excited enough to tell you, but fearful enough to not give you the address!! It will be great for our family and most of all my boys, who are making plans for the vast amount of green space. We will be there in 2 months and so the visual furniture arranging has begun in my head. Scott and I are giving a face lift to our kitchen table which I will proudly post another time. But overall there is a feeling of anticipation and a great feeling of closure in finding a place to land and live for a LONG time!

I am also struggling with change. Change of moving outside 270. I feel that I am moving very far away. I know it is for the best, but I am sad. I fear that my friendships will change and that my running schedule will suffer and that my kids will be late EVERY day. There is also a lot of staff changes going on at my church and that is always hard. You love the people who serve you weekly in a weird way and when they leave, although it is happy for them, there is a feeling of great loss.

I am also excited about my recent auction win! Scott and I won the raffle type drawing on Saturday night at the CCS auction and chose the trip to Naples! I have never ever won anything like that! It seems that God knows we will need another vacation after all of this "transition" stuff!

Our dear friends, The Ellisons, had baby #6 last week. It was a great joy to rejoice with them in having another, long awaited, little GIRL (this should help balance out the 4 boys). Emmaline was a full term baby but within the first 48 hours she was in the NICU and is still in the hospital. They are full of faith and trust that God will take care of her, but they still do not know what is wrong and why she is failing to breathe, at times. Just another reminder of joy and struggle all mixed together, which draws us closer to God, even if it is just to ask, "Why?"

Our Emma was diagnosed with Dyslexia a couple of weeks ago and is undergoing a special reading program at school. She is aware and has a great attitude which I am very thankful for! I feel so loved by everyone involved at our school. While I am not necessarily rejoicing in this diagnosis, I am thankful that we know what if "OFF" about her and that we can rejoice in her strengths. She has learned to adapt her learning to compensate for this visual lag and is therefore really smart everywhere else! And as always she is an inquisitive little thing!

It is spring her in St. Louis which is a beautiful combination with daylight savings time! My kids are tired and can't awake on time, but the weather was great for eating our tacos outside last night! And Claire got a new bike yesterday which she has been riding around the loop here at our rental...I do take joy in how God has provided for us in all the little details :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Vday everyone! We hope you get a chance today to tell everyone in your life how much you LOVE them!

Here is Sam, Claire and Emma posing with our "LUV-BOT" which Claire is entering into a Valentine's day box contest at school today. It was fun to assemble and last minute like always, but we are proud of him!

Time Out

About the same time we were putting our house on the market we decided to plan a little January get-a-way! We generally are craving somewhere warm in January but also had the idea of wanting to do a destination 13.1!! This would be Scott's first so he got to choose. He chose based on one criteria...FLAT, zero elevation. Miami was the winner and so we booked it.

We began to waffle about the timing of this. Should we go or not go? We finally decided if the Mother-In-Law was willing to keep the kids then we should go. She was, and we did! It was really fun!

We raced, we finished, I beat Scott! only by 2 minutes :)

We stayed at Eden Roc resort on the beach for 2 nights. It was as they say, "Delightful"

Then we hit Coral Gables for one night and headed back home. It was just the perfect trip. We relaxed a lot, exercised some, enjoyed the sun and humidity, took in the culture of Miami (just a bit), ate fabulous food...We did not talk about where we will live or how our children were doing. It was truly a vacation from our real life!

I know that you won't believe me if I said that nothing new has happened since Christmas!

To say that nothing new has happened in the life of the Smouts since Christmas would be a big fat LIE! However if you are waiting for some big announcement...we don't exactly have that either. We do however have a story that we are living day by day that we can share about our housing situation. It is an ongoing story of how God is shaping our desires, defining needs vs. wants in our life, making us and our children more flexible, allowing us to be grateful for all God has blessed us with and deepening our trust in that he knows the end of this story.

Christmas was full of ups and downs. We had a contract on a property we really wanted, but we had to walk away. It was sad. We were angry. We started packing not sure of where we were headed. Our Gannon house looked perfect to us at that time. We were sad. I thought we were making a huge mistake. Here is our oh, so perfect Gannon house, that no longer belongs to us but it making a cute young couple with NO children very happy! Long live Gannon!

And while we do love the Gannon house, it had it's limitations for us. We had been there 6 years knowing that it would not be our forever house. Kids keep growing and the rooms did not. We knew it was time to let it go...

It went under contract quickly and SOLD on January 23rd!
Our goal was to find a rental without a 1 year lease by January 1 and God provided this adorable house in Glendale for us to rent. Only catch is it is under a contingent contract so we have to be out by May 15th IF the buyers sell their house in order to close on this one. Oh so complicated!! We are enjoying this house. It is great! The adjustment was a hard one but after being here a month the kids are happy and it feels homey :)
So where we will go from here, only God knows at this point. We have looked at so many houses it is enough to make my head spin or give me a good headache at least. It is stressful. We know we may end up moving again but are trying to see how God will work this all out in the end. So the big announcement is yet to come, but if you would join us on this journey, through prayer, we would be so grateful.