March Nuts and Bolts

Our entry in the Smith Family Nuts and Bolts newsletter for March:

“March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb.”

We’ve all heard this adage, one that applies to March weather. The past month applied fittingly to the Smith Family too! Our eventful March begun with the inevitable ward split that occurred on Fast Sunday. It was definitely time as our ward swelled to 710 people (more than double from the 330 we started with). Some took it hard, but most were excited for the change. We kept most of Devon Glen (our neighborhood), Green Acres (our mobile home park), and the block north of it. We’re now sitting at 470 members, still a large congregation. It’s exciting knowing that we’ll now have more time to bring people back to Church. Picking up the pieces after the split has kept us hopping as we’ve since reorganized the Relief Society, High Priests, Elders Quorum (we lost both quorum presidents), Young Men, Ward Mission, and Activities Committee. Matt Kieffer, the 2nd Counselor in the bishopric was also released and Kevin Wilkins is now serving with us. Things have died down considerably, but I think we were busier than when the ward was created from scratch!

Tayah is now a sitter and we couldn’t be happier. She now will sit and play for longer periods of time. She has been attending the same baby sign language class Kadence did and now can do five or so signs (including Daddy…how fun!). She has followed her sister’s example by waking up early, usually around 6:30. She still sleeps 12 hours and takes two good naps so we can’t complain too much. She likes to pull herself up to a standing positions and has her fair share of bumps and bruises. Tayah is such a good, sweet baby and brings us so much joy. Kadence has her moments where she enjoys “disciplining” her sister (“No, no Tayah!”), but they already have quite the special bond with each other.

Kadence has grown right into a two-year old. In fact, she’s a pro! Of course, she’s so fun and sweet most of the time, but has developed the occasional attitude. It’s so fun to watch her grow daily. She loves reading and can spend long periods of time immersed in books. Kadence will often walk around the house singing non-stop. She particularly loves Primary songs. She and Tayah were both under the weather this month, but before that, she managed to have several play days with neighborhood friends. Kadence doesn’t talk a whole lot in Nursery, but enjoys her teachers and the time there. She says funny things each day, things we’ve endearingly dubbed Kadenceisms on our blog. Kadence and I also had our first Daddy/daughter date to the Springville Museum of Art.

Elizabeth turned 29 this month and we’re ever so grateful for all she does. We had a fun day with gifts, lunch at Tucano’s and a quiet night at home. We had a family party on Easter Sunday for her. She was in charge of arranging the rides and tickets our Young Women had for the General YW meeting. She worked a lot in our yard as we had a large amount of compost delivered to our house. I’d often wheelbarrow it out and she’d make it look pretty. We also planted some trees and are excited to get a lot of this work done in the cool Spring (sometimes cold) weather. She also had the second half of her exhilaratingc root canal. She does so much for our little family!

I had an eventful month at work as we finally moved into our new LDS Philanthropies building located at 1450 N. University Avenue. It is a beautiful building and is a world of improvement over our previous locale. It has been a fairly smooth transition and we’re still getting settled. We have had an enormously successful year, already raising nearly as much money now as we did in 2007. We hope it continues! We enjoyed having all 70 employees to our house for a fun to-do (two nights). We also went around and visited with most BYU’s deans, distributing Annual Fund money to them. We also held our annual student giving campaign on campus. I conducted sacrament meetings in March.

Other events: Achievement Days Recognition Night, Cougar Club with Dad, my mother had eye surgery, a temple trip, a fabulous Easter with new Easter dresses and Easter egg hunts (ward and family), a party with my high school friends here, a mission preparation fireside (with a former mission president in our ward), St. Patrick’s Day, visits with the Stake Presidency, Hansens’ reception, a ward canned food drive, and some new additions to our DVD collection(Enchanted and 101 Dalmations).

Come to think if it, March actually came in and went out like a lion…what a wonderful month!