The Treehouse: White to RED

Extreme Home Makeover: Level 1.
Includes: new brushed metal fixtures to hold certain key bathroom items; classic ruby red paint to kick the kitchen up a notch; new light fixture in the kitchen.

Lessons learned:
1. Red paint actually comes magenta in the can. This will change with dry time and extra coats. 3 of them.
2. Painter's tape is not foolproof and should not be trusted or taken advantage of.
3. Touch up paint should match previous paint.
4. Sharp ceiling spikes are unsafe, unnecessary, and hurt BAD.
5. You can't start painting mid-President's Day Monday and be done President's Day evening. Especially for "deep base" colors. Shoot for 2 days.
6. You learn a lot about previous tenants when you try to paint over their paint job.
7. Installing a ceiling light fixture IS rocket science. And it can light your house on fire.
8. If you have to move your stove for any reason, it turns out you CAN'T plug it into any regular socket. Have you seen the size of that thing?
9. It also turns out that microwaving the same meal you would have made on the stove top is just as good. Who'da thought?
10. A power drill would be a good Christmas gift next year.

Here's our experience in photos, and for the record, we LOVE the new look.

National Geographic Museum Frog Exhibit

Frogs :)

And friends! We went with some friends to the Nat'l Geographic Museum and had fun learning new random facts about frogs. Such as the huge African toad that will attack even humans if they come near, latch onto them with their massive jaws, and not let go until they are pried off. Or the "Gigolo Frog" (Nat'l Geographic said it, not me) that finds one mate, makes frog eggs with her, then find another mate that he tricks into making more frog eggs with so that the first mate'babies, now hatched, can have the second mate's eggs for food and EAT them all. A user and a loser. What a punk!

Or the fact that some desert frogs store water in their bladders in time of drought to have water built up. Apparently the aborigines would stick the tail end of the frog in their mouths and squeeze the frog's stomach to let the water into their mouths...gross. As Shiloh said "we actually call that water something else..." And we learned that the most poisonous animal on earth is a poison dart frog, who has enough poison in its body to kill 10,000 mice or 200 people, or something like that. I think I learned that in 3rd grade during our Rain forest section, but you know, live and forget, learn and re-learn.

The last photo was supposed to be taken of all our feet over the Nat'l Geographic seal, but Jon of course had to move the camera up to take a candid of our unexpectant faces. So unattractive. Thanks Jon.

IHOP National Pancake Day

So, we departed for IHOP to get some free pancakes, but thanks to the worst ice storm of the year, we ended up eating free pancakes at the Smith residence. Let it not be said the Smith's don't celebrate National Pancake Day.

Photoshop 101

Jon had the opportunity to teach and inspire up and coming Photoshop users at the Mount Vernon Stake Arts Festival. Melissa's the one with the chalkboard art skills. I don't know why the yellow picture, it makes Jon look like some professor from the time of discolored photos, the glasses may or may not aid in that look as well. After the class Melissa practiced the piano as Jon practiced his photography. Melissa's famous one-eye look successfully captured.

Half-Mast in Honor of the Beloved Prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley (27 Jan 2008)

This a photo of the flag at half-mast at the Washington DC temple, the day after President Gordon B. Hinckley passed away. We're excited that President Hinckley and his wife are once again united, but as for our house, it's been a tough week coming to realize how much we're going to miss that extraordinary man. We love President Hinckley very much, and we'll NEVER forget him and his great legacy.

We've also posted a video clip that we love by CNN anchorman Glenn Beck, an LDS convert, giving his own tribute to the prophet.

DC Temple, Night Photos

We're kind of on-again, off-again bloggers--you're either getting a mad rush of photos or a big empty break for a month. Well get ready for our on-again moment and open up for your drink of Smiths at fire hydrant speed, because we replaced our camera and we're back with force (at least for a week or two until the next drought).

Jon's cousin came into town for a visit, and since work took over our days, we took full advantage of the nights and took moonlight field trips to show off the DC sites. We love the temple, and we obviously can't take enough pictures of it. Eat 'em up.

Night Photos in DC

In the first photo you notice three of us, that's because Jon's cousin Scott Wakefield came in town, which allowed us to get all these cool night shots.

Williamsburg, VA (Martin Luther King Jr. Day)

For Martin Luther King Day, we decided to spontaneously cruise down to Williamsburg, stay in a $30 motel, and learn a little bit about our nation's history. We were fortunate enough to have a friend lend us her camera, and thus we were back to our normal photo-taking frenzy.

Below are photos of us around Williamsburg, taking our turn in the stocks, walking down the cobblestone streets and past the old buildings, then photos of the original capitol building of Virginia, the Governor's Palace, Jon inside the Bishop's Parish church, Melissa in a classroom in the Wren Building (oldest academic building in America), and us being crazy and romantical on the beach of James River, overlooking the Jamestown Settlement.

Check out the photo of a white wall with writing on it next to a window. We thought this was pretty cool--it's a replica of a cell in the nation's first insane asylum, and on the wall was scrawled the exact scripture that moved the great prophet Joseph Smith to ask the question in the grove that initiated the story of the restoration of the gospel.

It was a cold day, but the crowds were almost nonexistent, so we loved it.

Christmas Eve Caroling with the Old Folks

We may or may not be posting this over a month late. This is the infamous last photo in the records from our parted camera. This is us keeping the Christmas Eve Caroling tradition alive by singing to the old folks here in Virginia with friends from our ward.

Jim brought his dog, Robin brought the cookies, we all brought the Christmas cheer, and the old folks brought the standing ovations. This guy in the photo wanted to follow us around the rest of the evening as we sang to others. We were pretty much a hit, and all walked away with more gratitude for what we have this Christmas.

Post-posting syndrome

You may or may not have noticed that sometimes when we post things it will just be a long chain of photos and absolutely no text. This goes back to an internet problem (Jon has to run outside with his laptop to get service strong enough to upload the photos on the post) that leaves us posting pics with a hope of typing up something witty to go with them later. Unfortunately it's been quite a challenge to do that, but since we have no photos to post, we've finally been able to go back and fill in the blanks. So, in case you were interested, you could go back now and actually find out what the stories behind the pics are. We're just backwards, don't worry about it.

LOST: Casio Exilim 7.0 megapixel camera, dark gray metal finish, tucked rightfully in its candy-apple green case

Saddest news of the holidays...we unexplainably lost possession of our camera. On its one-year-birthday of becoming our brand new camera last Christmas. It makes no sense to us at all, it's just gone. At first we thought it would just show up later, but it's way later now, and it's a definite no show.

We're kind of picture-taking junkies (in case you can't tell), so we've been going through some serious withdrawals. It's weird how when you don't have a camera, you don't want to do anything cool because you have no means of documenting it. Or maybe that's just us. Who knows who we're documenting it for, but we like it documented nonetheless. Anyway, so this is our disclaimer, letting the blog world know we haven't been participating as of late because we haven't had a camera. And who wants to read text-only blogs? I apologize in advance for having to read ours until we get a new moment-freezer machine.

In the meantime, we're learning to go out and have fun without having a photo shoot at the same time. It's good for us, because then we can just focus on each other and enjoying whatever we're doing. My favorite example of this was the day after Christmas. We wanted to see the Downtown decorations before they were taken down, so, on Day 2 of being camera-less, we took the plunge. It was awesome, and we could not get enough of how rad they had set up the trains outside the Botanical Garden. The leaf/organic material monuments inside were awesome too. We were so impressed. We checked out the National Tree, looked for the Utah state tree, enjoyed the heat from the MASSIVE yule logs that some professional yule log burner man was burning up in a pit, and swung past the Capitol lawn tree as well.

After that we were just slowly walking the streets of DC in a light rain, and loving how quiet the streets were, and we totally stumbled onto this awesome ice skating rink that was HUGE! It was built right on top of the huge fountain in the Sculpture Garden, and it was totally empty that night. The rain had stopped, I'd never been ice skating before, and in a moment of spontaneity, we forked out the money and jumped onto the rink. The city was so quiet, and we were totally alone on this huge rink playing old music, surrounded by awesome DC buildings and a pinkish-whitish night sky. I got to see Jon sport some sweet ice skating moves, and I didn't even fall once. That was big. It was like this weird, perfect, winter wonderland night. I wish we could have had 100 pictures of that night, but I don't think they would have portrayed how perfect it was anyway. We watched other families come and go taking tons of pictures, and we could just forget all about that and kind of get lost in the moment.

This is the lamest, longest post ever, and it doesn't do any of the things I'm talking about justice. See, I told you we need a camera. :)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

These are the main attractions at the Smith home for the holidays this year! We splurged and got a 2-footer-pre-lit tree from Target, which fit perfectly on a box in our only available space in the apartment. We've got this awesome idea of wrapping anything we get at the store that we don't need immediately, and all of the sudden we've got all these presents under the tree! We're gonna be dying for the toothpaste we wrapped if our current tube doesn't hold over long enough.

Our stockings have been hung on the wall with care, we've put Christmas lights everywhere we can, and we couldn't feel more festive. We're totally into Christmas, and it's been fun sharing our family's traditions with each other as we combine them and try to come us with some new things of our own. We're loving our little Christmas decorations in our little apartment, it's perfect for us.

Ward Christmas Party

The Ward titled our Christmas party "A Night in Bethlehem", and thus invited us all to don our best Bethlehemite apparels. Jon was thought by the committee to be a great candidate for a Roman Soldier, and thus volunteered for the part. Free costume for him. Us being a non-bathrobe kind of family, and not being clever enough to think of some cheap material we could use for a headress of sorts for me, Jon insisted I wear the tropical-stripe "towel for two" beach towel strapped onto my head. So I just sucked it up and went as the oh-so-untrendy Bethlemita. Fortunately, the peeps in our Bethlehem didn't seem to be judgmental. Jon made a poor little 2-year-old boy cry when he tried to put him in "jail", I whipped up our names in some sweet Hebraic calligraphy, and we went home grateful that we don't really have to make our own sandals nowadays, or Jon would be wearing his hand-crafted cardboard-and-twine flip-flop getup every day to work.

Christmas Lights, Washington DC Temple

If we were to have included a photo for our Christmas card, one of these probably would have made the cut. But since we're pretty photo-obsessed and we smatter our blog with photos of ourselves all the time anyway, we thought we'd spare you all the extra photo attachment with the Christmas card.

We ended up making the trip to see the lights at the temple three times this year. We got to go to the Festival of Lights program, then we went once with family, and another time with friends. What a great opportunity to have the temple so close, we love it. We were super impressed with the lights and their un-traditional colors, and we're grateful for whoever had to put all those lights up...that's gotta be a rough job. Nice work temple-light-putter-uppers!

Festival of Lights, Washington DC Temple

Melissa's visiting teaching companion was in charge of the invitation for the Festival of Lights, and after discovering that Jon's a designer asked him to design the invitation for this year, which he did, and this is it.

"The Awakening" w/ Jami & Jeremy (Dec 1, 2007)

Jon and I LOVE having family come out to visit us, and we got lucky enough to have my sister Jami and her husband Jeremy in the neighborhood. Jeremy was out east interviewing for his residency, and we REALLY hope they pick the one closest to us!! :) It would be so fun to have family nearby out here.

We had lots of fun with them for the short less-than-24-hour time bracket we had them. We took them to watch the planes coming in at Gravelly Point, climbed around on the Awakening (which made the photo shoot), and cruised up to the temple to see the lights. Unfortunately, the night ended with a terrible dinner at Chili's, but the hilarious conversations we had there (while waiting an hour for our waitress) made it totally worth it. Note to self: eat at home with guests.

We wish they could have stayed longer, but thanks so much you two for going hours out of your way to come say hi! We love you guys!