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!

Turkey and spice and everything nice

So this was a big week for us...we just hit our 6 month anniversary, and exactly a week later was our 1-year-since-getting-engaged anniversary. Since we got engaged in here in DC, during the week of Thanksgiving, and had the big dinner away from our families then too, this year brought back a flood of memories, and we can't believe it's already been a year.

What a great year though! We have so much to be thankful for, and while I'm sure a blog is a great place to express all our "thankful fors", we'll just save most of it for our journals. Last year was our famous year of not breaking the wishbone since we felt so blessed we had nothing to wish for. This year we might have broken it for a wish or two :), but overall, we feel very blessed and happy as ever.

The weather was awesome here for Turkey Day, and we were especially grateful for that because I (this is Melissa) had decided a great pre-feast family activity would be to join the masses and jump into the Alexandria 5 Mile Turkey Trot. I got Jon to join me after just a little bit of "it'll be fun!" talk (Jon describes it more as "coercion" and says "that's what wives are for"; he loves me). So we were up 'n at 'em as of 8 am to eat our runner's meal and head to the starting line with 2,500 other locals. (Who'da thought people would rather run than sleep on a holiday?) Although the officials had to ask us to slow down a bit so as not to embarrass the trained runners and steal their trophies, we did manage to finish in a decent time...considering we didn't train. At all. Meaning Jon hadn't run ONCE since the marathon in October of last year. And I'd run once or twice in the last month. Maybe we're just dumb, whatever. Everyone feels better about feast eating after 5 miles. Not that we could walk the next day....no pain no gain...

We had the fun experience later that day of having Thanksgiving dinner with some friends from the ward, who were so great, and we had a blast. The food was amazing, the company was great, and the evening ended with a Thanksgiving bingo game, accompanied with little gifts--who could ask for more than that?

Of course we missed our families, and we hope they know we think about them and we'd love to be with them (we also love when they visit us here! wink, wink), but it's fun to be our own little family having experiences out here on the beautiful east coast. We love Thanksgiving. That being said...bring on the Christmas tunes and Christmas lights and halls of decking! We may or may not have decorated already...photos to come in the near future.

The Coming Home, Ski CD 2007-08

Sick ski/snowboard vids are put out all season long by "j product video", each season we make a Ski CD soundtrack of songs to use for the upcoming ski videos. Here is the CD design for the 2007-08 ski season. Nick's the mastermind behind this year's music, and Jon threw down the design expertise, with a cameo drawing by Nick's oldest, Cole.

Elder Smith in Hawaii

This is Elder Smith in his 'Other Side of Heaven' aka Hawaii, posing with a dead wild pig, and its happy hunters.

Justin Boardin' in the White Stuff

Melissa wanted to know how to put videos on our blog so I found the sickest video we have to test it out. This is Jon's bro Justin.

Jon & Melissa... Simpsonized

I've got to attribute this one to the Jesse Spencer, I saw it on his blog first, (thanks for the idea Juice). If you're interested in simpsonizing yourself, go to simpsonizeme.com

Nieces and Nephews

Just wanted to take this space to show off our cute little family members... Cole, Eric, & Ella... Kaylee... Jensen & Drew... Jayci

Technicolor Trees Along the Potomac in the Autumntime

We'd kicked ourselves long enough and decided we were long overdue to take advantage of the famed technicolor dreamland that spreads like an epidemic of colors on the east coast come mid-October to mid-November. Afraid we would miss our chance any day now and the leaves would all of the sudden be brown and dead on the ground, we deemed today the day to cruise the GW Parkway after early morning church to catch our own piece of autumn for the year. And catch it we did.

So here's a smattering of reds, golds, browns, greens, oranges, and yellows along the Potomac near Mount Vernon that we were eating up by the mile, leaving us guilt-free for documenting the fall before winter sneaks in on us.

Trick or Treat!

So technically, we know, Jon didn't have to wear a costume at all. Either way, he would've been Jon Smith. But Melissa insisted we suit up as Pocahontas the indian brave and John Smith the courageous explorer captain guy since Jon's had the name his whole life and never, until this day, taken full advantage of the jokes he hears so frequently.

We walked into the ward party totally late because that's when we get off work, and in ten minutes we won the adult costume contest. We have no idea how that happened, but the props really go to Melissa's mom for her late hours of work with us to finish our costumes while we were in Utah earlier this month. And we're not even cute little kids that she could take out trick-or-treating. That's love. Our ward is awesome though, and so many people were costumed up, so that made it a lot more fun than Jon had thought it might be to go all out for halloween.

The second photo was taken with Melissa's dad when he flew into DC on halloween night and we wanted to don the festive apparel once more for good measure. And we wanted to show up like that at the airport just to be funny. Good to see you Dad...life's always better when you throw a frosty into your night.

Washington Monument from Tidal Basin (Oct 27, 2007)

Ahh, the Washington monument, the location of our first date.

FDR Memorial (Oct 27, 2007)

We don't really HATE, but apparently this rock does.

Joel and Kalli's Wedding (Oct 11, 2007)

Jami's Wedding (July 17, 2007)

Cedar City Mountains (Oct 9, 2007)

Jensen/Dandelion

It would seem that Jensen may have been a dandelion in a former life. He must get cuter with each life. Maybe in his next life he'll be a polar bear or something of the like.

The Sick Huge, Beautiful Mountains of Utah, "Cedar Breaks"

This was the week that Jami and Jeremy got married. Went on a little hike with the fam.

Biking Along the Potomac River (Sept 29, 2007)

Probably the last voyage that our free bicycle will have before conducting major surgery on it. It needs fixin', that became apparent to us when we were peddling but not going anywhere. The blue "Rollfast" has been on some good trips with us this short summer that we've been proud owners.

Our New Green Children (Sept 15, 2007)

The reason we visited Manhattan over Labor Day weekend was to pay China-town a visit to buy 2 new turtles.

The lighter-colored baby is "The Kernal", named after Jon's favorite snack (popcorn), and the darker baby's name is "Nessie", named after melissa's favorite snack (Nesquik chocolate milk).

The big turtle is Lincoln who is about one year old now. We wanted Lincoln to have some friends but he's still jealous and territorial, we've official separated him from the babie's, he's not a fan.