Smith Family Weblog

This week, I had the great fortune of spending a few days with my sister-in-law Laura and my new twin nieces Hazel and Eliza. They are quite possibly the sweetest babies ever—small but strong at around seven pounds each.

Laura, despite sleeping in spurts of 90 minutes at most for the last three weeks, has stepped into motherhood with remarkable grace and aplomb. She and Josh make a great team.

This was how I spent most of my trip, and believe me, it was very hard to leave.

I miss them already.

There’s very good news (and beautiful pictures) over at The House on Hudson.

As Ava said when she found out Laura and Josh were expecting twins: “Two, two, two babies! Two babies on the SAME DAY!”

We all share that level of excitement. Congratulations, Josh and Laura, and welcome, Hazel and Eliza.

Katie’s boyfriend Tom traveled to Nebraska and Kansas via train to spend part of the holidays with our family. He joined us for New Year’s Eve, then spent about a week at our house. He’s on my list of favorite people because he entertains my children, compliments my cooking and shovels snowy sidewalks.

He’s one of Bryan’s favorites because he generously provided kick-ass tickets to the KU/Cornell game earlier this week. Tom’s a Cornell alum, but Bryan was able to overlook that…and the visiting team’s bench.

Tom spent the week touring Kansas, quite literally. Every night, he’d come home and tell us more about our little niche than we’ve managed to uncover in the past three years. We very much enjoyed his company, and we were sad to see him go. I know, though, that someone else was very glad he was headed home.

I hope they both come back soon…and if it isn’t too much to ask, permanently. As the song says, Tom…

Hey ramblin’ boy, why don’t you settle down
Boston ain’t your kinda town…

I think we ended up with about 400 photos over the Christmas break, but I culled the 50 most descriptive in the slide show below.

It wasn’t the most conventional holiday, as we missed most scheduled celebrations, but we kept in touch with family across the Midwest via Skype, email and IM, and spent several cozy and calm days at my grandparent’s house, which was a real treat.

We ended up spending at least a bit of time with most everyone. Highlights of the trip included Christmas Eve at Gramma and Grampa’s with Mom, Dave and Katie, a few nights at Bryan’s parent’s house (where Doug made us pizza and ice cream cones), a gathering with my sweet and adorable nephews, their parents and my sister-in-law Jess. We also had lovely celebrations with Dad, Rose and Grandpa D., as well as Katie’s wonderful new boyfriend Tom.

My mom makes a cross-stitched birth sampler for all of her grandchildren, aiming to have them complete by their first birthday. She was a bit behind on Olivia’s, finishing it up the day before her second birthday. This was to my benefit, as I was able to see and photograph her at work.

I have tried cross-stitching a handful of times—it is complicated, difficult work that involves counting and patience, things at which I’m not particularly good. My very talented mother makes it look easy and almost enjoyable.

Here’s the finished piece waiting to be framed.

It lists Olivia’s weight and birth date…

And, at the last minute, my mom added “I love you,” because she somehow remembered that Ava’s birth sample included that sentiment, and you know how grandmas like to keep things even! I love that cute little mouse—it reminds me of the snugly little recipient.

Thanks, Mom!

My sister Katie, the dean of administration at a Boston-based charter school, sent the following note yesterday morning. I’m posting it because it’s a cool glimpse into the the efforts often required for positive media coverage, and also because I think she’s awesome.

We had a pretty exciting day at Excel yesterday. The Governor’s office called around 4:30pm Tuesday night and said, “The Governor will be at your school tomorrow morning. He’ll be making an address in your auditorium. Oh, and we have two of his event staffers sitting in your parking lot ready to come in and let you know what we need you to do before 7:30am tomorrow.”

Um, okay. We had to quickly break the news that we had no auditorium. (I was told I couldn’t blame that fact on the Governor’s charter school funding formula in his or his staffers’ presence.) They came into the building, did a walk-through, created the minute-by-minute schedule that the Governor would follow during his “random” tour of the school, and told us that we would need to change our schedule around to accommodate his visit.

We don’t normally change things to accommodate visitors or do anything that might be disruptive to our academic program, but given the likelihood that this visit would get several politicians and members of the media through our doors…and since we have been trying to get to them to the school since the beginning, we figured it made good sense to meet their needs.

We ended up having 4-5 government officials visit, including the Governor, the Secretary of Education, and our State Senator. There were at least 12-15 members of the media in the building throughout the day.

The Governor’s office requested our cutest, littlest kids to attend the assembly, so we gave them our 5th graders…kids who love school and get excited about pretty much anything. During the assembly, one of our kids raised her hand and said, “I just want you to know that we’re not faking it for you. We’re always this smart and well-behaved.” Pretty classic.

As the Governor was leaving, he turned to our Executive Director and said,”I love this school.” We’re wishing one of the 15 cameras in the building would have caught that.

Katie saw a great return on investment. Excel received coverage in this video, the Governor’s Flicker photo account, an article in the Boston Herald and one in the Boston Globe. Way to go, Kate!