Per her request, Hila woke up to a room full of balloons and had cake for breakfast.  She really enjoyed wielding the birthday girl authority over the day.  I adore my sweet little girl, she is so thoughtful, and very patient with me.

Hila, the summer of 2006 age 3

Hila, nearly 4

Hila, 4th birthday cake

Hila, first day of kindergarten last year.

Hila, self portrait summer 2009

Hila, with her build-a-bear unicorn on Hannah’s birthday.

Hila, blowing out the candles on her princess castle birthday cake.  Happy 6th birthday, Hila!!  I love you so much.

Happy Birthday, you sweet, beautiful little rascal!  What a blessing it has been for you to grow up near all the people who love you.

My dear ‘ol dad turns 50 something today and doesn’t look a day over 45!   We forced him to celebrate last night during the superbowl (no he’s not a hardcore fan) with chocolate cake and cream cheese frosting.  The groundhog has predicted 6 more weeks of winter!  Happy Birthday Dad!

I have been such a slacker lately, I completely missed blogging about Asher’s birthday and gun birthday party.  Since I know I spent adequate time spoiling and spending time with Asher during his whole birthday week, rest assured that he is not offended.  Asher got a snow-storm from mother nature that canceled school every day leading up to and including his birthday.  Asher’s birthday was on Thursday and the weather turned around and got nice and warm for his actual party on Saturday.  I didn’t take enough pictures.  It was a really fun party.  Some friends of ours brought over lazer-tag guns and we split the partiers (11 in all, I think) into teams at different stations.  Lazer-tag was one, and thank you Seth’s dad for heading up that team.  Thankfully nobody got hurt even though my teenage nephews were on the roof.  Another station was shooting at cans stacked up and hanging from a rope.  Inside we had Nerf N-strike and a very fancy target I made on the back of a vinyl tablecloth.  It was good, clean cheap fun and all the partiers left with a gun-set from the $1 store.  Total cost for party supplies, lunch for 20 and treat-bags: $75.  I’m good.

Here are some pics:

Target from table cloth

Happy Birthday Gabe!!! We had been promising Gabe if he was potty trained by his birthday we’d go get him a dinosaur from Build-a-bear that he spotted on Hila’s birthday. He has been in underwear for 2 weeks! Way to go Gabe!!!! We love you, sweet boy. You always keep us laughing.

At the mall the kids played a fun video game that was projected on the floor

And Gabe rode in a space ship

Gabe loving the elevator (we don’t get out much).

We got home so late, we were all too tired for cake. So we had it for breakfast today!

I forgot to give Gabe a fork, so he just picked the whole piece of cake up and ate it. I love my little 3 year old!!!

I’m playing photo-catch-up today. Here are some pictures from Hila’s birthday. She had her best friend cousin Opal spend the night

And she got a bunny from build-a-bear. I forgot my camera, but somewhere on my phone are pictures of Hila at build-a-bear and Asher helping her. Then they all rode the merry-go-round…it was cute. Take my word for it.

Sweet Hila Camille is turning 5 tomorrow.  In some ways I can’t believe she’s only turning 5.  She seems too perceptive and artistic to ONLY be turning 5.  We’ve been celebrating since Saturday with a trip to build-a-bear where we spent more on a stuffed rabbit and stuffed rabbit clothes than I’ve spent on an entire outfit for Hila–ever.  But it was totally fun and she loved it.  We also rode one of those old-fashioned merry-go-rounds.  The kind with the real horse-hair.  The kids loved it.  She had her favorite cousin spend the night Saturday also.  Today we had cake at Mema’s and tomorrow we’re going to start with cake for breakfast and presents and then cupcakes for her class.  Yes, I’ve been baking cakes non-stop.  Hila wants to celebrate her birthday by firing up the black snakes leftover from 4th of July and dying Easter eggs!  LOL.  She’s such a funny kid.  I just adore her.  I have ever since I knew I was having a girl.  I had her name picked out before I had any children at all.  My great-grandmother passed away and although my only memories of her were strained because she was a bit of a cranky old woman I always LOVED her name.  And I’ve never heard of anyone else with that name.  I found out later that it is actually a Hebrew name that means “aura”.  I always wondered if my great-great grandmother had made it up.  I can think of two naughty things Hila has done in her lifetime and both of them a pretty funny.  First, she and Asher wanted create the illusion of snow inside our house so they got the canister of powdered sugar I had left out and scattered it all over the floor of the kitchen.  That’s what we get for calling powdered sugar “sugar snow”.  Then when she was about 2 she got a container of Vaseline and opened it and smeared the entire contents into her hair.  It took weeks to wash that stuff out!  Hila is such a joy and a peacemaker.  She’s always doing things to make other people happy or more comfortable and I feel so blessed to be her mother!

Turning 30 by Andy Rooney

As I grow in age, I value women who are over 30 most of all. Here are just a few reasons why:

A woman over 30 will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, “What are you thinking?”. She doesn’t care what you think.

If a woman over 30 doesn’t want to watch the game, she doesn’t sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do. And, it’s usually something more interesting.

A woman over 30 knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom. Few women past the age of 30 give a damn what you might think about her or what she’s doing.

Women over 30 are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won’t hesitate to shoot you, if they think they can get away with it.

A woman over 30 has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women
friends. A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her best friend because she doesn’t trust the guy with other women. Women over 30 couldn’t care less if you’re attracted to her friends because she knows her friends won’t betray her.

Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over 30 is far sexier than her younger counterpart.

Older women are forthright and honest. They’ll tell you right off if you are a jerk if you are acting like one! You don’t ever have to wonder where you stand with her.

Ladies, I apologize. For all those men who say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free.” Here’s an update for you. Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage, why? Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire Pig, just to get a little sausage.

All but that last paragraph made me think of you Jules, I hope you had a good day!

My “present” from birthday alarm.com

How I approach life and how I appear to others

You are a natural diplomat, reasonable, tolerant, fair,
always willing to listen to varying viewpoints, and ready to see
the other side of an issue. Even if you strongly disagree with
someone, you will try to find points of similarity and agreement
rather than emphasizing the differences. You often avoid taking
an extreme or one-sided stance on anything. You have a strong
desire for harmonious and pleasant relationships, and express a
spirit of cooperation, compromise, friendship, and fairness. You
very much want to be liked and because of your need for approval
and acceptance, you are easily influenced by others’ opinions,
especially when young. You so much want to please that often you
will suppress your own intense or unpleasant feelings in order
not to offend others. Sometimes your politeness is interpreted as
phoniness or wishy-washiness.

My personal motivation

You are, in many ways, an eternal child. Your mind is bright,
alert, curious, flexible, playful, and always eager for new
experiences – and your attention span is often quite brief. You
grasp ideas quickly and once your initial curiosity has been
satisfied, you want to go on to something else. You crave
frequent change, variety, meeting new situations and people.

On this day 35 years ago Bridger Jay Smith came into the world! What a cute little baby he was at 1 year old! I really wanted to scan in some pictures of the fun ways we have celebrated BJay’s birthday in the past. But my scanner doesn’t work with my computer unfortunately. One is a picture of “pin the tale on BJay” that we played at Tim and Piper’s house (when it was the white house on McReynolds and the twins look about 4). Then there is the birthday in Costa Mesa where we had all our friends throw water balloons at BJay standing up against the garage wall. The group violence totally terrorized little baby Danielle Bonilla and she cried for weeks when she’d see us or go near our house. Oops. And then there is the hilarious picture of BJay’s VW van completely filled to the roof with crumpled newspapers. We were trying to remember if that was a birthday prank, or just a prank. I’m thinking it must have been a graduation prank now. Anyway our good friends the Fannins and Worths had a little assistance from Decker on that one. It wasn’t really funny the morning we discovered it and I was already late for work. BJay smashed some of the papers down and we drove off with a van full of trash to my job at the Planetarium. My boss wasn’t amused. But its hilarious now to think that anyone would go to so much trouble for a laugh… Oh to have time to do something like that now! Watch yourselves Fannins. I’m still trying to think of a way to prank you back, and when I do its going to be goood.

Here’s B 5 years ago at the beach sinking into the sand.

Here’s B doing what he’s always done best, playing with the kids and being a great daddy.

And here is a photo Hila took of B being a good husband vacuuming, and doing a very sexy job of it.

When I think about it I know I always loved you BJay. Before I knew I loved you something in my soul would stir when I saw you. Before it was even possible to know you I loved the impression that you left with the people around you. I loved the person you were before we even met. I always knew I’d marry someone like you. I never would have guessed I’d get the real thing. Happy Birthday B! Its been a beautiful, happy life with you so far.