HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!

Emily and I celebrated our First Anniversary yesterday on August 14th. I know she is usually the blogger of the family, but I wanted to do this post. I can't believe it has been one year!! I am so lucky to be married to my best friend. Here is a quick whirlwind of our first year of marriage together.



As you can see, ever since we met each other almost five years ago, it has been a wild ride. I mean how many get to fall in love in Hawaii? From jumping out of planes to swimming with sharks, we have had some amazing experiences together.

We took our engagement pictures at a barn in Texas.


Our actual Wedding Invitation.


My beautiful bride!!!! She's gonna kill me for posting this picture, but its my favorite picture EVER!!


I will never forget our wedding day!! Although it was definitely a crazy day, it was amazing!! Check out those Cowboy Boots!!



I had to throw this picture in here. During the last month or two of my mission I started writing a song for Emily called "No More Goodbyes." For those of you who know us well, you know that we spent the first three years of our relationship saying goodbye at airports. Anyways, at our dinner I gave a small speech about how much I loved Emily, and then I sang her the song. Really cheesy, but the best part was that after that she stood up and spent five minutes talking about how much she loved her family, and then she sat down without saying a word about me!HAHA I guess she has made it up to me this past year.:)


The day after our wedding, we left for our honeymoon in San Antonio. We went to The Alamo, Six Flags, and Sea World. We also ate almost every night at Rain Forrest Cafe. (They're Pizza is amazing!!)


Us at Rain Forrest Cafe


After the honeymoon it was back to Hawaii. This is our one month anniversary!

Our first Christmas together.

Our first Valentines Day together also happened to be our six month anniversary. When I came home from work Emily had decorated the entire apartment. I'm so grateful for all the little things she does to make me happy. (Don't worry, I have cut my hair since then....haha)


For our six month anniversary/Valentines day, we went on a trip to the island of Kauai. It was so beautiful. Our favorite part was our hike along the Pali coast which ended at this 200 ft waterfall. Emily had a bladder infection throughout the entire hike, but she was a trooper!!



Sipping on a smoothie at the Ali'i Luau, where everything began. This is where Emily and I first got to know each other when we worked there in 2005.


As you can see, this past year of our lives has been quite a journey. It has been fun, unpredictable, and exciting. We've laughed and cried together, been through ups and downs together, and learned and grown together. I can't think of anybody else I would rather have by my side as I travel through life. Emily, you are my best friend in the whole world, and I love you more than you will ever know. Thank you for the most amazing year ever. I can't even begin to imagine how much better each one will be. Happy Anniversary, I love you most.

Thank Heaven for Little Girls

What on earth would we do without adorable sweet innocent lovable little girls??? I know that there are two little munchkins in particular that I could not survive without, my sisters daughters Avery (4) and Berkley (9 months). They came and visited us in Texas a couple weeks ago and it was so fun to be able to rock and kiss and hold and play with them. Prepare yourselves for these pictures, they are RIDICULOUSLY cute.

This is Berkley Alexis Smith. I went into the kitchen to do the dishes and found a surprise in the sink! This surprise was MUCH more fun to wash, however it was NOT dishwasher safe...

This is Avery Madeline Smith. It was difficult to get a picture of her while not eating (note the crumbling cookie), what can I say, that's the Thompson in her!

She was willing to put the cookies down in exchange for driving the boat with Grandpa :)

Berks enjoyed the boat too...mostly the shoes that everyone left on the floor of the boat...

The girl loves to eat shoes....weird...that's definitely NOT the Thompson in her...

Two of my most favorite people in the entire world, doesn't get much better than that :)

"We're back" continued...

Sometimes we forget we're living in such a beautiful place and think, "ugh there's nothing to do today"...but then we remember that we live on an island that's just begging to be explored. We hiked to these waterfalls one day with some friends and had so much fun. We jumped into the waterfall and even hiked back a little further up the waterfall and found some nature-made rock slides. There's just something so awesome about being somewhere that hardly anyone knows about...swiss family robinson style!

I perfected the art of enchilada making, which according to Alex put me way higher up on the "good wife" scale
I turned 22 :) Alex gave me lilies and made me a beautiful dinner complete with a glorious diet coke!

Alex went to Washington DC to represent BYU-Hawaii as the SIFE PresidentWe did tons of snorkeling these last couple months and we got to see so many amazing things. We swam and played with a giant sea turtle that let us hold onto its shell as it pulled us along, we got to see some HUGE fish that we haven't seen before including scary looking ones with teeth, and we got some awesome pictures of our very favorite fish like the one below...tough life eh?...

WE'RE BACK!!!!!!

I'm sure everyone has just about given up on our blog...you know it's time to post when you get comments on your blog like this one, and I quote...

"FOUR MONTHS?!/!?!?!

GET ON IT YOU LAZY MOTHER TRUCKERS! We need to hear some updates... I told you in APRIL that it was time for a new post. You are both lazy SOBs!"

Thank you Haycock.

In our defense we HAVE in fact been busy. We have been in Texas since June and will be here until September. Alex is doing a business management internship with a Walgreens that just so happened to be about 15 minutes from my parents house!

SO here's some pictures to sum up the last couple months...

Alex's hair gets OUT OF CONTROL and I have to learn how to cut it... :/
and then came the mullet...
and then the mohawk...
And last but not least, the finished product and a rat in a dust pan!
I got to throw a baby shower for one of the sweetest most amazing people in the entire world...NANAKO!!! Of course we played the "whats in the diaper" game, and I must say they all looked extremely real and disgusting, I was SO proud (Alex nearly threw up). It was a blast :)My boyfriend Oliver came to the baby shower too...I love this boy
And then two of my very favorite people in the whole world came to visit!!!My little brother Barrett and my sister Sexy Lexi! We had SOOO much fun eating, paddle surfing, eating, going to the beach, eating, shark diving, and eating!
I had to throw another picture in of the CUTEST little boy in the world...this is Oliver and we have been babysitting him since he was soooo little. We LOVE him and his awesome parents. How could you not want to kiss and squeeze these cheeks!!!!!!!!!!!
We celebrated our first Easter as a married couple in Hawaii...we colored eggs, had a mini easter egg hunt and a big chicken dinner. It was so fun (side note:I won the easter egg hunt), but we missed our families and our nieces and nephews we we're looking forward to the next Easter on the mainland :)Complete with a soccer egg for Larry, a "your mom" egg, and a "my egg is bigger than yours" egg...all the basics...

We took some advice from our friends and started doing really creative dates (thanks cass and ammon). Among the dates included Alex's "trip down memory lane" date where he took me to all of the places around Hawaii where we fell in love 5 years ago, including the place we first held hands (thats what the picture below is), the place where we first said "I love you", the place where we had our first kiss and so forth, it was AWESOME. Another favorite was our "camping trip" that I took Alex on where we made foil dinners, ate smores, and played uno (until alex was sick of losing...) Needless to say, dating once your married is WAY more fun :)

Well, that was a monsterous post and should tide you over for now...YOUR WELCOME HAYCOCK! We've been doing tons of fun stuff here in Texas also, so I'll start posting all of that stuff soon, but heres a little preview!!
ENJOYYYYY

Hanakapi'ai Falls Hike

Do I even need to explain on this picture???
We had stopped to get subway on the way up to the pali coast when we found Ariel here...

Here we are about 15 minutes into the hike (yes I'm already sweaty and exhausted). You can see the reef in the background which is pretty cool. At this point we were like jogging up the mountain just excited to see more of the lookout spots!

This was probably 30 minutes or so in. We were kinda upset because we had been told it was going to be a pretty hike....freaking ugly.

Here we are with our good friends Lauren and Steven Tracy. Me and Alex planned our trip around our 6th month anniversary and Valentines day. A couple days after we bought our plane tickets we were talking to Steve and he told us that he bought tickets to Kauai to surprise Lauren for their 1 year anniversary and valentines day. We asked what days they were going and it ended up we were going to be there the exact same days staying in hotels that were next to each other! Haha so we saw the sights together and it ended up being such a blast. We're so glad they spent their one year with us!!!! :)

Yes those are tally marks of deaths in the place that we hiked to....yikes

This beautiful stream goes straight out into the ocean, its hard to see in this picture but the ocean is right behind my head. It was AMAZING and FREEEEEZING!!!! haha Alex was bummed that we had not brought fly fishing poles.

This was the half way point in the hike. We stopped, had some food, and just watched the amazing waves crash into the cliffs. This was one of the ones we got on camera but it doesn't do any justice to the size of the waves we saw. They were the biggest waves I've ever seen in my life by far. Plus it was super windy so as the waves crashed the wind would like spin the top of the waves into a swirl that looked like a mini tornado! Check out the video below to see sorta what I'm talking about.

My little explorer in his bamboo forest.

FINALLY THERE! When we came around the curve and saw this we all about cried. It was honestly the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life (besides the mullet my husband is now sporting). 200 ft of beautiful clear fresh water cascading down the cliff into a perfect little pool to swim in. We swam back behind the waterfall and sat on a little step looking out through the water, Alex said how we all felt, "we went swimming in the celestial kingdom."

My husband IS Kocoum (from Pocahontas).
Us right after seeing the falls for the first time.

So, we passed a lot of people on our hike, and all the women we saw were in like full make up white shirts and some were even in nice khakis, and they were all clean as can be! We couldn't figure it out because we were all COVERED from head to toe in mud and grossness by the end of the hike. Me and Lauren decided it was because unlike the other girls on the trail who were following their husbands, we were "women on a mission" and were leading the way for our husbands during a lot of the hike. Needless to say we were pretty much the coolest girls on the trail!

Immediately following this shower seen above we ran to the car (still covered in plenty of mud) and Steve drove like a bat outta hell to the airport where we arrived at 8:00 pm. Our flight was set to take off at 8:15 pm. And....drum roll please...
WE MADE OUR FLIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We would like to thank Steve for his race car driver skills, Hawaii for the laid back attitude that allows for people to only arrive 15 minutes early and still make their flight, and Alex would like to thank his wife for being willing to cut in lines and fight his battles to get them on the flight on time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!