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Our family recently spent two weeks on an adventure-filled road trip up and down the eastern seaboard, visiting family and friends along the way. I took over 2,000 photos and a fair amount of video, which is taking me a long time to organize and edit. I hope to begin posting our record of the trip soon, probably one day from the trip at a time. In the meantime, here’s a shot taken of Ember near the conclusion of the trip at Sesame Place near Philadelphia. Be sure to click through to the larger version to get a close-up of her pointed gaze.

This is a large set, but it may be the only way I get these pictures online anytime soon. Here are some of my favorite family shots going back as far as 2000.

Some shots from the past few days including Eden’s bath, kids doing homework, and Ember reading to Barbie.

This footage is a few months old. Here are some clips from Ember’s 3rd birthday weekend activities, including painting Easter eggs, Camden’s preschool Easter parade, and watching General Conference.

Ember’s 3rd Birthday from Ben Smith on Vimeo.

This weekend was relatively uneventful. We spent a little time at the pool, and the kids spent Saturday playing with Sam. I did also start experimenting a bit with the new camera.

We caught some good smiles from Eden here under Ember’s supervision. These were taken at the end of May.

A few weeks ago, we took the kids to an open house at the Gym for them to try out some new activities. Camden impressed the karate instructor with his sword fighting talent, and received a free month of karate lessons. We also signed him up for a week-long karate camp that he really enjoyed. Here he is in samurai garb defending our living room.

I have been on the board of our HOA for the past year and a half and have had the pleasure of getting to know our association manager, Chuck Grubb, through that work. In response to a generous invitation from Chuck, our family visited his farm today and had a blast. The kids got to ride and feed the horses, drive a tractor, play with the dogs, as well as other fun stuff. I forgot the cameras at home, but fortunately was at least able to capture these with my phone (with Chuck’s help in some cases).

Here are some shots of Eden at just over six weeks old. She has been growing very quickly, moving from newborn diapers to barely fitting in her size twos.

Her siblings have been great with her. Tonight, Camden covered her ears for her while Erika was vacuuming. They all love to give her kisses and hugs.

Eden did not get Sierra’s elf ears, but did get a pretty good natural mohawk. We think we’ll keep her.