special friends

while we were in austin, my close friend, caroline, drove 4 hours from tyler, tx to come see us.  nick had to work so caroline and ellie made the trip on their own and spent the night with us.  i can't tell you what a refreshment it was for me - the smiths (along with all of our other gordon conwell friends) moved back to texas last summer.  we have missed them terribly over the past year.  jude and ellie were born 3 weeks apart and it was so fun to be able to experience the new realms of parenthood together.  caroline is an incredibly gifted singer/songwriter and she is working on a great project called the "scripture to music collective," where she is writing a song for every book of the Bible to tell the story of scripture in song form.  (you should check it out - her songs are so rich and you can download them free) :)

just a little progression of jude and ellie's friendship:

Ellie just home from hospital; jude 3 weeks old

ellie and jude at 2 months old

ellie and jude at 16 months

my favorite shots from our time with caroline and ellie:

bonding at Hula Hut over tortilla chips

pajama time!

time for milk and then bed

right before the ball hit jude in the head :)

they didn't think bath time was near as fun as we thought it would be!

other close friends of ours from gordon-conwell, daniel and heejei, actually moved to austin while we where there. we spent an afternoon with them - it was so great to see them!  their little boy, nathaniel, was born 13 hours before jude and they lived in the apartment right below us!  daniel was a groomsmen in our wedding and met heejei when we got to gordon-conwell and they got married the following summer.  greg and daniel have been friends since they first lived in china in 2004.  it was really wonderful to be with them and to see the boys together again!  heej cooked an amazing lunch for us - i have missed her cooking!

nathaniel and jude playing the drum together - each with a drumstick :)