Konor & Zilya » May 2006 Journal Entries » AboutMyBaby - online baby scrapbooks, photo albums, videos, birth and pregnancy announcements

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Mon, May 29, 2006 12:14 PM
HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!
This morning @ 7 am...about 3,000 runners ran in front of our house for the 10K Cotton Row Run (29th yr)...It was so sureal, no talking, just hearing them all running on the pavement..very weird.

After we went to Big Spring Downtown..There were still runners finishing, and they started the 5K and 1mile runs later in am. Weather was wondderful, until later when got hot.

Then went to Sonic for breakfast..

Cooking steak out on grill later, perhaps let kids in sprinkler after naps...

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Sun, May 21, 2006 11:56 AM
We went to this memorial yesterday, then out after. It was fun, bittersweet. I'll sure miss Matt!

A toast to Matt Smith: 'co-conspirator, inspiration, alchemist'
Party set for today to honor bartender, start fund for kids
Sunday, May 21, 2006
By PATRICIA C. McCARTER
Times Staff Writer, pmccarter@htimes.com

Once he served them a martini or a beer, customers of Matt Smith would follow him to whichever bar he was pouring drinks.

From West End Grille to Buffalo's, from Patrick's to Pauli's, Smith had a following. Part of it was he made a potent drink. A bigger part was the way he could entertain anyone who walked through the door.

"I stopped drinking 10 years ago, but I'd go to the bar just to watch him work," said the bartender's brother Tom Smith, who is mourning the loss of his younger sibling. Matt Smith, 46, died of a heart attack on May 9.

"He could be pouring a drink, telling a joke, drawing a caricature of somebody and doing a trick with a napkin, all at the same time," Tom Smith said. "He could size somebody up the moment they walked in, and he'd be pouring what they wanted even before they said so."

Matt Smith tended bar at Pauli's the night before he died. He had gone home and watched Comedy Central with a friend, but sometime during the early morning hours, he went outside. He was found in his driveway after the sun rose.

His jokes and magic tricks won't fade away. Paul Thornton, owner of Pauli's, said while cleaning up behind the bar this week, he found a notebook in which Smith had written - in a code Thornton didn't understand - the punch line of jokes and how-to tips on his tricks.

"I couldn't make sense of it, but I'll bet he'd told those jokes and performed those tricks on his son Christopher so much, he'll be able to figure it out," said Thornton, who knew and worked with Smith for 18 years. "I passed it on to him.

"Matt loved his children. It's all he wanted to talk about. He loved those kids above all else."

Christopher is 11; Alexandrea just turned 13.

Smith, his parents and five siblings moved from New Jersey to Huntsville in 1971. He was on the inaugural soccer team at Huntsville High, and he and some of his brothers went on to play at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

At his funeral last week, Tom Smith called his 6-foot, 5-inch brother a "complicated and beautiful man ... physically a giant, yet he had a childlike sense of fun and wonderment."

"Matt was a friend, co-conspirator, psychiatrist, inspiration, stand-up philosopher and alchemist," he said. "Those of us fortunate enough to have known Matt are well aware that the magic of his alchemy was worked in the laboratory of the heart.

"He somehow knew if you needed a joke, a bit of advice, a hug or all three, and when you left his presence the day was better, the sun was brighter, and your troubles just didn't seem that bothersome anymore."
Some of Smith's other gifts were playing the guitar, trumpet and harmonica, "and he could slip into the character of a Rastafarian or Irishman and just kill you because he was so funny."

When his brother Terry Smith spoke at the funeral, he said he was sometimes jealous of how easily Matt made new friends, "and the number of people he knew was amazing to me."

"He lived very modestly, but he had a big heart and was generous," Terry Smith said. "He was always willing to share with others what little he had. His generosity was as big as he was."

Smith suffered from gout and arthritis, but Terry Smith said that never stopped him from crawling around on the floor to wrestle with his children as well as his nieces and nephews.

Because of the generosity Smith showed, Tom Smith said he knows his brother's friends want the chance to be generous to his late brother's memory. Family members have organized a party for his friends and acquaintances to share memories as well as raise money for his funeral expenses and to create an educational fund for his children.

The event is today from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Holiday Inn beside Madison Square Mall.

"He would always say, 'No worries, pally, no worries,' " Tom Smith said. "And now, he has no worries."

http://www.al.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news/1148203406219600.xml?huntsvilletimes?nfare&coll=1&thispage=1

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Fri, May 19, 2006 4:33 PM
Konor can now officially count to 10!! Yeah Konor! He is learning and recognizes most of his letters too, esp in his own name..but doesn't quite sing the ABC's song correctly yet.

Konor sings songs too.. You are My Sunshine, Twinkle,twinkle little star, You got It, I'm sure there are more, but now have Zilya wantin.g t.o type, better run..

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Mon, May 1, 2006 10:14 PM
WOW

A LOT going on these past few weeks!!

Moving is one of the big ones.. got ourselves into a very nice $300K home, 2mins from dwn town, but yet 'country-like' setting and near the big Maple Hill cemetary and the land trust trails..where I got my 1st taste of poison ivy, ugh, lol

finally back online..

will update more later ..with words and pictures of home!

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