THIRTY ONE YEARS AGO, on Jan. 29th, Kelly Coverstone was born, weighing 6 lbs. 13 oz. and 20" long. She was born in Portland, Oregon. It was 5 weeks later, that Jim and I added a middle name - Kelly Ann Coverstone. Changing her birth certificate was no small task. Here she is at 1 day old. She was the most alert newborn, we'd ever seen.
She was a beautiful little girl. When strangers would tell her how pretty she was, she would glare and scowl at them. To this day, she still glares at you when she is not pleased.
This is the glare.
Kelly has always been and still is a daddy's girl.
At 2 years old, Kelly became a big sister. Kelly was always very helpful (except that time when Crystal was 2 years old and Kelly cut Crystal's hair and neatly put her hair in the trash can).
Kelly and Crystal, 2 1/2 and 9 months.
At 4 years and 9 months, Kelly became a big sister again.
She was an active little girl, always busy. Here she is at 4 1/2 , Baton Timber Twirler.
Wonder Woman was her idol. This was her Wonder Woman outfit.
She loved taking swim lessons from Ilynn in the summer. Every year Ilynn would take these underwater shots of the kids.
We went camping every summer and she loved it. She enjoyed the outdoors and "daddy time".
She really loved these glasses from Disneyland. We all went for the first time when she was a Junior in high school.
We had a few pets over the years. A couple of cats, a dog and some gerbils. Murphy was Kelly's gerbil. Of course Crystal had to have a gerbil too. The pet shop guy assured me that both gerbils were boys. As you can see by our growing gerbil population, Murphy was really Murphette.
Kelly took piano lessons for 5 years. She was very good. Crystal and her played duets. Kelly even accompanied the school choir. She also sang in the choir in middle school and high school.
She was a cheerleader for three years in high school. We really enjoyed going to all the games. This is 10th grade.
11th grade.
The football team went to State in her Senior year and a new football stadium was erected. Before that happened, the Rebels had to play all their football games at their arch rival's football stadium when West was at "away games".
The last 2 years, Kelly and Crystal were cheerleaders at 2 different high schools. Kelly-South Albany Rebels and Crystal-West Albany Bulldogs
This always made the civil war games lots of fun.
Kelly graduated from South Albany in 1996.
Over the years she has had all kinds of hairdos. Long hair . . .
short hair . . .
and foo foo hair.
She got her accounting degree from Linn Benton Community College. It has served her well, he has had many occupations using those skills. She is now a beautiful young woman, a great wife, a super mom AND a year older. Happy 31st birthday to a wonderful daughter that we love very much!! mom and dad.
If you'd like, you can tell Kelly happy birthday at
skrubk@hotmail.com . But whatever you do, don't ask her why she doesn't like llamas.
Father and son beannie boys for Chris and Dylan.
Owen and Dylan, as long as something is in their mouth, they are happy boys.
Kevin got a dart board last year and he finally got it hung up yesterday.
First shot hit almost on the bullseye.
Easter morning at 2 months old. This is right after we told her she couldn't eat any of the candy in her Easter basket. (not really)
Crystal was a "master climber". She climbed in the kitchen drawers. Below she is in a bucket. She would take books off the bookshelf and climb in and lay on the shelf. She went into a twin bed at a year old because she started climbing out of her crib. She walked at 10 months old.
Two years old.
About 8 months after turning 2, Crystal became the "middle child" with the birth of her brother, Kevin. Some photos of the "middle child".
There were 3 things Crystal loved: BABIES
BARBIES
and ANIMALS.
But her favorite animal was her chicken, June. She had her for 8 years (a Guiness World Record for longest living chicken, I would guess). When June broke her leg in the bicycle chain, we took her to the vet and had a pink cast put on the leg. The bone healed a little crooked, so June hobbled a bit afterward, but she was one happy chicken and Crystal was a very happy chicken owner.
Crystal had some good little buddies over the years. She played with our neighbor, Edward all the time. This is Josh, he was a good friend too.
Crystal's 7th birthday party. The little girl in red is Lesley Jean and the little girl in the blue stripe is Jessica Jean. Crystal remains good friends with these girls today.
The years pass by so quickly, here's Crystal at 10 years old.
This is Crystal in 4th grade and Kevin in 1st grade (notice the height difference).
We went to Disneyland when Crystal was a freshman in high school (notice the chipmunk is even taller than Crystal).
Crystal played the piano for 5 years. She really liked doing duets with Kelly.
Here is Crystal doing one of the things she does best, clean. She has always been a cleaning machine. She had to share a room with Kelly for 17 years. Kelly was like "Oscar" and Crystal was like "Felix" of the Odd Couple. It drove Crystal crazy. She would get so mad at Kelly for not cleaning her half of the room. Then Crystal would finally give in and clean the whole bedroom(Kelly's no dummy). The interesting thing is that now both girls have their own homes and they are always very clean.
Crystal was a cheer leader for all 4 years of high school. This is freshman year.
In this photo I told the girls to do a "cheer leader move".
Crystal had long hair forever. She loved Aunt Patty's long hair. Kelly also had long hair, but in this photo it was recently cut. Kelly is 14 and Crystal 12.
Crystal started cutting her hair shorter after that. Then in 10 grade, Crystal cut her hair the shortest it has ever been.
But by 11th grade it was long again.
And at graduation from West Albany H. S. it was medium length.
Crystal graduated from Western Oregon University with her Bachelor Degree in teaching. She taught preschool for a while. She even has her CA teacher lisence signed by the Govenator (Arnold)..jpg)
Crystal is a beautiful woman, a great wife to Ryan, and super mom to Alex, Payton and Owen.
She will always be a wonderful daughter to us. Wish we could be there to watch you blow out the 29 candles. If you would like to wish Crystal a happy birthday, e-mail her at crystalarinsmith@gmail.com . We hope your birthday is fun, love mom and dad
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