Since his daughter Elizabeth was returned to her family on March 12, she's been spending a lot of time with family and friends, Ed Smart said.
"It's nice to have a houseful of girls again," he said.
He said the family has no special plans for the summer. But they are planning to do something fun together as a family on June 5 — the one-year anniversary of Elizabeth's abduction, he said.
"She's doing so well that it's hard to believe that she went through so much," Ed Smart said.
After missing her entire freshman year of high school, the 15-year-old is now trying to decide between East High School, West High School and the Waterford School. She has been completing some correspondence work so she won't be too far behind when she returns to class in the fall.
"She's looking at all of her options and having a difficult time choosing," Ed Smart said.
Elizabeth still enjoys running, though her father said he doesn't allow her to run alone.
He also turns the alarm on at his family's million-dollar home in Salt Lake City. Before his daughter's kidnapping, the family had not been using the home's alarm system, something that may have alerted family and police earlier of the armed intruder who snatched Elizabeth.
"It's on every day and every door works," Smart said.
Smart said his family also hopes to finalize a book and movie deal about Elizabeth's kidnapping "sooner rather than later."
"We're working on it," he said. "Nothing's in writing yet. One of the important things to us is that it's done in a manner that I'm not going to be looking back and having my daughter say, 'Well dad, why did you do that or why did you say that?' "
E-mail: djensen@desnews.com