First Ferry Boat Ride

Ed took the week off of work so we decided to go do something as a family.  We live in an area where, because of islands and peninsulas, there are lots of ferry boats.  We drove down to Edmonds today to do a walk-on ferry boat ride.  It was Samantha's first! 

When we arrived, we had barely missed one sailing so we purchased tickets for the next sailing and wandered around Edmonds on foot for a while.  The weather wasn't the best, but we were bundled up and thought to bring umbrellas.  We ended up stopping for lunch and window shopping a bit.  Then we raced back to the ferry docks just in time to catch our scheduled ferry.

Not actually the boat we were on, just passing on the water...

Samantha was so excited to go on a boat ride.  She wanted to go out on the decks and look at the birds and other boats on the water, then go back inside and sit on every bench and look out the windows.  It was pretty cute. 



The sun peeked out for just a bit on Samantha's first ferry boat ride!

 

Loving the big winds out on the water!



Getting in to Kingston

We didn't walk around on the other side, just waited in the terminal so we could re-board. 
 Anyway, she had a blast on the way back to Edmonds too!

Afterwards, she totally crashed!  As boring as it may sound, it was a fun day!!

The look of a successful outing!  :)

In Love With Autumn

Today was a beautiful Fall day!  It's my favorite time of the year.  I love the changing colors, the crisp mornings, the clear sunshine - not a fan of the impending months of gray and rain, but hey, you take the bad with the good, right?

Anyway, we were out in our front yard and I captured these gems:

Peek-a-boo!

Samantha loves playing outside!

Contemplating climbing the tree...
(can you see the gears turning??)  :)

Halloween Party

Every year we have a Halloween Party / Fall Festival at church.  It's a fun evening where kids (and some adults) don their Halloween costumes, enjoy each other's company, play carnival games, and eat goodies.

Samantha wore her "Candy-land Princess" dress for Halloween this year.  Such a sweet little princess with her glowing star wand!  She played games like the Cupcake Walk, Ring Toss, Plink-o, Fishing, Bowling, and donut-eating-on-a-string!  Here are a few pictures:

Graveyard Bowling

Donut-on-a-string

 

So much for the "no hands" rule

 

Forget this - I'm taking the donut off!

Pumpkin Ring Toss

Pumpkin Patch II

Sarah and her family came into town to celebrate Emma's birthday so while they were here, we went to Craven Farms and went on the hunt for pumpkins!  I wish the weather had been a bit less...soggy...but it was fun anyway.  I think Samantha enjoyed getting dirty and splashing in the mud puddles!

Soaked to the bone but still smiling!

Samantha's pumpkin haul! :)

A cute bunch of kiddos!

We ended up coming home with 2 pumpkins, muddy shoes, wet hair, dirty pants, and happy faces!

Totally Apple-sauced

Samantha and I trekked over to Wenatchee for the day so Samantha could play with friends and so I could spend the day with a friend making applesauce...all day.  My friend, Sarah, got a really good price on some apples and it's so much more fun to make/can applesauce together, we just made a day of it.

It was a beautiful drive to Wenatchee!

We started with about 200 pounds of apples - yep, 200 pounds.  AND I still brought home another 20 pounds of apples that we didn't can. 

We had apples coming out our ears!

 

See what I mean?  Still ended up taking some apples home!

So, after lots of chopping and cooking and squishing and pouring - we came out with these beautiful jars of applesauce. 

Just a portion of our haul!

We then turned our attention to apple pie filling.  I had never canned apple pie filling before.  I've frozen apple pie filling, but canning is a little different.  It requires the use of this stuff called "Clear Gel" in order to get the right consistency and preserve it properly.  We set to work slicing the apples and immediately getting them in some treated water to keep them from browning.   At the same time, we were boiling water to cook the apple slices in preparation for the cinnamon-y goodness we would immerse them in to can them. 

Now to the Clear Gel - this stuff did not start out as our friend!!  We were advised to add it a little at a time and whisk the heck out of it to keep it smooth.  Well, my whisking needs some work but Sarah, a master, was whisking like crazy and...still lumpy!  Ugh!  So, we removed some of the bigger chunks and smoothed it out as much as we can (doesn't impact the taste - don't worry, we tested).  The next batch, hmm, let's try a gravy shaker and mix the water and Clear Gel together.  WRONG!  Clear Gel expands with liquid so two shakes in and we had a huge lump of gel in the shaker.  Ugh!!  Whisk, whisk, whisk - fix that batch.  Still tasted great.  On to the last batch - hmm, why don't we mix the clear gel with all of the other dry ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, etc.) in a big gallon-sized bag and then add that mixture slowly to the liquid (water, apple juice, etc.) while whisking.  VOILA!  We've attained perfection in our apple pie filling.  No lumps, great taste, and so pretty!

So pretty!  Yummy too, but so pretty!!

Our plan was to get this all done during the day and Samantha and I would leave around 7pm to get home by 9:30pm.  Yeah, Sarah and I didn't finish our canning adventures until 3am.  By that time, I was so tired and Samantha had been fast asleep for hours.  So I curled up for a bit as well.  Then it was up again at 6:30am to get home by 10am for a rehearsal at my house.  Well, I made it home in time, but was exhausted the entire next day.  In fact, I don't remember a lot of that day other that it was full of lots of Diet Dr. Pepper in an effort to keep me awake!

Thank you, Sarah!  Canning alone just isn't the same!  I'd trek over to Wenatchee to can with you any day! ;)

Pumpkin Patch I

I love this time of year!  My sister had the day off of work so we took advantage of the beautiful weather and she and Tommy joined me and Samantha at one of the local pumpkin patches.  We wandered around for a bit, gave the kids rides in the wagons and wheelbarrows, let them climb around on the hay, and more or less run around and wear out for naptime!  Love this time of year!

Just sittin' here on this pumpkin!

I can't believe Missi let Tommy sit in the dirt!!

Cute cousins!

Remote Control Race Car

This week at work, Ed won a little remote control Mini Cooper race car.  He brought it home and showed it to Samantha.  Well, the next day after he went to work, Samantha found the car and begged me to play with it.  I thought, "ok, here goes..."

She was so funny!  She kept exclaiming, "That was awesome!" and I just giggled because not only does she know the word "awesome," but she used it correctly!  I know she picked it up from the character of Rhino in the movie, Bolt.  So hilarious!  Then she would bend down to try to pick it up but not realize her finger was on the button so she ended up chasing down the car while calling, "Come here, car."  Anyway, it was so funny, I had to get some of it on video (pardon some of the hand shaking - at some points it was a struggle not to laugh at how cute she is!).  Enjoy!

Today, she wanted to play with the car again.  With a time out fresh on her mind from this morning, it was so funny to watch and listen to her interact with this race car.  She kept telling the race car, "I love you, race car."  Then she would hold onto the car and say, "Time out, race car," followed by a, "Look at me please, race car."  Then she would set the car down, tell it she loves it again, and resume racing it!  So funny because it's completely patterned after her own time outs - we make sure Samantha knows we love her, tell her she's in a time out, ask her to look at us so we can explain the reason for the time out, and always end a time out with another, "we love you, Samantha."  So completely amusing to watch her give the car a time out!  I wish I'd have caught that on video!

Cowboy

I'm not quite sure how or when this started, but somewhere along the way, milk turned into "cowboy."  One day Samantha just started asking for "cowboy" instead of milk.  I'm pretty sure it started because we called it "cow juice," but how it evolved from there, I have no clue!

Samantha and her "cowboy"

New Hair

I decided to get my hair cut.  My hair is so boring and most days, I just pull it up into a clip or a ponytail for the day.  So, I opted for something a little different today.  What do you think?

Side view

Other side view

Finished product - complete with bangs and everything
(which I haven't had in YEARS!)

And when all was said and done, there was at least another full head of my hair on the floor!  It was just a bit too short to donate this time, but oh my, there was a lot of hair there!

Boy, it sure will feel different to wash my hair tomorrow without all of this!

 

Happy Birthday, Samantha!

It's hard to believe that two glorious years have flown by since we first met Samantha Grace.  This special little girl has lit up our lives and made everything more beautiful.  We continue to love and adore every precious minute with her and are grateful every second of every day for this little treasure.  We express our unending gratitude as well to Samantha's wonderful birth mother and hope she knows how much we love and appreciate her.

I asked my brother, Matt, to build a video for Samantha with pictures and videos from the past two years.  I hadn't thought of this song in terms of adoption until a good friend of mine mentioned it to me.  It's from a popular movie, so I had always just associated it with that and nothing more.  As I listened to the lyrics with new perspective though, it expresses so many of the emotions that Ed and I felt as we waited for Samantha, finally held her in our arms, and continue to watch her grow and change every day.

Thank you, Matt, for the love and care that you put into the selection and placement of the pictures and videos.

Samantha - we love you.  We love your personality, your sense of humor, your beautiful smile, your ability to learn new things so quickly, your loving and inquisitive nature, your giggles, your love of animals, your goodnight hugs and kisses, and most of all, we love that we get to spend eternity with you!

Do the Puyallup!!

As is our annual tradition, we spent the day at the Puyallup Fair!  We thought it a fun way to celebrate Samantha's birthday - such a fun day!!

Samantha loves looking at animals, so we started with the cows, pigs, and horses.  She wanted to touch every one of them, so unfortunately, we had to keep her confined to her stroller as we walked through the barns.

Samantha loved the cows so much,
we had to go through those barns twice!

Reaching out to try to pet every animal!

Posing with the turkey - gobble, gobble!

After the animals, we visited "Sillyville," the kiddie-ride area.  Samantha rode a total of six rides...only two of them with me or Ed!  That's right, she rode FOUR rides all by herself!!  Being as tall as she is, she "qualified" for many of the rides so either Ed or I would take her in the gate and get her strapped in, then watch her have such fun on these little rides.

Flying high in the helicopter

Motorcycle baby!

The cutest pilot ever!

Up, up and away in my beautiful balloon!

All these rides wore Samantha out so while she napped in her stroller, Ed and I took the opportunity to wander through the commercial exhibits - nothing exciting this year at all!  In fact, it was really disappointing.  Once Samantha woke up, we treated her to a bubble gun though.

Blowing bubbles

We also followed through with a little tradition we started last year though and paid to have a caricature of Samantha drawn.  We even found the same guy to draw it!  It's now hanging in Samantha's room (over the drawing from last year).

On the way out, another tradition we had to uphold was buying Fisher Scones.  A little disappointing that the scones have gotten smaller but the price has not - but, it's tradition and they're still yummy!!

All in all, I think Samantha would agree that she had a pretty great birthday this year!

Peaches and Pears

I have to say, I'm not the biggest fan of canning in general, but I LOVE the product of all of my hard work!  This year, so far, I've canned 75 lbs. of peaches and 50 lbs. of pears.  I have more pears downstairs at the moment and hope to still get more yet, as well as can some applesauce and pear sauce!

So, clean the kitchen, clean the jars, clean the fruit, peel the fruit, core/pit the fruit, slice the fruit, add sugar and water, clean the tops, add the lids, process the fruit, anxiously await for the lids to "pop" indicating a seal, clean the sticky off of the processed jars, make room and store the jars, AND clean the kitchen again!!  Why go through all of this? 

Well, it's so I can turn this:

Into this:

 

Aren't they beautiful!

 

Yep, it's a lot of work, but the end result is so worth it!

Evergreen State Fair

Today we went to the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe.  For years, Ed and I have had a tradition of going to both this fair and the Puyallup Fair.  So far, the only year we missed was the 2010 Puyallup Fair - and for a very good, little-bundle-of-joy-type reason!  :)

We always have a great time at the fair - pack some snacks, the stroller, some sunscreen and head out the door.  This year, Samantha was so enthralled with the animals.  We must have visited every single animal barn at the fair this year!  It's all worth it to see her smile and hear the giddiness in her voice as she imitates the animal sounds!

As is tradition, we also stopped at the Frontier Photo Booth - where we get dressed up in "old west" clothes with props and everything, and they take our picture in front of a saloon-type background and print it out in a sepia-tone.  If you're ever at our house, that last three years are on display! ;)

We also decided to take Samantha on a few rides this year.  Since she did so well and loved the ride at Remlinger Farms last week, we bought enough tickets for her to ride four rides.  Our first stop - the merry-go-round.  Samantha picked which animal she wanted to ride, first the zebra then the rabbit, and I got to go with her both times.

Look at that smile!

So glad I got to ride with her!

She also rode a car ride - although she was getting pretty sleepy toward the end of this one:

And then rode with a bunch of other kids on the train ride:

She's the cute one in the pig-tails on the end there!

We also some time (and money) over by the games.  Ed played a dart game and won Samantha a stuffed horse that we've since named Clyde (that was Ed's idea!). 

Some major concentration happening here!

The victor and her prize (darn that sun glare in the photo)!

The only low spot of the day was when some contract workers were setting up a booth and ran into Ed with a huge display.  Yeah, that didn't fare so well on his back.  They kind of apologized, then ran off.  The guy in charge of the booth wouldn't take any responsibility for it and at one point, got in Ed's face about it and started swearing.  Uh-oh mister, you just poked the momma bear.  That language is NOT ok in front of my daughter and I made it a very loud point to tell him so.  Even though Samantha was actually sleeping, there is no excuse for resorting to that kind of talk, especially at a family-oriented venue.  Needless to say, he backed away from me and rather sheepishly offered an apology!

Of course, at the end of the fair we continued with our tradition of buying some Fisher Scones for the ride home (and breakfast the next few days - yummmm!).  Great weather, great exhibits, great rides - all the makings of a great day!