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!