Sammie at Home

Wow! My plea for more comments really did bring some stalkers out of the woodwork! Thank you so much for writing and tuning in, it's really great to know people are reading along.

Instead of posting more Portugal pictures right now, I wanted to add a few cute pictures of Samantha from the last couple of weeks. She's been so cute and fun, I just don't want to forget all her cuteness at this stage.
The picture above is one that I took a few days ago. I like it because she looks a lot like I looked in some of my 2-3 year-old pictures. (Wish I had some here, and I'd post them, so you could see the resemblance.) Most of the time, people say "she sure looks just like her Dad." And I have to agree -- I see a lot of Brian in her. But I like sometimes seeing some of me, as well.

This next set of pictures should be titled "Brellies and Wellies." Last Saturday, we went to TescoXtra (kind of like a Super Wal-mart), and Samantha talked us into buying her a lovely pink umbrella (Brellie -- as she calls it, I think it's British -- surprise), and some really cute pink rain boots (Wellies, or Wellingtons, as they call them here). Sammie LOVES her new brellie and boots, and hardly lets them out of her sight for more than a few minutes. She took the umbrella to church with her Sunday, and has insisted on wearing her boots every day since we got them. Here are some pictures of her with her new toys...

Below... after church we had another family over for dinner. Her Sam poses with Kim and Lilly -- and her new Brellie.

Samantha has taken to finding new places to sleep-- or at least "pretend" to sleep. She gets her blanket and lays down under the desk in the office, in the crawl space by the couch, etc. A few days ago, I caught some cute pictures of her trying to sleep in her toy box that sits under our living room table. She had her blanket from her bed, and was trying to get comfy for a good sleep!
Her new favorite place to sleep is in Daddy's closet. Since Christmas, she's made a little bed on the floor where Brian keeps his shoes in his closet, almost every day we've been home. She brings in several stuffed animals, toys, and blankets to make her bed nice and cozy. I saw her try to put her toy car that she rides on into the closet one day, but it didn't fit, rats! Here are some cute shots of Sam "sleeping" in the closet.


She also loves to sleep her baby dolls in interesting places. Here's one shot of two dolls sleeping in the foot pedals of our cross trainer. They also been put to sleep under the table or bed, in kitchen drawers and cupboards, and on the piano bench. Usually they get a nice blanket and a stuffed animal to keep them happy.
One more funny picture of Samantha's outfit this afternoon. She's still not too good at getting herself dressed -- she asks "Mama help" most of the time. But she picks out some winners and I help her get the look she's after. She was THRILLED to find her "cute suit" (she says coot for cute) today and was confident she looked pretty stylish when she got it on -- she posed and said "cheese" for this picture.

That's our girl! She's a lot of fun, always into something new and entertaining. We sure love her so much. How will it be to have number two?!? (Seven and a half weeks left! yay!)

Back from Portugal

Hello, my stalking readers who seldom comment. (I confess, I'm guilty too, on many other blogs. But I also confess I love to read people's comments and with so many recent posts that still have "0 comments" on my blog, I'm a little sad. sigh.)

So we are back from a lovely little trip to Portugal, such a nice, relaxing break. I thought I'd share some of the fun pictures from our trip. Mainly castles, cathedrals, churches, oceans and architecture (that's really what Portugal's about, we've decided). Later, when I have more time and brainpower (sometime less close to midnight), I might add some details about what you see here. But for now, just picture power...

That's all for now. I will only add that Brian took a bajillion-million MORE pictures than just these few, so, if you continue to stalk, you might eventually see:
a) comments on all the pictures I've just added
b) a lot more "artsy" pictures of cathedrals, castles, oceans, and architecture.
Hold tight!

Happy Birthday, Sammie -- video

Bodiam Castle and Hastings

One fun day trip with Reed and Alysa was to visit a castle we've been wanting to see for quite some time -- Bodiam Castle. It's one of those romantic looking castles, with a mote around the outside and ducks and fish in the mote.

It was built in the 1300s as a fortress/manor house. Very impressive, even though it's all in ruins now. We explored some of the chambers and climbed to the ramparts for some good pictures. Here we are standing in front... Reed and Alysa in front...
Alysa showing Sammie the ducks, while Sam admires her mittens. (She was warmly dressed in a lot of non-matching stuff... how do kids always lose the stuff that matches??)
Reed taking Samantha on a tour of one of the inner chambers.

After touring the castle, we got super HOT hot chocolate to go, and drove a few miles to the village of Battle, where the Battle of Hastings was fought by William the Conqueror in 1066. There's a huge Abby and battlefield, which we were hoping to tour. Unfortunately, we missed the last admission by like 10 seconds. Rats! But we took some nice photos and had fun peeking in some of the little shops in the town.


That's all there is to tell for now, I guess. We leave for a spontaneous trip to Portugal early tomorrow morning... We figured this may be our last chance to travel Europe before this baby arrives (only ten weeks to go!). So, hopefully next week we'll have more fun stuff to share.

Happy Christmas Wishes!

We had a wonderful Christmas, though I didn't get many pictures. It was a really relaxing time, with lots of good food, good company, and plenty of rest. Who could ask for more?!
Here are a few pictures of Samantha opening her presents... then I'll tell some of the finer details.

Here is Samantha modeling her new Princess Pajamas that Janice and Jay sent... she wanted to try them on the second she opened them!

Reed and Alysa spent Christmas week with us, arriving on Sunday, 23rd. That was a crazy day! I was helping to organize the Christmas service for our church service, including playing the organ, doing a special piano piece, and accompanying several singing groups on the piano. Plus, we were doing a special Christmas craft activity with our Primary children, with lots of glitter, glue and paper stuffs that were my responsibility. Well, Saturday night we noticed Samantha's eyes were going bloodshot, with lots of fluid in them. After we put her to bed, I started researching her symptoms and guessed she might have conjunctivitis, or as we know it, "pink-eye."


Brian and I discussed, and decided I would drop him at his early church meeting and then take Samantha to the walk-in clinic before church. That turned out to be a not-so-good time, as they made us wait for nearly two hours at the clinic before telling us, yes, Samantha has pink-eye, and giving us a perscription for eye drops. Unfortunately, that meant I was late getting to church, and Samantha was contagious and had to go home. Brian met me at the car, and took Sam home while I went in to take over playing the music -- I was a nervous wreck. I guess it turned out okay, people said. But I was pretty distracted, with the Primary activity, Samantha being sick, and Reed and Alysa arriving while we were at church. Whew! Oh, and I had to cancel our Christmas Eve party and tell everyone at church... we had planned it at our house for the next day, but since Sam was contagious, we really didn't want other kids getting sick. That was a crazy day!


But from there, Christmas was all a nice, relaxing time! On Christmas Eve, we went out with Reed and Alysa to see some of London. We wanted to go to the concert service at St Paul's cathedral. We waited for nearly 40 minutes, but we didn't make it in. We got some nice pictures anyway...

Here we are on the bridge with St. Pauls in the far background. Another COLD night, but what do we expect in December, anyway?
We walked across the bridge and had dinner at a nice pizza place. Here Samantha enjoys showing off her cool pizza hat for Aunt Alysa...
Then we went home, ate chocolates and talked about Christmas memories before bed. We all slept in Christmas morning until 9ish, then took our time lounging before opening presents together. We had a nice late breakfast of pancakes and hashbrowns, then napped and played with our new presents for the afternoon. Dinner was nice -- ham and potatoes, etc., then more talking and feasting on chocolate, which seemed to be the order for the rest of the week.

Among the gifts I received was the DVD collection of the 7th season of West Wing. I had watched most of the 6th season during the spring, when Brian was working that REALLY rough stretch. Well, so Brian thought I'd enjoy seeing the 7th season, just to wrap it all up. I DID enjoy it! Together we watched the entire season between Christmas and New Years -- mostly between 10pm and 1am. Whew! Glad that's over. :) It was fun to be so indulgent with television, as that is probably more TV than either of us has watched in the last 6 months combined.

Anyway, we've been having a lovely time relaxing this past week, really enjoying the time Brian has had off, and enjoying being with Reed and Alysa as well.

Brian's work's Children's Christmas Party

A few days before Brian got off work for the holidays, his firm put on a Christmas party for all the children of their employees. It was quite the shin-dig! They had a big race track with remote control cars, some electronic games, a sand sculpture station, a billion balloons, face painting, a DJ, and a really nice lunch spread. This was all before Father Christmas brought presents to the 50+ kids that were there! I didn't feel really comfortable taking pictures of all the events with so many kids and parents around, so I mainly just got Sammie and Daddy waiting for Father Christmas.

Here Samantha holds her balloon that was a rabbit (she cleverly untied him and then had a long sword-like balloon instead). Yes, she's looking a little wary, waiting for her present from Santa.
Even though we talked it up all day long, meeting Santa still wasn't a very pleasant experience for Samantha. She cowered in Brian's arms and had a hard time looking Santa in the eye. But she did accept the gift, and managed to say "thank you, Santa" through her tears.
She got a "tick tock clock" as she calls it. A very loud toy that tells time and weather conditions. She loves it!
By home time, Samantha was bushed! Here she sits with a helium balloon, waiting to go. She slept in the stroller on the Tube all the way home, cutie.

It was a fun day, and we were happy to have gone to the party, as we've been invited three times now. :)

Fun with Family

Brian's only sister, Janice, and her husband, Jay, came to stay with us for a week and a half just before Christmas. We had so much fun, and we hope they did too! With Brian working, we made good use of the weekend and went to Bath for our Saturday. Here are some of the highlight pictures...
We found a great Middle Eastern buffet restaurant that Janice and I really liked. Samantha wasn't so impressed, but liked her snacks of applesauce and pretzels a bit better. This shot of the River Avon looks deceivingly not as cold as we were when we took it! Brrrr!! It was a very nice day in Bath, but also VERY cold. We had to keep popping into shops and markets to get hot chocolate or warm our hands.
We visited the Roman Baths -- the reason they call the place Bath. I've visited Bath five times now, and this is the first time I've actually paid to take the tour of the Baths, built in the 4th century when the Romans Empire was in Britain. It was well worth the tour, as it turns out... lots of great history and nicely restored to showcase the natural hot springs that still flows there.

I was most interested to learn that the entire springs was buried for many hundred years, and was only rediscovered in the 1800s, when people noticed their basements were flooding slightly. They dug the whole place up and started excavating and look what they found... (that's what I read on one of the plaques, but I could be mistaken in some of the details)


Samantha loved having Jay and Janice around. She especially loved all the goodies and treats Jay brought -- fizzy drinks (Fanta soda pop) being her favorite. She also loved traveling like a big girl when we went on the Tube. Instead of being in her stroller, we got her out to sit on the BIG seats with us, a rare privilege that I can't afford to do often when we're out alone.

We also spent a day in the Cotswold villages, one of my favorite places in England. Unfortunately, I didn't remember to take a single picture!! But I think Janice and Jay may have some good shots, I'll try to add later if I can.

It was so fun to have them here. Janice taught Samantha that it's FUN to have her hair brushed and fixed (something I REALLY appreciate). And she also taught her to say Princess dress, Princess pajamas, Pretty princess, etc. Welcome to the world of princesses!

Catch up time!

As you've probably noticed, it's been weeks since I've gotten around to adding anything new here. I feel comforted in browsing other people's blogs and noticing that most of them also have been absent from blogger. I guess we've all been busy enough DOING fun stuff, we haven't yet had time to blog about it?

That's certainly the case here. The short scoop of why there have been no blogs, and then I'll update in a new post...
First, Brian's sister, Janice, and her husband Jay came to stay with us for a week and a half, leaving midweek before Christmas.

Then, a few days later, Brian's brother, Reed, and his wife Alysa came to spend the Christmas week with us, leaving yesterday (New Years Eve).

And now, it's New Years Day (happy New Year, everyone) and we're lounging at home, planning a trip to Portugal for the coming week -- leaving early tomorrow morning.

So, my only chance to catch up is NOW. There may be several posts (this explanatory one being at the bottom, unfortunately), if I can stay focused. And then, you'll have to wait another week to hear how our trip to Portugal turns out! Stay tuned...