Birthday pictures!

I have been so busy lately with extra computer time that I have not even posted the professional pictures we had done of the girls.  So here they are.

Sam's were from a local reserve.  It had a neat bridge.

Such a girlie girl!

She loves her sister and her sister adores her!

Love her laugh!

Sassy!

Sweet

She had a great time throwing petals!

For Zoey, I knew she would not do well on the bridge, so we went back to the gardens.  I appliqued shirts for the girls.

 Poufy dress.

I love this one!

There was the cutest picture on pinterest with a 1 year old with a tutu.  The girl was lying on her belly and the tutu was behind her.  Zoey would just not have it.

She also would not leave the letters alone or hold them correctly.

But who can get too upset when she smiles like this.  This expression is her default.  I do not know if there is a baby out there easier to get to laugh.

 Showing off her squatting.  There was a hovering one, but this expression was much better.

 She was too interested in the fish to look back at us to get an over the shoulder shot.  And it was not for a lack of us calling and clapping and such.

Check out that Buddha belly!

Here are a couple other catch up pictures from my phone.

Mom, Sam, Zoey and I went to the downtown market and a charity chalk event.  We bought tickets to vote for ones done by artists and also bought a space for Sam to decorate.  So much fun!

Shopping at Lowe's.  The girls are in the St. Patty's day shirts I appliqued.  They were so time consuming, but they looked so cute.  They were shamrocks made out of 4 hearts.

And now for the latest installment of Samisms or kids say the darndest things.  Some nice fodder for embarrassing her later on.  Nick was playing with Sam recently and she handed him the doll sleeping bag below (a leftover from my childhood, gotta love the 70's) and told him to put on his love glove.

And another interesting one.  She and my mom were talking about a stuffed unicorn at my mom's house and Sam said he was a boy because of the thing hanging down.  My mom knew he was not anatomically correct and on questioning it came out Sam was referring to a goatee on the unicorn.  You have got to love the innocence of a 4 year old.

 Zoey is a full time walker now, but shoes still throw her a bit.  She is also picking up words faster.  I read recently that the so called vocab burst is mostly a rumor, that most kids have a gradual increase, and that is the case with Zoey.  Her vocabulary is astounding for a 13 month old.  Not all of her words are completely understandable, or at least not without context, but she can get across a lot.  She even says a version of thank you.  Sam is learning more and more words and can read a couple of full books.  What a super star!

Things have been busy but mostly good.  There have been some showings of our house, so we are hoping for some real interest soon, fingers crossed.  There is still craziness with the USF-Polytechnic split and we will be glad when we know where all that will fall.  We had a nice spring break, but it was mostly filled with cleaning and such.  We both know we will be teaching this summer, so that is better than at one point.  I have 2 classes and Nick has 1 and research.  My parents also got a new car so that we can all go places together.  They have a brand new Mazda 5, a van/suv crossover.  It is on a car frame so it is small but it seats 6.  Now to figure out where to put the 2 carseats.

Adventures in bipedalism

Zoey has reached the threshold to be a true walker.  She prefers it most of the time.  She still gets distracted easily and slips on things.  And carrying things can be her downfall.  But her ability to pop back up is amazing and sometimes she pulls off a great recovery.

Spring Break!

My 300th post, wow!  Or as Zoey says, "Vow!"

We started Spring Break early with our trip to Epcot.  We also hit the Tampa Zoo yesterday with another USF Poly prof and his family.  It was tons of fun.

Sam got to ride a camel.

We rode the coaster, too.  What a cool picture!

The orangs were close eating carrots.

Zoey loved the penguin.

We plan to fill the rest of Spring Break with a lot of cleaning.  Today I tackled our bathroom.  Thanks to pinterest, I got the idea to use vinegar and dawn to cut through the soap scum.  It is sparkling!  There will be some fun as well.  Our relator was having an open house at our Atlanta house today.  There have been a few showings, but no strong interest.  The USF split has been approved, so Florida Polytechnic University (FPU) will be created.  There will be a teach out, 5 years to get the current students graduated.  We are not sure what exactly will happen, we hope for options.  It has been so stressful, especially with the Atlanta house hitting the market.  Samantha also did not get into the charter school.  She ended up 40th on the waiting list after the lottery.  The lady said sometimes they have gone to 60, but we are trying to have a back up plan.  We may go with the school we are districted for, which is a great school, but the jr high is so awful.  So she would have to move again.  We will try the charter again next year since they have more slots for kindergarten and add a magnet school that starts at kindergarten.

Sam continues to amaze us.  My mom works with her a lot in addition to all we do.  She does not, unfortunately, learn much at school.  But she is learning sight words and can read The Eye Book.  We are searching for a school that will do her advancement justice.  So many PreK programs start with letter recognition and get to sight words by the end of the year.  Not acceptable when you know them at the beginning.

Zoey learns new words all the time.  She has over 20 for sure, some are hard because she does not say them perfectly.  She is in that gray area between crawler and walker.  She is starting to prefer to walk, she just is in that falls a lot, acts like she is drunk, cannot avoid obstacles stage.  Many might officially classify her as a walker, we are just waiting for a more definitive 50%+ spent walking.  Long distances are still crawl and of course after a plop down.

Epcot in bloom

We decided to get a jump on Spring Break and go to Epcot Wednesday before the Spring Breakers.  We let Sam skip school.  It as the third of our passes that we needed to use before they expired.  We had a nice day.  Epcot is a little less crazy and it was the start of a garden event, so flowers and topiaries were everywhere.  It also has a small aquarium and 2 kid museum type places in it.

Right at the entrance.

We hit the character area. Zoey was unsure at first and even started to cry at Pluto.  But by Donald she was into it and made her "Wow" face.  She even says wow, but it comes out vow.

Nana, Sam and Bambi.

We saw baby ducks.  So cute!

Duck is also one of Zoey's words now, although it sounds like duh and is similar to dog (dah).

A silly shot yelling "Butterfly!"

In one of the areas they had a fire safety section.  Samantha remembered from when they came to her school and was selected to demonstrate stop, drop, cover your face and roll.  She did great.

More cool topiaries.

There were so many, so just a few more.

I asked her to turn around :)

Nick was here too :)

Making a wish at the fountain.

Perhaps a future summer job?  A born princess.

Panda topiary!

It is hard to see, but Nick helped Sam make a character of her for this video game.