30 days hath September

A few recent pictures.  We let Sam paint at home recently, but we removed her pretty dress first.  She had a great time and did three pictures.  She said one was for Mommy, one for Nana, and one for herself.

                                        

Sam and I went to a Mother's Club tour of the Barboursville Volunteer Station.  Sam had a pretty good time.  Here she is with a fellow club member.

And driving the truck.  

After the tour, she and I went to the mall for a bit and then out to lunch.  She was not well behaved at lunch.  She did not eat much and complained about her stomach, but I thought she might just be hungry since she tried to go to the bathroom and could not.  We went home and I put her down for a nap. She took a long time to fall asleep and woke up about 30 minutes later.  We discovered that she had thrown up in her bed.  She ended up having several days of an upset stomach and a fever for a few days.  She had to stay home from school and miss gym class.  It was a rough few days.

Nana and Papa came during her post-fever, but still upset stomach time.  Nick had a conference in San Francisco, so they came to help out with Sam so I could teach his classes.  Sam was really excited to see them again.

They brought a hiking pack to wear kids, but Sam did not like it much better than the one we borrowed.  She only lasted a few minutes.

And Nick and I went out to celebrate my birthday since we had free babysitting!  We tried Huntington Prime for the first time.  It is a fairly new restaurant that buys locally, but the food was only okay in my opinion.

It was so nice of my parents to drive all the way up here.  My mom has even taken over laundry and washed all my maternity clothes so I can start wearing them.  We are so thankful that they are so giving and generous. And that Sam can have such a bond with them.  But I am super excited that Nick will be home tomorrow.  It just is not the same without him.  And a lot more work to teach his load too :)

So evidently a lot of people have had video issues. If you switch back to the old editor, it works. So here is the video of Sam and her friend Jalyn dancing at Chilifest.

Fall Festivals!

This season in Huntington is tons of fun.  So much to do!  We started the weekend by a fundraiser carnival at Sam's school.  St. Joe's are also the fighting irish, so she wore an ND shirt.  There were inflatables, games, and food.  Sam got her first taste of cotton candy.  She really tried to win a cake at the cake walk, but we never did.  She was super excited to get her whole face painted as a tiger.

                                             

                                                

Saturday was the Chilifest, which is a large fundraiser for the Ronald McDonald house.  Sam enjoyed more jumping.  She did not like the chili, but enjoyed chips and cheese.  I really enjoyed the chili.  Sam also enjoyed dancing around to the band with a friend.  I have a video, but it will not upload, so more later.  

This weekend is Greekfest, which includes baklava!

Who Dey!

So we made a small trip to Cincinnati this weekend.  It was a crazy trip without enough sleep, but we squeezed in a lot.

We went to the Duke Energy Children's Museum.  Sam loved the water play area.

Sam was really cute and grabbed the frog puppet and told us where to sit for a puppet show.  She ran up to this tower and put on a show.

She had a great time.  Perhaps more puppets are needed for Christmas presents.

Then we also went to the zoo.

There was a pretty nice polar bear exhibit, but it was hot to have only outside areas.

This was a great position.

Sam, Nick and the wolves.

The little penguins were so cute!

Sam and I rode the train.  We learned that it is the second oldest zoo in the country.

While we rode the train, Nick got a close up visit from a peacock.

And the coolest was that Sam got to feed a giraffe.  She enjoyed that.

And on the way out, she said "Z-O-O, Zoo."  We were so impressed.

Fall fun!

We continue to be super busy.  Of course there is always unpacking and household stuff.  We also had our first day of needing to take snacks for the class to Sam's school.  I decided it would be nice to make muffins.  They want healthy snacks, so I went with whole wheat blueberry ones from a mix and they were really tasty.  Sam helped me make them.  She loves helping, standing on the stool.  She also helped make cupcakes for Nick's birthday.

We have had several park playdates.  Here is Sam with her friend Samuel.  They had a blast.

Here is Sam with Nick on his birthday.  She really enjoyed making his day special and helping unwrap his presents.

One of his presents was a pumpkin Sam painted at the pottery place.  She picked it out and did a great job, even if I did not agree with all her artistic choices. 

Here is a closeup of the pumpkin.

We went to a street fair for the MU-WVU game.  Go Herd!

And the biggest event was that Sam started gym class today.  We are doing a mom and tot one for now.  She loved getting dressed in her leotard (or leo for those in the know).  She also enjoyed picking matching accessories, which was impressive.  Hearing a two year old say, "Hey Mom, this matches my leotard" is pretty cool.

She did great in class, although she always wanted to do something before she was supposed to and always wanted to know what was next.  Here she is doing a backwards roll.  She really got the front ones, which she has called flip-flops.

She was fearless being flipped over the bar.

She loved the balance beam, even doing tip toe kicks.

And she loved sliding into the blocks.  I told her to count to 3 and slide so the other kid could clear out of the way.  She kept counting.

And when all the other kids moved on to the balance beam, she had to crawl through the blocks to get the out of place red one on the ledge.  She really is a mini-me :)

Busy weekend

We have been keeping busy this weekend with a lot more fun to come!  I wanted to share this picture.  Sam was just drawing and said, "Look Mom, I drew A."  I thought it was an impressive one!  She has taken "up, down, across" to heart.

September already?

Sam has been doing great with preschool.  She cried for 3 mornings and then it shifted to a quick goodbye and off to play.  I am so impressed with her adaptability.  We do not know much about what all she does other than eat and play with dolls.  But she is excited to go on most mornings.  Luckily she is also excited to see me when I pick her up, too.  She has not been napping too well after school, though, which has been rough.

These are actually from August 13th, but I just scanned them in.  I had the PAPP-A test done and it included an ultrasound.  Here is a profile view.

And I thought this was too funny since it looks like the baby is doing a fist pump and Sam recently started doing that.

We have been keeping busy beyond unpacking and such.  Sam and I went to a princess party at the library.  We only stayed a little while though because it was insane and she was cranky.  

We also went to a baby and kids expo that had inflatables and a princess party.  She loved jumping and had it all to herself.  Here is an action shot.  I find it amusing because this is the same dress she wore last fall to jump at the ribfest.  It is much shorter now :)

She loved seeing the princesses, but Tinkerbell was her favorite.

She likes putting on our clothes.  Here she is in Nick's socks.

And she has been loving getting in and out of boxes and tubs.

Another cute story with no pictures I want to share.  The other night Nick was working on fixing our ottoman.  He told Sam to leave his tools alone, so she went and got her plastic play toys and came to help.  It was adorable how she hammered and offered her tools.  I did not take a picture since I figured getting the camera would ruin  the moment and I was elbow deep in dish duty.  I am so blessed to have such a wonderful kid and husband, who is a great father too.