1st Double Stuffed Oreo

Recently, Sam had his 1st Double Stuffed Oreo. As to be expected, he carefully scraped every last speck of icing off with his finger. It was like the Everlasting Gobstopper of Oreos. It went on forever. The pictures speak for themselves...

Trip to See Santa at the Gaylord...Well, Kinda

The other night, we went to the Gaylord to see Santa which is where we went last year. (See pic) I pictured us strolling through the hotel, sipping our coffee, hand in hand while looking at the lights and discussing our many blessings. Well, I could just show you the following 3 pictures without any other explanation and you can probably tell how the night went...

Mistake #1 - I gave him a sucker at 8:30 at night.

Mistake #2 - I let his feet touch the floor....and he's off...

Honestly, the back of his head is all I saw of him the entire night. Poor Daddy was sweatin' 5 minutes into our arrival and I was chasing the 2 of them down while pushing the stroller with one hand (bum finger, remember?) and coffee sloshin' & flyin' everywhere (and we were going to stroll, remember?).

What? His Face? He didn't mean to stop long enough for his face to be seen. Hurry, this never happened...

However, Sam got to ride on an escalator for the first time without a stroller.

The decorations were amazing and Sam had a great time to say the least. We decided to postpone the visit with Santa once the meltdowns began and try again for another day. (another day, another post)

Well, all I can say is Live and Learn!

Getting Ready for Christmas

Ok, I have had my decorations up since before Thanksgiving and I am just now blogging them. Since the main reason that I blog is to journal and/or scrapbook these wonderful times with my sweet SamBo, I decided better late than never. Sooo, here are some pics of the process and the results :)

Getting it all down...
As we were getting down the decorations from the attic, Sammy found a little red rocking horse. It's really small and supposed to be used for decoration, not as a toy. I laughed out loud when I turned around and found his little bottom wedged in it, rocking back and forth.

The outside...
After getting everything down, it was time to decorate the outside of the house. The plan was for Matt to do the outside while I did the tree. As it turned out, Matt finished the outside as planned and I successfully spent the entire day complaining about how I didn't want to go inside and "fluff" the incredibly painful, stiff artificial branches.

Sam sat in the back of Daddy's truck and watched as Matt did the work.

This was Sam's reaction when we turned on the lights. We switched to colored lights this year in efforts to make it more gingerbread like. Sam thought there were little "ball balls" as he calls them, all around the house.

Next, it was time to decorate the tree...
I love this picture and his sweet little hand. (Although he looks like he is innocently placing an ornament amist the tree, he is most likely getting a good grip so he can rip it off)

Later, I walked up and found him looking at this sweet little picture of himself from last year and saying, "Sssssss". That's how he says Sam. It's an ornament that says, "Baby's 1st Christmas".

While I was doing the awful chore of fluffing the mashed down branches, he came over and had a little seat in my lap.

After the beat down of the branches was finished, I bit the bullet and decorated it. Sam helped :)

This year, I added big candy-like pieces to go with the whimsical candy house theme.

At first glance, this seems like a sweet little picture of a sweet little boy. If you look a little closer, you can see that little mischevious gleam in his eye that says, "Go ahead and go back in the kitchen, I'm not going to do anything."
All finished. We added new stockings this year but didn't manage to get the names on them. Oh well, maybe next year.
This T'was The Night Before Christmas book was the first one that my dad started reading when my oldest brother was an infant. He's 42 now and my dad has read us the story every Christmas Eve since then (another post to come after Christmas this year)

Make Like a Tree & Leave

The other day, Matt was working away, raking millions of leaves from the yard when Sam took the rake away from him and went to town. My favorite part is the way that he grunts as he works :)

*WARNING* Really gross picture! Look at your own risk!

Ok...after much convincing from my friends that took this picture, I decided to post it on my blog. This is my finger after nearly a week. It is starting to feel much better although it is still uncertain as to how much of it will survive. The hope is that most of it will live and the part that my not live will be such a small section that it will be fine. Anyway, for those of you that like gross stuff, enjoy! For the rest of you...I'm really sorry! (Scroll down to see the picture)














Drumroll......

What a fun night :)

A few nights ago, we had one of those simple nights at home when you turn off the TV and just hang out as a family. We don't do this nearly enough! After dinner, Sam & I played hide & go seak with Daddy. We would hold hands and run and hide while Matt hollared, "Where's Sammy?". Sam would stick his sweet little finger to his mouth (or sometimes behind his lip) and say, "Shhhhh". However, he was anything but quiet. He would chuckle & giggle as loud as ever while we would sneak up on Daddy & jump out and say Boo! Matt would be very dramatic and act scared and Sammy loved it. Matt wouldn't hardly have the words out of his mouth and Sam would be grabbing my hand saying, "a knee, a knee" (again, again). He and Matt finished with some football & good ol' tickle torture. He was so excited that he started going in circles until he was dizzy (which is his new favorite thing). See the video below which is crooked and I don't know why...(Don't forget to pause the music at the bottom of the page)