Samantha's Birthday

On Monday, the day before Samantha's birthday we did her Toddler Room celebration since I was going to take her out of school on her actual birthday. First they did their usual circle time and Samantha was excited and happy that I was there for her circle time. Here she is waving to me all excited to see me.


Enjoying her cupcake:


All the Toddlers and Hannah enjoying their birthday cupcakes:


Good Morning and Happy 2nd Birthday Samantha!! My traditional birthday picture that I take of each girl first thing in the morning on their birthday...I am sure they will love that when they are teenagers. :)


I let Samantha & Hannah eat their breakfast at their little table while watching "Curious George"...this was a treat b/c they hardly ever get to watch T.V. while eating at the same time.


On her birthday we decided to go the ArtBeast in Sacramento which is basically a kids art studio. We invited one of our neighbors across the street (the other was out of town who we usually play with too) and we had a lot of fun.

The first thing Samantha did was head straight for a toy we have at home...glad I paid for her to play with that in Sacramento:


After that she headed off to do some painting.


Sisters painting:


Samantha LOVES stairs...obviously b/c we don't have them:


Playing in the kitchen:


Playing with the washers and making a lot of noise:


More art:




Then we met Daddy for lunch and went to visit his office. The girls really loved playing hide and seek and running around in the office filing room...go figure!




At the end of the evening Samantha was excited to open her birthday presents...


Working hard!


Happy with her new play parachute:


The first present she opened was a medical kit...this was a HUGE hit and still is to this day. All Samantha wanted to do was take her temp, look in her own ears and everyone elses. She has also become very demanding ordering us to lay "DOWN!" as she says in order for her to give us a medical check up...it is hilarious.










Samantha got to pick out her own birthday cupcake at Nugget and was very excited about it. We are going to be baking a lot of cupcakes for her b-day party so this is why we did not bake anything this night plus Samantha, and Hannah too, love to look at the cupcakes at Nugget. The fancy carrot cake is for Adam and I. :)



Blowing out her 2 candles


Enjoying her cupcake:


You can probably see that her left eye looks a little funny...that is because the universe decided to give her pink eye on her 2nd birthday..good times.

And sisters enjoying themselves together:



It was a good day. :)

A few Christmas Pictures

Here are just a few pictures from Christmas:

Hannah, Samantha and Tulip (trying to get in the picture) on Adam's Mom's staircase on Christmas Eve.



This was just about 1/2 hour before Hannah's ear infection really set in and we were calling around trying to find a pharmacy open on Christmas Eve and having to bother our on-call doctor. She was awesome though and sent antibiotics to the one open pharmacy we found and all was saved! Yay!

Hannah with her cool new Aggie hat from Santa...


Samantha really getting into opening her presents. Check out the tongue...apparently you really have to get your tongue into opening up your presents. :)


The joy of opening up a gift!


Finally today is Samantha's 2nd birthday! Happy birthday to her! I will post later with pictures but we are sitting here right now waiting for the doctor to call as back as I am pretty sure she got pink eye for her birthday. Good times.

Happy Girls

Our big gift to our girls this year was a train table (that I got a great deal on at this 2nd hand kids store here in Davis). For years they have had train tracks but it was hard to bring them out b/c train tracks don't build well on carpet and everytime we would go somewhere with a train table they would always spend most of their time playing at this table.
We decided to give it to them last weekend because we are headed down to Adam's Mom's house for Christmas Eve & Christmas and since we can't bring it along and to give them a chance to play with it before we go. This is a great picture I captured of them jumping up and down with excitement when they saw the table.



I love this picture!

Winter has arrived in Davis

Thanks to our awesome neighbor across the street we have snow in Davis!! He drove up to the snow, loaded a trailer full of snow, came back down to Davis and built and igloo for the kids in the front yard. Now not just a simple igloo...he reinforced it with wood inside and plastic at the front entrance...when he builds things he goes all out. So after dinner last night the neighborhood kids were out in their snow suits playing in the snow...perfect for the first day of winter. Thanks Dave!!

Samantha getting in her snow suit and not enjoying it at all...


All the kids playing...


Hannah found a slide


Hannah at the entrance of the igloo


Samantha checking out the snow


Eating the carrots that are suppose to be for the snowman


Mom, could you please get me out of this snowsuit...


Samantha inside the igloo and here you can see the great construction on the inside


All the parents hanging out, drinking and watching their little ones have fun.


Making snow angels...or at least trying.


Samantha was so stubborn she didn't even want her rain boots on and wanted to walk around so I just let her...




Then she finally realized her feet were cold and wet so we had to take her socks off and she sat on a chair pointing to her feet and saying "cold"...yeah it was time to go home.


One more picture sitting on the snowman...don't ask me why she decided to sit on the snowman.


Let's hope the snow doesn't melt too fast so we have a few more days of fun!

Fesitvus for the Rest of Us

Seriously?!! This is what is wrong with our legal system. Apparently no one watches Seinfeld within the system. :)

F*#&ING TAPS!!!

Since I bike to work I am part of this "Go-Club" thing and get a free 12 day permit from TAPS (our parking "police" here at UCD) to use whenever I want throughout the fiscal year. Whenever you use it you simply have to write in the date and circle the day of the week. Well yesterday happened to be one of those days that I used it and I wrote "11/30" and at first I circled "W" for Wednesday...I guess I was being hopeful it was later in the week. Anyway, I realized my mistake so I crossed it out and circled "T" instead for Tuesday as you can see below:


And when I got back to the car after work I got this!!


A $218!! ticket for a "cancelled/altered permit" are f#&ing kidding me!!! I seriously could not believe it...this is a new low for them. How could you possibly think b/c I got the day of the week wrong that I somehow deserve a $218 ticket! I got the date right and there is no way I could have altered that and if you look at all the other dates previously there have been no alterations...come on! I am so MAD!! You better believe they are going to hear from me today.

The Girls Are Sharing a Room!

So as of last night our girls are officially sharing a room. Adam and I started the move at 1pm yesterday (a little late) but I just wanted to get it started and it ended up a complete move...at least for their room, the rest of the house is a mess! We took the "Babi/Nali bed" as we like to refer to it and moved it into Samantha's room and Samantha's crib into Hannah's room or as it is now called Hannah & Samantha's room. So now when the grandmother's come to visit they officially have their own room to sleep in and don't have to sleep with Hannah.

Hannah was there for the beginning of the move but then went across the street to play for the second half of the move. When she came back we were all done and she was so excited, she was jumping up and down with so much excitement, it was cute. Samantha seemed a little confused but looked excited too.

Then when bed time came I read to both girls in Hannah's bed and that went well, then both girls laid down in Hannah's bed for me to sing them some songs and Samantha was all excited to be tucked into Hannah's bed and laying next to her sister, it was too cute. After my songs I told them to say goodnight to each other and I grabbed Samantha and moved her to her crib...and that is when the crying started. I think she thought she was going to be sleeping IN Hannah's bed with her. I finally got her to stop crying and she told me "night" like she has just started saying and Hannah said goodnight and then I walked out and the crying started again. Hannah then proceeded to tell me that Samantha was crying...like I didn't know that. I tried to tell Hannah to ignore her and that she would eventually stop but Hannah being the good concerned big sister kept talking to her and bringing her stuffed animals and I even once caught her singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" to her. Of course while this is sweet she didn't realize it was making things worse.

So I went in there multiple times (Adam was away that night...which was actually a good thing b/c I didn't want to hear him saying "see I told you so" since he wasn't too thrilled with the idea of the girls sharing a room anyway) to try and calm Samantha down and each time I went in she was fine, would lay down and then as soon as left the crying started. So I decided to tell the girls I was going to take a shower so they know I wouldn't be accessible and this worked b/c I did not hear any crying while I was in the shower or when I got out. Then all of sudden the bathroom door opens and it is Hannah telling me that Samantha isn't crying anymore but now she cannot sleep, which she never does and then of course Samantha starts crying again! UGHHH!! So back to having them both try and get back to sleep. Eventually Hannah falls asleep and once she is asleep she doesn't wake up for anything. So even though Samantha was still crying she slept right through it. Samantha eventually quieted down and I went in there to tuck her in and I found her just sitting there. She finally went to sleep at 9:30pm!!

I am hoping this is just the adjustment period of moving to a new room b/c she seems very excited to be in the same room as Hannah. Both girls slept through the night but Samantha was up at 6:25am this morning and then woke up Hannah...great! As I said I hope tonight and future nights go better.

Turkey Trot & Doggy Torture

This past Saturday the girls and I ran in the Davis Turkey Trot. I ran the 5k, Hannah ran in the kid's 1/2 mile and Samantha did the 200 yard Toddler Dash. We all finished, even though it was freezing, windy and raining off and on. Here I am crossing the finish line...


While the clock does say 35minutes I finished at 34 minutes...due to the fact that it took me a while to cross the starting line b/c of how many people were out there! I was so proud of myself though b/c I ran it all without stopping. I ran it with my friend Susan and next year we are doing the 10k!

A couple of hours later were the kids races. Here is Hannah and I and her friend Sydney getting ready to run:


Hannah ran almost the whole thing and I am proud of her even though she complained most of the way that her side was hurting and she would not let go of my hand even though I told her it would be better to run and use your arms...she still didn't let go of my hand. And here we are crossing the finish line:


Getting the all important ribbon:



The next day her legs were so sore and she was a super drama queen and complained most of the day everytime she moved that she was in the worst pain ever b/c her legs hurt. Me being sympathetic mom told her to just walk it off. Luckily this complaining only lasted one day.

Next it was Samantha's turn in the 200 yard Toddler Dash. Adam "ran" that with her. She was by far the smallest one out there but she was so cute! We had her all bundled up b/c it was so cold and while she did not run the whole thing she did do it all on her own...Adam did not pick her up once! Here are several cute shots of her "run":

She's off!


Almost there!


She finished! High fives all around!


Happy Girl!


After the races it was off to the bounce houses that were set up for the kids. This was Samantha's first experience in a bounce house and I waited until most of the kids were gone so she wouldn't be trampled in there. She loved the bounce house!




These bounce houses had been out there since 7am and it was now 12pm and they had been accumulating all that rain on the top. So as I am standing there watching Samantha in the bounce house a wind blows and somehow the bounce house shifts just enough for the water that was on top to come down right on top of me like a massive waterfall! I was drenched!!! Adam happened to be on the other side of the bounce house and saw the whole thing happen and just stood there laughing as I was soaked!



I have no idea why when there were many kids in that bounce house the water did not fall from the top...it was only when there was just Samantha left in there that this happened. Craziness! Anyway, Samantha got hit too as it bounced off me and into the bounce house so she was pretty wet as well. Adam had to crawl into the bounce house to get her and then it was definitely time to go home.

Now for the doggy torture. Hannah has taken a new hobby which is to decorate and dress up Tulip. This poor dog. She has become more tolerant over the past few weeks to getting dressed up but I still feel for her. Hannah loves to dress her up and now Samantha is even helping her! Of course Hannah has dressed Samantha as well. What a bunch of silly girls.


Awwww...so sweet.


Finally, the other night we saw the most beautiful sunset from our sliding glass door. Hannah is clearly her mother's daughter as she yelled "Mommy take a picture!" So I did.



This sunset was of course taking place on the west side of our house and Hannah yelled out "I am going to go see what it looks like from my room, Samantha's room and Mommy & Daddy's room!". One problem is that Mommy & Daddy's room faces east...too funny.