Sammy is Three!!

Here's the birthday boy enjoying his cupcake

Pulling out the airplanes each of the Potter girls made for our fridge - thanks girls!

The first gift Sam opened got him quite excited for the rest - a set of airplanes and helicopters

And a homemade teepee which Sam calls his tunnel. This is going to bring so much entertainment in the months and years to come! Thank you so much to Grandma and Great Grandma!! All of Sam's gifts were thoughtful and will bring many hours of enjoyment - thanks to all who helped us celebrate Sam!!

And the birthday cake. It turned out to be much more difficult than anticipated, but we managed to get it done. The cupcakes were for the kids and the adults enjoyed the yellow cake with chocolate marble and cream cheese icing. Sam's favorite part was his "spaceman" candle, which he lovingly used to stamp blue frosting across the top of the yellow fondant before the party. Sam had a great day and would go around singing "happy bird-day to me" :)

The Nightmare Continues

Ok, I'm admitting it: I've had a rough day (and it's only 2!) Sam gave me his cold, which has left me congested, difficult to sleep and just dragging through each day. But somehow I manage to drag myself out of bed and get me and Sam gone by 9 am to do my visiting teaching. Now don't get me wrong, I love visiting teaching and I love the sisters we see, but it gets really difficult to keep my sanity when Sam fights at every little thing and each visit takes an hour and a half and they are not scheduled quite together. So we get home around 1 and Sam is having a meltdown because he is tired and hungry. I'm not feeling great myself, so I get into some comfy clothes and set about getting lunch, when I notice a big pile of dirt outside the back doors. It has been pretty warm around here lately, but I didn't think we had a big pile of dirt under the snow in that spot, so I open the door to check things out. My worst fears are confirmed when I see the two to three foot long hole that has been dug right next to where the previous hole was - the skunks are back. I try to call Robert and he doesn't pick up, so I sit down and just cry. I am so ready to be done with this house!! Robert called back and helped me calm down by saying that its ok because we'll just buy a new one tonight (we are looking at two houses in our area tonight) and we will be calling the skunk guy, if we can find his number again. Appparently skunks are undesirables, even among the pest control community, and it is difficult to find someone to take care of the problem. So if you were thinking your day has just been horrible, know that someone you know is also thinking the same thing and that someday life really will get better - you just never know when it will be better or when it will be worse! :)

Staying Busy

Lucy didn't want to be left out of the picture taking

Sam, Natalie and Josh "swimming" on their ocean made from a blue blanket with the flattened moving boxes along the sides for a beach.

We have been spending most of our time this last week welcoming my older sister and her family to the area. It has been great to watch Sam interact with all his cousins and I cannot describe what it is like to have my big sister closeby again. Some of you may remember when Robert and I moved to Kennewick, Washington for a summer while he did his internship for the church farms. Corinne and her family lived in Prosser, which was around 40 mins away, but we didn't let that stop us from being out visiting them just about every weekend and several times during the week. We grew really fond of the Potters that summer and have always talked about living close to them again and so it seemed like a dream come true when they let us know that Ben was going back to school and they might be as close as Idaho Falls! Now they are here and they live right in downtown Rigby and we are so happy to have them, although we are working on sharing them with Ben's brothers and sister who live in the area as well :)
Sam has been battling a cold this week and now that he is finally just about past it, Mommy is feeling under the weather. This week we were called in to speak with the bishopric and even after expressing my concerns (ex: I'm pregnant and will only be getting more so, what I am supposed to do with a newborn in nursery, if I am nursing I will most likely have to leave the other teacher with all the kids at some point during church, etc) I am now called to be a nursery worker - obviously someone in charge has a sense of humor (they also wanted me to remain the visiting teaching coordinator, but I told them when the baby comes it will be time for someone else to have that blessing)

Daddy has been working hard or hardly working, we're not quite sure :) It has been great to have him getting home between 5 and 6 most nights and home every Saturday. So we used our free Saturday to go up to the shop and spend some time working on Robert's sandrail (more details and pictures to come at some point) Later that day we were able to go shopping for Sam's birthday - I can't believe he will be 3 on Friday!! We will be doing just a small party with family and I'm excited to try an idea I saw online for his birthday cake incorporating Toy Story 3. Pictures to come!!

Another Memorable Day

We have had another one of those days that you just won't forget anytime soon. The day looked promising with the return of our water supply last night after two days of absolutely nothing. But alas, it had more in store than I was betting on. I felt great being able to accomplish many of the things that have been bugging me since getting back from our trip: dishes, laundry, putting away Christmas, reorganizing the "catch all" table and the office, getting the snow tires put on the car and even getting a chance to get some gas station hot chocolate (my favorite!)
The first thing to go awry was the discovery of a ball of black and white fabric in the rubber seal of my washer. Since it was the load of Robert's work clothes, I thought it was just some fabric or lint of some sort. When I grab the thing, it turns out it is a MOUSE!! A dead, wet and very gross little mouse that had made its way in with the laundry somehow. I have to admit, I lost it a little bit. But thankfully it didn't scare Sam, he just thought Mommy was playing a game and being silly, even when he heard me telling the story to Daddy on the phone he simply thought it was an adventure worth repeating over and over again (even though he wasn't in the room for the discovery)
Most would think that in itsself would be memorable enough. But no, we need a little something more to keep this day alive, so Robert comes home from work and when I notice a rag and electrical tape wrapped around a finger he tells me "I don't want to show it to you because I know you will just make me go to the doctor" Great. These are words you don't really want to hear, but now that they have been said, you must trudge on. The result is the above picture, which is only part of the gash. I tell him he really should go, but he decides to take a shower first. I call my nursing sounding board (Corinne!) to confirm that he should at least get it looked at and ask the neighbors to watch Sam for us. I wondered if that was really necessary, but it turned out to be a really good idea. Not because it took all that long, but because after getting numbed up (which anyone who has experienced it knows usually hurts more than the injury itsself) Robert starts turning gray and calmly asks me for a drink of water. He didn't faint, but he definitely made us think he was going to. Now he is all stitched up pretty and got a tetanus shot and I will get to spend the next few days giving drugs and changing the bandages. How was your day?

Christmas

Here's the front room after Santa visited

And the stuffed stockings

Jolly Old Saint Nick even ate some of the treats we left for him! These were pretty yummy - an Oreo baked inside of a brownie - mmmm!

Sam had a great time Christmas morning opening gifts from friends and Santa and was a little frustrated when he needed help opening a few.

And by far the favorite present of them all was Buzz and Woody figurines. It was a great Christmas for all of us with very thoughtful and practical gifts. We enjoyed getting to be at home together being lazy all morning and then we packed up and left for the warm country of Arizona. There we spent a week enjoying family, food, motorcycle riding, bunny bashing, and paintballing. But as always, the week went by way too fast and we are now home again in good, COLD Idaho anticipating the move of the Washington Potters to Rigby - we are so excited to have them live close again! Hope all of you had a great holidays!

Skunks

I was hoping for this to be a happy post about how we took out the skunk under our house. But, it's not. We did catch one skunk and a cat in the skunk trap last night, but as it turns out, there is an entire family of skunks under the house. This is a picture of the nice hole they have dug for themselves to get under the house.

This is the one of the little ones we caught in the trap last night. When Robert looked out to check on it, he saw two more coming out from under the house to help it, so he grabbed the shotgun and tried to shoot both of them, but was only successful at getting both of the other two to spray under the house, which seeped up through the walls and floors and such and made the house nearly unbearable last night.

So this morning we disposed of Skunk #1 and we are really, really hoping we are able to get the other two (or more!) skunks to come back out and just catch them in the trap. This is specifically a skunk trap and is small enough that the skunk can't lift up its tail to spray you - thanks to our great neighbors for allowing us to borrow it!!

Stockings Hung with Care

Well, we are all ready for Christmas up here in Idaho. I just thought I would share a little bit about our stockings.

Robert's mom has made each of us our stocking and spends many hours sewing both crosstitch and on the sewing machine to put these beautiful stockings together. Each of the kids in the family have a full crosstitched stocking and then the grandkids have just a topper.

Every stocking is different in some way, but they all go together as well - I love it! And, I love that I can give these stockings to my children when they grow up and they can have something Grandma made just for them.

And this year I am so happy to have Kaylie's stocking to hang with all the rest. Even though she isn't here with us, Kaylie is a part of our family and doing the simple things like having a stocking just to hang helps us to remember our angel in heaven.

Santa

Wednesday was storytime and this being the last storytime of the year, we had a special visitor come! Sam and Josh both enjoyed sitting on Santa'a lap and telling him what they wanted this year; Lilly wasn't so thrilled with the whole thing.

As for me, I had a little something to ask Santa for this year as well and I got my present early. You want to know what it is? We were able to have our mid-pregnancy ultrasound today and found out that the next little one to be joining our family will be another little girl!! I am so excited right now. Yes, later I will probably be a little apprehensive, but at this moment I am so excited to have seen my little girl and to know that she is growing and doing well. The due date is May 12, 2011. We are so excited to finally share our news with all of you!! Merry Christmas!!

Week Summary

This was so cute - on Sunday we made our mini version of Thanksgiving dinner, so we decided to let Sam stay up and enjoy the meal with us. But you all know how you feel after eating all that turkey and other yummy food, right? The poor kid was so wiped out he fell asleep during one of his own movies around 8:00 or 8:30. We put him to bed, but he woke up a while later to sit with me for a little while and then go back to bed.

This week has been filled with fun playdates and yummy Christmas treat making. On Tuesday Josh and Lilly came over to play and we made Muddy Buddies, which they loved because each got their own bag to shake and then to eat.

Then on Wednesday, we got together at the Potter's house to frost and sprinkle sugar cookies. The boys love mounding up the sprinkles and Lilly just enjoys eating all the cookies she can manage to grab.

Thursday we had visiting teachers come over and then played with another friend at his house. This morning I woke up to see three deer out in our backyard grazing to their heart's content. They stayed for a while, sitting just on the other side of the fence and then bounded off.

Then today we went to William's house to decorate gingerbread houses. My friend is so awesome - she actually made gingerbread and put the houses together last night so they would be nice and sturdy for little hands to decorate this morning. Both mommies and kiddies had fun sticking all sorts of candies on the houses and getting them just right.

Working hard to get the candies to stick on the roof

Sam's finished product and the trademark squinty grin. In front of the house we made a snowman, his wife and a snow baby and then Santa's sled out of tootsie rolls. Tomorrow Daddy gets to stay home again, so we are going to get family pictures taken and then spend some quality time cleaning the garage. I can't believe it is only two more weeks until Christmas!!

A Fun Day

It is finally that time of year again where Daddy can start taking Saturdays off, so we made the most of our first day by going just about everywhere. We enjoyed sleeping in and then having waffles for breakfast and then headed out to Rexburg to visit the motor sports store and the flight museum. These first two pictures are of Sam showing first Opa and then Grandpa some ideas for Christmas gifts this year ;)

We have been wanting to take Sam to the Legacy Flight Museum in Rexburg for a while, but they are only open from 9 to 5 on Saturdays right now and it has been hard to get up there in time. Unfortunately Sam was having a rough day and didn't really enjoy the museum as much as we thought he would, but being the only patrons there we were given first a guided tour and then were able to hear some of the stories behind the aircraft and the owner of the museum. All of these airplanes still fly and help show the history of flight through WWII and on up. These two red airplanes were some of the more recent. The lighter red was the kind that movie stars would fly themselves around in and the darker one they call the "Toyota of the Skies"

The guides were especially nice to Sam, letting him climb inside several airplanes to look at all the dials and switches and play with the steering sticks and you can see on his face how much he enjoyed the experience!

A model T truck. So awesome to see one of these!! They also had a jet engine that you can see in the far left of the picture. Upstairs they had an amazing collection of army/military/war artifacts from World War I on up to present day. It was amazing to visually see the progression we have made throughout the ages.

Sam wearing the pilot headphones and pretending to fly

After the visit to Rexburg we came home for lunch and naps and then headed back out to Idaho Falls to do some much needed looking around for Christmas gifts. We ended the night off right (in my opinion, but you may need to ask Robert about his) with some fudge-covered Oreos and finally getting to watch Eclipse - and on Blu Ray! It was a great day spent with Daddy and we are really looking forward to having more Saturdays to enjoy!!