Happy Halloween!

Ah, another Halloween is over and done with.  I've got to say, I LOVE Halloween.  It is so much fun for me to watch Samantha choose who she wants to be and see her face light up as we go trick or treating at each house.  She had so much fun and was great at saying trick or treat!

We went out with our amazing friends from playgroup and had quite the crowd!  Before heading out we had an Orange dinner of mac and cheese, mummy dogs, and a tasty orange drink.

Did you know Snow White is a closet villain?

The princesses!

How cute is Miss A as a Cabbage Patch doll?

Zachie finally conked out!

D was a lifesaver and helped me carry Samantha as well as his own daughter B.

Samantha's loot!

Once we were done with playgroup trick or treating (THANK YOU D for hosting and the amazing dinner!) we hit a few houses in our neighborhood.  One of the houses goes ALL out and has decorations everywhere.  They offered to take a picture for us, but I got cut off!  Oh well!

We hope you all had a happy Halloween too!

ornaments

This morning we had a playgroup to make homemade ornaments!  It was so much fun and thankfully, Samantha pretty much cooperated.  I only had to do the handprint 3 times and the footprint we got on the first try!  I think they turned out great and I can't wait to hang them on our tree.

Samantha's first Christmas gift

Today our playgroup had a Secret Santa playdate for the tummy timers.  We were both super excited to participate.  Last week while we were at Target we picked up a rattle ball as our gift.  Samantha has one that is one of her favorite toys so I thought it would be perfect.  Unfortunately, Samantha saw the ball and was quite upset that it wasn't hers to play with!!!  Oh well.  She quickly forgot it once she remembered all the toys she already has.

Here is Miss Samantha with her gift.  She got a new book all about colors!  This was the perfect gift since I am always looking to expand our rather tiny book collection.  Samantha definitely seemed to enjoy reading it and I loved all of the colors and pictures it included.  So fun!

Thank you so much to Lindsay for hosting today and to Katelyn and Dillon for our new book!!

let the festivities begin!

It has been so much fun this year celebrating all of Samantha's first holidays.  So I was especially excited for today to begin our Halloween festivities!  We started off this afternoon with our playgroup's Halloween party.  There were 57 people scheduled to show up PLUS all their babies!!  I'm pretty sure all of the 57 parents showed up so it was a full house.  But we had a blast with everyone.  There was delicious food and delicious deserts.  I just LOVED the confused looks on many of the babies' faces wondering what the heck was going on.  I tried to get pictures, but the problem with photographing babies is none of them want to look at the camera, let alone all at the same time.  Here is me and Samantha with our friends Megan and Caleb.  And Amy - I know you read here...for some reason all the ones with all three of us came out blurry.  :-(  So I hope one of the ones your husband got came out nice!!!

After the playgroup party we headed to my cousin's house for our second Halloween party.  This was an adult only party so we didn't stay too long since we didn't have a sitter for Samantha.  But we did bring her in her kitty costume so she fit in.  My cousin was dressed as Rainbow Bright and looked so cute!!  Her husband was a hockey player.  Unfortunately by this point Samantha was getting very tired so we only stayed for about an hour.  A highlight of the party though was when one of the guests actually recognized Samantha from her little bit on the news the other day.  How cool is that?!  Here is Samantha and I with my cousin, Vanessa.

By the time we got home, Samantha was WIPED.  She will typically wake up the second you remove her from her car seat but for the first time ever, she didn't even stir.  The poor little thing was just exhausted.

Now we can look forward to Monday when we will be taking her Trick or Treating!!!

Thankful Thursday

I've decided that on Thursday's, I'm going to try to post about what I am thankful for.  On this Thursday, I am thankful for my playgroup, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Onesies.  After Samantha was born, I decided that I needed to find some mom friends since no one I know here my age has kids of their own.  I ventured over to www.meetup.com and decided to look for local moms groups and came across the sisterhood.  I joined and then noticed that they were having a "Breakfast Club" meet-up the following day.  The click to say "yes, I'm attending this meet-up" was one of the toughest things to do!  Much harder than I thought it would be.  I probably sat at the computer for 5 minutes with my mouse hovering over yes, me too scared to push my finger.  This making new mom friends thing is SCARY!  Finally though, I did it, and so was the beginning of my playgroup membership.

I didn't know the "rules" of playgroup when I attended that first meet-up.  That being that the 10:00am start time listed online, really means 10:30...or whenever your little one decides to wake up from his/her nap, finish eating breakfast, etc.  So here I am, carrying Samantha in her carrier, racing to the door at 10:01 freaking out that I'm going to be the only one to show up late.  Lo and behold, I was the first one there.  The girl that answered the door, Christina, was SUPER nice so it wasn't too terribly awkward to be there alone for the 30 minutes until someone else arrived.  Unfortunately, Christina recently  moved to Pennsylvania so I don't know how often we'll get to see her.  But I do hope we see her again.

Since our first meet-up we've attempted to go to playgroup 2-3 times per week.  It is so refreshing to get out and talk to other moms, and also for Samantha to have the opportunity to interact with other babies.  There are actually quite a few little ones right around Samantha's age.  She just loves looking all around and taking everything in.  Yesterday we had an Arts Appreciation 101 playgroup where we all sang silly songs and played music with our babies.  Samantha really enjoyed singing and watching the older ones dance.  This morning we went out for brunch at IHOP.  At this point, I've gotten close enough that I even meet up with a few of the mom's for non playgroup things!  For example Kate and I went walking yesterday and Megan and I went to the park today.  (Hence all the pictures!)

Some people wonder "how we have time to get all our housework done" when we are at playgroup all the time, and to them, I ask "how do you get your housework done when you are at work all the time"?  It's no different really.  At this point in time, I think it's extremely important for us to be out and about, making friends, and giving Samantha all the experiences she can have.  She is soaking in SO much information and it's quite evident how much she is enjoying everything we do!!