_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 's New Room

Wednesday night we had a little scare w/ Lauren having pretty frequent contractions. During the couple hours at home before we went to the hospital I realized we were in no way prepared for our new baby girl to join us yet. I promised Lauren that if this baby didn't come, I would be a maniac this weekend and try to get prepared. And that is exactly what we did. First, Lauren was an amazing help getting things done. Thanks to my parents for watching Samantha for a few hours Saturday, we were able to get baby girl's room painted a nice shade of pink. Samantha helped me today install a ceiling fan and decorate the room. As of now, this new baby's room is 99% finished. We even brought up a ton of baby stuff up from the basement and made room for things and will spend the week getting it all cleaned and ready.
Moving forward, please keep Lauren in your prayers. She has had some really good days and really bad days. We are praying this baby stays in as long as she needs to come out healthy and happy.
P.S. Don't try too hard to guess baby girl's name, I may or may not have exaggerated the number of characters in her name...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

My Aunt Sandy texted me this picture to me the other day. It is on a bench in downtown Englewood, Florida. It could not describe my little Samantha any better! Although, I just asked her if she is a "curly, dimpled lunatic" and she said; "No, I am a big kid." So there you have it.

Englewood, Florida holds such a special place in my heart. My Mamaw and Papaw had a house there when I was little so we got to go spend a lot of time down there when I was a kid. It is still the place that my sweet Great-Aunt / Uncle, Mary-Lou and Dick, still live. Every time I go down to visit my mom (in Siesta Key) was always make the 45 minute drive down to Englewood.

Snow Fun (Videos)

Snow Fun!

The last couple of days we have received an inch or two of snow. Samantha is now old enough to enjoy the snow and know that she likes it. These pictures are all from Friday and Saturday. Enjoy...

Wine & Canvas

Tonight, Mandy, Amanda Copeland, Katie Lacy and I all went to Wine and Canvas Columbus. It was hosted at On the Border restaurant at Easton and was really nice. They have all the stuff set up for you and the theme of the night was "Birch Tree". Above is our finished product!

Budding artist!

Taking this whole painting thing very seriously.

Our little group.

My Morning With Samantha

Our morning routine is always the same, Lauren is leaving for work by 6 or 6:15 and that is the time I am just getting ready to wake up Samantha and get her ready. I normally just take 1 "Good Morning Mommy" picture to send to Lauren but this morning my baby was just too cute...

(When I went into her room this morning she was still peacefully sleeping with her hands so sweetly folded under her face).

(More times than not she is a morning person and only takes a few seconds for her to shake off the cobwebs and be in a great mood. Within 2 minutes of waking up, she went to potty and was immediately photogenic).

(As soon as she woke up she was asking for her frog book. To backtrack, yesterday she woke up from her afternoon nap saying her frog book was scaring her. This book has been on her bookshelf for months without being read. For some reason yesterday it bothered her. At bedtime last night she still was not happy about the frog book in her room, it scared her. So, I got the book and had her walk with me into the loft and let her watch me throw it downstairs on the couch so she knew the frog book was no longer in her room. This morning she started asking for it immediately. Once we had the book, she said (and this is a quote from her, verbatim)"this is scary in my room, but down here it's fine and not scary".

(Then, we had our annual morning "smiling contest". This is how I ensure to get at least 1 good picture to send to Lauren.

(As we were getting ready to leave, I put my hat on since it was super cold and she wanted her hat too to be like Daddy. Once we both had hat's on, there was nothing else I could do but take yet another picture.)

Cyclone Gymnastics

Tonight was Samantha's first night of Mommy-and-Me gymnastics class. She actually was the only one in the class tonight although there are more kids signed up. We got there about 10 minutes early and she asked no less than 100 times if it was her turn yet!

Here she had to walk her feet up the wall and she did pretty good.

And a head-stand.

Here she had to support herself on the bar.

Overall she had a good time, but I think she will do much better when she is not the only one there. She got easily distracted by the other classes going on around the gym and wanting to do whatever they were doing. A few of the other coaches would let her jump into their class and "try" to do what their class was working on. And she just thought she was hot stuff when she got to hang on the big bar with the big girls! Hopefully she will really like this as we have 7 more weeks until the quarter is over. And by the time this class is over, we should be very close to having our baby girl here! Time sure does fly when you are having fun!