Pop Goes Samantha

This morning was a typical morning in the Thode house.
We woke up and started to get ready for the day (showers, ironing clothes, etc.)
As we usually do, we put Samantha in her jumperoo for awhile so we could get ready without leaving her unsupervised. The jumperoo has two sound settings. It can make jungle noises whenever she jumps or it can play continuous music. At one point it was playing the song Pop Goes the Weasel. Whenever that song plays Chris has a tendancy to sing "pop goes Samantha!" instead. I never really thought about how that might affect her until this morning. Now I'm sitting here wondering if one day our little girl is going to be in Kindergarten singing that song with her class. All the kids are going to sing the right words and she'll be the only one saying "pop goes Samantha!"
I think maybe it's time to start teaching her the right words to the song.

Our Awesome Rug

These pictures don't even come close to doing this rug justice. It's shimmery and thick and amazing. I kind of want a blanket made out of a bunch of these rugs. There are a few areas that feel like chenille...so soft...
Double bonus, you can see our new tile in these pictures too! We haven't put any trim around it yet. We're slowly getting there.

The Dave Matthews Band weekend finally arrived!

And now it's over. The sad part is I have no pictures from the concert because they wouldn't allow cameras in. I tried to sneak mine in by putting it in my back pocket, but they actually frisked everyone at the gate! Seriously? Yes, seriously. I had to hike all the way back to my car and stash my camera away before they would let me in. They wouldn't let umbrellas in either. I suppose if you are a comic book villain you might be trying to sneak a machine gun concealed in your umbrella into the concert, but I didn't see anyone in the crowd who struck me as that kind of dark character. My personal feeling: not allowing umbrellas in was probably unnecessary overkill.
We did manage to have a great time without our cameras and umbrellas, although those items would have really made it a party. We had seats on the lawn, and we sat there up until about the second or third song. After that we moved closer to the stage because the sound on the lawn was awful. The speakers that were supposed to be working for the lawn did not work, so all we were hearing back there were the echos of the stadium speakers. If you've ever seen Dave in concert you know that you could be standing right next to him and not understand a word he is singing anyway, but good sound is still important at a live show. We ended up sitting on the wall right by the gates that divided the lawn seating area from the stadium seats. We could see the stage and occasionally got a glimpse of Dave when he was bouncing around close to the edge of the stage. The sound in there was awesome though. We weren't too upset that we couldn't see the band because we wouldn't have really been able to see them from the lawn anyway.
The most entertaining part of having those 'seats' was being able to watch the staffers checking peoples' tickets before they could get into the stadium. They kept turning people away who had lawn tickets, and those people kept getting ticked off about it. Come on now, you bought the cheaper seats. Don't get mad when you can't sit in the expensive seats! There were a bunch of people who managed to sneak past the gates though, as I'm sure there always is at events like these. Some of them just slipped through when there was a big crowd, and others moved the end of the gate and got in when the staffers were too busy with their ticket checking to pay attention. Good times. I kind of hope some of those moochers got busted and kicked out.
Rewind now to Friday night. We made it into Oak Lawn in time to see the high school football game. It was a chilly, misty, rainy night, but it was nice to finally see a decent OLCHS varsity team on the field. They actually scored two touchdowns while we were there. I think that might be more touchdowns than the varsity team scored the entire time I went to that school. I'm only kidding a little bit. Our football team was awful.
Our senior year of my friends once said to me "Do you want to hear a joke?"
I said "Sure."
He said "Oak Lawn's football team!" and then he died laughing.
Again, it's nice that we finally have a team that can win a game.
Other than that we just got to hang out and have a nice weekend. I was able to get together with an old friend of mine on Saturday. We try to meet up nearly every time I come to town, but somehow things just never line up. It was great to see her and catch up a little bit.
We were also able to make a quick visit with my grandparents on our way out of town. My grandpa has been weaving rugs for about as long as I can remember and now he has a new kind of rug he is making. He bought some upholstery selvedges in an assortment of patterns and colors and he is weaving them into rugs. He gave one to us (probably because I wouldn't have left their house without one!) and I think it is just the most amazing rug in the world! It looks incredible in front of our fireplace. Check out the post above this one for pictures if you haven't already done so.
Oh oh oh, I almost forgot! We went to see my brother run in his cross country meet on Saturday morning. This was something that I've been wanting to do ever since he joined the team last year. I'm glad that I was finally able to make it to a meet!

We had a breakthrough!

Samantha stayed with a new babysitter last night and we didn't get called home! Brit said that Samantha even took a nap for her! Whew, finally a little bit of relief. She did have to keep the Baby Einstein DVD running longer than we normally would, but it worked. This next story I am putting in this post might upset some of you dog lovers, but I have to write it down so we don't forget it.
This past Sunday we took our bikes, the new bike trailer, and two of our dogs (Mocha and Bandit) to Jack's football game. Jack is Chris' cousin.
So we went to the game, had a good time, and then took off to ride back home. At one point we were biking down a side street, Chris had the dogs and I was behind him pulling the trailer. All of a sudden this fat old Beagle/Basset Hound looking dog comes flying up next to us and starts to chase our dogs! Of course Mocha and Bandit flip out, nearly knocking Chris' bike over. He stopped and got a stronger hold on the dogs' leashes. This crazy hound dogs is barking at our dogs like mad and slowly inching closer. Finally Bandit had enough and started to lunge at this strange dog. Right as the dogs were about to get into a big mess of a fight Chris managed to get his foot in there and kick this strange dog back. He landed his foot right on the dog's chest and knocked it back a few feet. The best way to describe it is to imagine how it would look if you pushed an old man down. It was pretty sad, but hilarious at the same time. The dog didn't even think about coming close again, it just sat there for a few seconds barking at Chris. The 'tone' of it's bark made me think it was saying "What did you do that for, man?".
There were a few kids nearby so I yelled to them and asked if this was their neighbor's dog. They said yes, so I told them to go knock on their neighbor's door and tell them to put their dog on a leash. In all honesty they were the ones in the wrong. We had both of our dogs restrained, their dog was the one running loose. Our city has a leash law for a reason, they would do well to obey it.
I'm just thankful that we didn't have Katie with us. No amount of Chris holding her back would have stopped her from ripping that dog to pieces. I have no doubt in my mind that she would have severely hurt it, which is a big part of the reason that she doesn't go on these kinds of outings with us.
The strange dog ran back home with those kids and we went off on our way. I think we'll avoid that street in the future...


P.S. Her second tooth is starting to come in. It's the other front bottom one. We're never going to get a full night's sleep again!

Jackpot!

What an incredible Saturday of garage sale-ing we had! We weren't even really intending to go look at any garage sales this weekend. We just happened to see one about a block away from us. They had some kid's toys sitting out in the open, so we decided to take a quick peek. It was there that we found the Elmo activity table and the musical chair thing. They only wanted $7 for both toys. Sold! From there we ventured into one of the 'richer' neighborhoods, as Chris likes to call it. I think the entire neighborhood coordinated together and had a huge garage sale weekend. No kidding, about every 5th house or so there was a garage sale. We were pretty disappointed though, the majority of the sales either had a bunch of nasty junk or things we weren't interested in.
Finally we rounded a corner and I spotted the telltale orange flag of a bike trailer. I have been searching for a bike/jogging trailer all summer. We parked so we could check it out with the warning from Chris that they were probably going to be asking for more money than we could spend. Apparently this was the big ticket item at their sale, seeing as they had printed the summary of info about if off REI's website. No kidding, this is one of the top of the line trailers with all the bells and whistles. You can even attach skis to it and take it x-country skiing. Tempting...
We managed to get them to knock $50 off the price for us, and we are now the proud owners of a double passenger bike trailer. We already took Samantha out in it this morning.

One of the people Chris works with got married on Saturday. Chris was taking the pictures for them, and Samantha & I went along too. I have a couple pictures from before the wedding here, and maybe sometime later I'll post a few of the ones Chris took.

Football Weekend

Let me tell you, this has been quite an eventful weekend for us!
First and foremost, we discovered that Samantha has a tooth working its way through! Yesterday Chris, Samantha, and I were at the end of our driveway talking with Jake and Samantha was chomping down on my finger like she's always done. All of a sudden I felt something a little sharp, and sure enough, it was the beginnings of a bottom front tooth. You can barely see it poking through her gums, but it won't be long before that thing comes out.
The next noteworthy bit of Samantha news is the fact that she has started to eat those little puff snacks. They had them on clearance at Target, so I picked a few up thinking that maybe she would be ready to start eating them soon. We tried one the night I bought them, and she's hooked. These things are little star shaped puffed snacks about the size of a cheerio. They dissolve pretty quickly so we aren't worried about her choking on them. We have a few different flavors (sweet potato, strawberry-apple, and banana) and she loves them all. She hasn't quite gotten the hang of feeding them to herself yet, but she's trying!
Today Samantha is going to be trying pears for the first time. I pureed some for her last night and dropped a cube of them off with her this morning at Grandma Shirley's. We'll find out later today if they're a hit or not. So far she's liked every new food she's tried, so I have high hopes that she isn't going to be a very picky eater.
We've recently discovered that Samantha loves animals. She gets giggly and excited whenever she sees our dogs and cats. Yesterday Tweek decided that he was going to subject himself to her grabby little hands. It was kind of funny how he didn't care that she was pulling his fur out, and he actually flopped himself down on the ground and let her crawl all over him. He's a brave, and very lovable, cuddly cat.
I have to acknowledge that this past weekend was the official start to football season. I also have to acknowledge that the Bears were very disappointing. I think that's all I'm going to say on that subject. The wounds are still fresh. We'll talk more about football next week.
This is how our dogs watch football. I think they're making a W or an M, depending on which way you're looking at them.

And now we have a few pictures of Samantha to make up for the Deer Season post. I was informed (again) that it is unacceptable to put up a blog post that doesn't have a picture of Samantha in it, and that I had to make up for it by posting a bunch of pictures of her.

Deer season is upon us

For those of you who don't know, Chris is crazy about deer hunting. I'm not sure how you could know us and not know that, but I'm throwing it out there anyway.
This year Chris and his friend Jake decided to get themselves a trail cam to scope out the area their deer stand is in. Basically they've mounted a little weatherproof camera to the tree their stand is set up in so they can see what kind of deer come around that area regularly. The camera is motion sensitive and takes a picture every time something moves in its field of vision. This has left them with many blank pictures because of the wind blowing the grass in front of the tree. It has also gotten them some pictures of raccoons, but the majority of their pictures do indeed contain deer. There are a few pictures with a doe and her little spotted fawn, who I of course named Bambi, immediately after which I decided nobody should ever shoot that little deer. I don't care if it grows up to be the biggest buck with the biggest antlers (aka "rack"). I have granted that deer amnesty because it's so darn cute.
So back to the trail cam. Chris was flipping through the pictures on the computer after he changed out memory cards and said
"Dude! You've got to see this 8-pointer that keeps showing up on our camera!"
Calling a deer an 8-pointer means the deer has 8 points on its "rack". Isn't this cool? You're learning things on our blog today!
These are the pictures he showed me of his "8 point deer":
Sorry honey, I don't think you're going to get into any record books by shooting this one.
Now here are some pictures of the real deer they're hoping to get this year.
I hope he gets one, because that will mean we'll have a nice stash of venison in the deep freezer this winter. Then again, I don't want to have another discussion about why our living room is too small to have a mounted deer head hanging in it. Oh the life of a deer hunter's wife.

Sleeping Baby

Samantha the little octopus sleeping with her seahorse.

7 Months Old Today!

How is it possible that it seems like our family wouldn't be complete without someone who has been here for such a little amount of time?
I found out today that some friends of a friend of mine lost their 3 year old little girl yesterday. I don't know the details, just that she had an accident and died later at the hospital. I can't even imagine how broken their hearts are. It made me think that even with the assurance of salvation and the knowledge that they will see their daughter again in heaven it doesn't make the hurt of losing her go away.
We never know exactly how long we are going to have with our families, and we are fools if we don't treasure every moment we get. We have been blessed with these past 7 months with Samantha, even though there are days when we miss our sleep and quiet time! We pray that we will have many more decades with her, but we aren't taking a single moment for granted.
I am as guilty as the next person of walking away angry, saying things I would regret if they were the last thing I said to a person I care about, and not living as though I might not have tomorrow.
I don't want a tragedy to be what changes the way I live. I want to have peace if I am ever looking in the face of something as devestating as losing a loved one. I want to know that there is nothing I would have done differently, and that everyone I care about about knows it.
So happy 7 month birthday Sammy. We love you.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me." ~Erma Bombeck

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can. ~Danny Kaye

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies. ~Erich Fromm

God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only question is how. ~Henry Ward Beecher

We should give meaning to life, not wait for life to give us meaning. ~Unknown

Labor Day Weekend

So not only is Samantha crawing, she is constantly pulling herself up on anything near her so she can stand. She pulls herself up on the couch, the TV stand, her bumbo chair, literally anything. This means she is doing an awful lot of toppling over. We're trying to catch her the best we can, but there are always those few times that our arms or legs just aren't in the exact right spot. This girl is quite a handful.

We have no idea what she was thinking here. It's just another one of her special camera moments. This is definitely getting put in the photo album we show all her boyfriends in high school.

The whole weekend hasn't been fun and games. We've (finally) started to work on getting tile put down in our front entry way and in front of our fireplace. Since Samantha is now crawling all over creation we needed to make our main level a bit safer for her. The plywood and exposed old flooring just wasn't cutting it for us in the safety department.
There's still quite a bit of work to do, but we're off to a good start.

This afternoon we took the dogs to the river to let them blow off a little steam. Bandit hates the water, so she was off prancing around the dock. Katie was fetching the dummy, and Mocha thought she was assisting or something. There's a short rope on the dummy to make it easier for Chris to throw it. Mocha kept swimming up next to Katie when she was bringing the dummy in and would grab on to the end of the rope. She seriously thought she was doing something. It looked more like Katie was towing her in. Oh well, at least Mocha swims. Bandit freaks out like she's allergic to the water if it touches anything other than her legs. And that's the update from our house. Hope you had a great Labor Day weekend!