Scary face while wearing an elf hat made for a dog.
Our disaster of a house and half-asleep child on Christmas morning.
This girl loves her Santa hat! (It came from the $1 bin at Target. Can't beat that!)
This year she was a cow. There's no telling what she'll be next year when she will actually have a say in what her costume is.
The morning before we went to the farm I ran a 5k. I didn't end with an impressive time, and I sure didn't run the fastest in my age group. I'm just proud that I actually got out there, ran/walked the race, and made it across the finish line. 
Forgive me father, for I have sinned...it's been a month and a half since my last blog post.
Apparently the years I spent in the Catholic church have stuck with me. I feel like I should be sitting in a confessional waiting to hear how many Our Fathers and Hail Mary's I need to say.
Moving on...
It honestly has been way too long since I've updated you (our faithful readers!) on what's happening with us. Without further adieu, here we go!
Since my last post in September lots of things have changed.
Samantha has gotten smarter. A whole lot smarter.
Examples:
She knows some of her shapes (circle, square, triangle, star).
She hangs in there pretty well singing along with the A,B,C song.
Apparently she has an eye for decoration, as she is constantly rearranging the gel window decorations we have up for the Fall.
We got her a red ballon at the grocery store the other day. When I asked her what color it was she said "Elmo!".
Also, while at the grocery store, she called out the names of the eggs, cheese, and hot dogs as I was putting them in the cart.
We have replaced almost every single window in our house in the past month. The only two windows left are in our bedroom, and those are just waiting for Chris to have time to get them installed. We are also planning on having carpeting installed sometime this winter. We will replace the old carpet in our office/playroom, and we'll also be carpeting our stairs and the second level of our house.
Chris shot a very impressive deer just this past week. It's an 11 point buck. I'll get pictures of it and post them this weekend.
I started a new job at the beginning of October. Yep, you heard that right. I am now the receptionist at our church, Prairie Lakes Church. I've felt a push from God and the desire to work on staff here for years now. I can't even express what a big difference I've already seen in my life since I left my old job to start working here. I enjoy getting up and going to work everyday. I work with amazing people. I get to see and participate in the behind-the-scenes and inner working aspects of our church. It's been awesome.
We are planning on going to the pumpkin farm sometime this weekend, so hopefully I'll be able to stick with my blog writing and get a post up after we make that little trip.
Thanks for coming back after my month of silence!
Bear out of the shopping cart:
We have a new cozy fleece blanket for football season! This fabric is incredible. It's called ultra cuddle fleece or something like that. The brown footballs go well in our living room, and Samantha loves rolling around on the floor with cuddly blankets. Win win for everyone!
Last night we had an awesome thunderstorm. If we could get a storm like that every week I'd be in heaven. I was loving it right up until about 9:45 when our transformer for our block literally blew up. One second everything was great, then we heard a sound like a bomb exploding outside, and the house went black. On any other night that wouldn't have bothered me too much, but I was watching America's Got Talent and patiently waiting for Fighting Gravity to perform. Needless to say, I missed seeing them. I was bummed. To add insult to injury our generator was on strike so we never got that up and running either. Chris fought with that thing for at least an hour before he had to throw in the towel and get some sleep. Thankfully our city has people who will come out in the middle of the night and get the electricity turned back on. I'm pretty sure they had our transformer fixed by 4:00 or so.
getting the horse's nose in her face,
chasing ducks and chickens around their enclosure, 
and stepping in some muck by the pig pen...which turned out to be pig poop...and yes, her sandals still stink. 
I'm going to have to throw them in the washing machine to see if that gets rid of the awful odor.
The volunteers in her room didn't say anything about it, so all we can assume is that they didn't see it. She's got a pretty nice imprint of some kid's teeth on her arm though. I guess it could be worse. I was a biter when I was a kid, so hopefully this means she won't be the one dishing it out. Unless of course another kid has a bruise in the shape of Samantha's teeth...
Over the past 3 weeks our church has had a sermon series called 3 Doors. Door 1 was Forgiveness. Door 2 was Confession. Door 3 was Gratitude.
The rest of the night they were either making a disaster out of the play room or running around the house screaming at the top of their lungs. It was good screaming, they were having fun. I think they were playing tag or something, but at this age it's hard to tell. It was very easy to see that they had a good time together though. 
For a long time running Baby Einstein has been Samantha's favorite thing to watch on TV. Over the past few weeks Blues Clues has been edging in on B.E., and I think it's about to take over the #1 spot. The word "clue" has been added to Samantha's vocabulary, she does some of the hand gestures during the "Blues Clues" song, and she gets the biggest grin on her face when she hears the show starting. 
We don't just plop her in front of the TV all day, but when we do let her watch Blues Clues she'll almost always stay there for the entire episode.
We do need to get that carpet cleaned. We'll eventually paint, put up different curtains (Chris hates the purple sheers), and get some fun artwork on the walls. This will do for now though!
