Happy New Year!

What a weekend we had! I'm not even sure where to begin...
For starters, I only had to work half the day on New Years Eve. Samantha and I were able to enjoy an afternoon of running errands and hanging out at home. After Chris came home from work we headed over to our friends' house for dinner. They have a little girl who is about 9 months older than Samantha so those two got to play for a bit. We wanted to hang out and watch a movie with them, but Samantha has gotten so set in her bedtime routine that she turns into a mess when she doesn't get to bed on time. So we left one of the movies with them and watched the other one at home.
New Years Day was filled with more running around and hanging out at home. Chris went out in the subzero temperatures for some deer hunting in the afternoon (can you say crazy?) while the girl and I stayed nice and warm at home.
The real highlights of the weekend started on Saturday. I went out to the local consignment shops with a friend of mine on Saturday afternoon for a little bargain hunting and yet again hit the mother load. It seems like every time I shop with her I find exactly what I'm looking for and she finds nothing. So goes it. I just hope she doesn't stop bargain hunting with me because of it!
I was looking for some kind of play tent for the living room. Our church has this really cool Playskool kiddie tent in a couple of the nursery rooms and Samantha usually gravitates to them when she's in there. I wanted to find something similar for her to have at home. We walked in the doors of the last consignment shop and wouldn't you know it, that exact same tent was sitting right in the entryway. The price tag told me they were asking $40 for it, which (in my opinion) was pretty steep for a used tent. I walked around the shop, snagged a couple bags of peek-a-boo blocks (15 of them for $5!),

and decided to offer the cashier $20 for the tent. She didn't even flinch before she said 'sure'. Woo hoo! What a steal!
(Listings on ebay for this tent range from $15 + shipping to $299!)
We also found this super cute toy birdhouse with 4 little birds. I admit that I probably like it more than Samantha does, but she likes shaking the birds because the rattle. I guess we probably shouldn't get any pet birds if that's the way she's going to treat them!On to Saturday night. Everything seemed normal when we put Samantha to bed, except she woke up crying a little bit 2 or 3 times within a couple of hours. When she woke up crying around 11:00 I went up there to check her out. The minute I picked her up I could tell she had a fever. She was hot and just not acting like herself. We took off her pj's, changed her diaper and gave her a bottle. Her temp was just under 101°, but we were still worried. She has honestly never really had a fever or been seriously sick before, so we had no experience in dealing with that. We ended up paging our doctor and talking with him for a bit. We were able to get her fever down with some ibuprofen, and she slept pretty well (with us) for the rest of the night.

On Sunday morning she seemed fine, so off to church we went. By the time we got home around 10:30 her fever was back, she was kind of pale, and all she wanted to do was sleep. A treatment consisting of cool washcloths, fever reducer, bottles, and naps took up our whole day on Sunday. Her fever peaked out near 102° and at some points dropped down to 97°. It was so strange to have her sleeping most of the day, because if you know Samantha you know that she's constantly moving and getting into things!This morning she was still warmer than normal, but acting more like herself. All depending on how she is when I see her at lunch we may be making a visit to the doctor this afternoon. We're pretty sure her system is just fighting off this cold that she has, but when you're an overprotective first time mom you just can't be too careful. :)
Here's hoping that tomorrow I can put up a blog post telling you how great she's doing and that her fever is gone!