Gabba land Room!

If you did not know this already about me, I am a very ambitious person, sometimes a little too ambitious. However, if I want something done I WILL get it done no matter how long it takes! This has been a work in progress for a good 2 months now but I am finally done!! I am so excited that it turned out pretty much how I in- visioned Samantha's room would look!

Each land took me about 48 hours... obviously over time. If you are not familiar with Yo Gabba Gabba it is a great show on Nickelodeon Sam has loved since she was 4 months old! My mom told me about the show and so I gave it a shot. My first impression was... this is weird. But, she has learned so much from the show! They put together great learning songs and boy does she know them! For her first birthday we took her to see Yo Gabba Gabba LIVE since they came to town!

She loved it so much that I decided to put together a quilt which you see the finished product below!

This was quite the project seeing how there are no patterns out there for Yo Gabba Gabba anything! After looking online for ideas, I realized I had to just come up with a good design... and this is what I came up with! Each character had to be cut, glued, and sewed around before attaching it to the rest of the quilt squares. Needless to say, this was not an easy task for someone who was not only making everything up but also not a great seamstress lol. After a good year, I finally finished the top! Then, my mom took it to a quilting shop and top stitched it, and did the backing and finishing touches! I'm really happy with how it turned out!

I know she will grow out of this show when she turns like 4, but hey that's fine with me! That just means new project! Maybe the next theme will be princess! That would be fun!

26 months and counting!

The most Memorable Day a the Park: according to Samantha

This story will be told by Samantha, with mommy Translation

Samantha: "Paahhk, Paahk!"
Translation: "We are going to the Park since it is so nice outside!"

Samantha: "Weee!"
Translation: "I want to go down the slide!"

Samantha: "Boy, BOY!"
Translation: "Look! There is a boy at the park! Yay a friend!"

Samantha: "Come On!" she says as she puts out her hand for him.
Translation: "....Come on, come play with me!"

The boy does not take her hand but decides to follow her to the top so they can go down the slide

Samantha: "WEEEE!"

Boy: "WEEE!"

Translation: "uh, need I say more?"

Then, boy decides he wants to chase Sam around acting like a monster... she loves being chased

Boy: "RAAAA!"

Samantha: "AHHHHH!!!!!" she says as she comes to hug mommy for protection, still with a huge grin on her face.

This went on for a good 15 minutes, then the boy stopped and started to swing. After being at the park for over an hour mommy decided it was time to go.

Samantha: "Bye Pahhk"

Daddy gets home from work and Samantha rushes to greet him with excitement.

Daddy: "Did you go to the park today?"

Samantha: " dededede Pahhk dededede Boy dededede RAAAAA!!"

At least once everyday since then she has mentioned this boy and how he chased her acting like a monster. Lets just say he made a lasting impression! I love my little chatter bug!

Fall Festival at the Dallas Arboretum

I have not been to the Dallas Arboretum since I was about 12 years old so going this past week was so much fun! When we went when I was younger we usually went during the summer so we could run through these huge frog statues they have squirting water out of their mouths. For the sake of not having a breakdown, we did not show Sam these fun run through fountains this trip. It looked so beautiful all decorated in fall colors including yellow and orange flowers!

They had a section of the park turned in to a "Fall" village where they even had houses you could walk through made of pumpkins! I can't imagine how long it takes them to pull this off. I kept thinking of workers trying to secure the pumpkins on to the house and accidentally dropping one and it crashes and breaks open on the ground. What a mess!

My Grandma, Mom, Uncle and Aunt were able to come also which was fun! I'm really glad we were able to make it before the season ended or before it started getting super chilly.

Hope everyone has a Happy Halloween and a Fun Fall! Love, The Hills

Western Days

First of all, I want to say Thank you to everyone that came to watch us play! It was so wonderful to see your faces out there! Hope you all had fun! For those of you that don't know what I am talking about, Lewisville, TX puts on this yearly festival called Western Days where they block off all the streets in downtown Lewisville and have gun shows, bands, lassoing competitions and more. Its a very Texas kind of fun :D This year they even had country singer Pat Green come to our town and perform!

Our family band, The Fiddle Rascals played what we do best, old time fiddlin.

We just started doing 3 part harmony with my mom, Tori and me! I think it sounds pretty cool! Tori always rocks her solos though!

We usually have about 3 fiddlers, but only my Uncle Jimmy could make it this year! It was hard enough for him and then boom, one of his strings broke 10 minutes in to our show. SO we covered him with some singing while my step dad ran home to grab a spare violin! He made it back just in time lol

This was the last time for a while my brother Jimmy will play the bass since he moved to New Mexico. Sean has picked up the bass really quick though! He is a natural! We will miss our Jimmy though. We will be playing for Pirate Days in The Colony on the 15th which is fun because my grandma changed all the words of our songs to "Pirate talk" lol And we play the Pirates of the Carribean theme which is cool. That same night we will be playing at out church social's fall festival which should be fun. Plus I love chili cook offs! 

Tantrums? No she would never... okay there she goes

I knew the day would come eventually. The day every parent dreads as he/she peers at the struggling parent with the screaming toddler at the grocery store. You kind of have this awkward "I feel bad for you, wish I could help" look on your face as you just pass by and exit the situation as quickly as possible. Well this past week I decided we would venture out to the Denton Mall to look at the costume shop. I am planning a Barney birthday party for Samantha and they have a Barney costume you can rent. She seemed fine in her stroller as long as she was holding on to my car keys, a new obsession for her. She started to get fussy so we went to walk around and I thought she would have fun in the play place. So, I took her out of her stroller when we got there and told her I needed to hold the keys if she wanted to go play. I could just see Sam accidentally poking a child and potentially having a lawsuit on our hands. Extreme? You would be surprised. Anyways, after I asked her for the keys, her whole life seemed to end in that moment. Screaming, kicking, crying, rolling on the floor. You name it, she did it. This grandpa looked at me like, "Gees what did you do? Can't you control your kid?" Ugh whatever. His little grandson just barely started to walk and was still a pleasant little angel and I just thought to myself, "Just you wait..". Then Sam decided she wanted nothing to do with the play area and ran as fast as she could out in to the mall. She has gotten so fast! Well as you might have guessed, that was the end of that venture out. Its kind of funny I get these parenting emails and it forewarned me about tantrums that week. Well at least I know she is right on track lol. Yay for 21 months..!

Halloween? Already?

So I LOVE the store "Kid to Kid"! They sell gently used kid toys/clothes/everything here! Babies grow so quick its hard to be okay spending a fortune on a brand new wardrobe every couple months. Today, they had their Halloween Event sale! I was able to get 2 costumes and a cute Halloween outfit for $20! Now its just a matter of choosing which costume to use. Which one do you think Sammi should be?

Beautiful day at the Park!

So Sam was up by 7:30 this morning so I decided to get us out to a park and take advantage of the beautiful morning we were having today. The weather this week has been so beautiful and I will be sad to see it go. I don't want to go back to 3 digit weather but I guess I can deal a few more weeks. 70 degree weather is hard to beat! Anyways, I decided we should go try out this park we always drive by but never go to. It was such a wonderful park! Its called Central Park and it is completely covered by trees and there are 2 playgrounds next to each other, one for older kids and the other for younger. There was no kids out there except for this little 3 year old boy with his dad but they were playing on the big kid stuff. Sam, the social bug that she is, decided she wanted to go make a friend and went to go see the boy. They got along so well, it was so cute! They even were holding hands at one point! Because this was the big kid playground I followed behind Sam making sure she didn't fall or get too ambitious and try to climb something she could not climb alone. The little boy Conner went down the big slide and Sam climbed up to follow. She paused and looked down from the high point. "We're up high, huh Sam?!" I stated, then we went down the tall slide together. The little boy yells,"We got a pie? A pie!" He laughed and laughed and thought it was just the funniest thing I could say. Sam decided to copy him every time he said it after that too... except much louder! He would say,"Pie!" Then Sam would say, "PBYE!!" (couldn't quite noodle the "P" sound but was close) They later threw a little soft football around and Conner pretended to be a pizza man and serve pizza to Samantha. More kids started coming but we had already been there for almost an hour and a half so I decided we should go. Little Conner was so sad to see Samantha go and asked his daddy, "Am I going to see her again?" as they walked to their car. His daddy said, "I'm sure you will see her again at the park sometime!" Samantha sure made an impression on this little guy! So cute! I hope we run in to each other again at the park sometime so they can re unite!
Samantha was pretty wiped out when we got home. I washed her hands and she ate a PBJ with milk. I think this was the easiest time I had putting her down for a nap! Such a cutie.