Samson Family Christmas

The Christmas festivities ended withe a final event at my brother Michael's house in St. Paul. The house looked beautiful and he prepared a great German meal. I particularly like the speatzel. Charlotte had a lot of fun with her Samson cousins. She and Violet and Lydia all got these adorable nightgowns from Sarah and Ben. The cute jammies came with a princess wand and adorable sock/footsies. This Christmas was also fun and loud just like the Bellmont family Christmas. By the end of the day, all of our presents were open though I have to admit I felt a bit sad that Christmas has come and gone. We still have a fun package to open from Aunt Laney in North Carolina that is coming tomorrow. One thing that made Christmas much less stressful then normal is that I began shopping for gifts at the end of October and budgeted for gifts and made well thought out lists. How far I must say I've come because I typically begin Christmas shopping on the 20th of December and spend way more than I should.

One of the most fun parts about Christmas this year was that the Samson side of the family was gracious enough to give a family in need an incredible Christmas to remember. We went through an agency called Armful of Love, sponsored by the Community Action Council of Dakota and Scott counties. It was so much fun buying all the gifts and throwing in lots of surprises in there. The family consisted of a mother and 2 young kids and while their requests were incredibly modest we decided to surprise them by giving them way more than they asked for. I would have loved to see the family enjoy a well deserved Christmas but the anonymous part makes it all worth it as well.

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning was so much fun. Charlotte woke up at an appropriate 6am hour. I could barely sleep that night. I was so excited for her to see what Santa got her for Christmas. As you can see there are a few before pictures and then after pictures. Santa got Charlotte a Kitchen set full with pots and pans and food and a grocery cart. Charlotte was taken a back by what she saw. She was so thrilled she forgot about eating and wanted nothing to do with breakfast. It was so fun to see her enjoy her kitchen and it has been a big hit thus far. It was certainly her favorite gift. Kevin and I also got open our Christmas stockings that Santa left for us. Kevin got lots of little stuff to get ready for work after working out and I got some great gift cards and yummy chocolate.

Our Family Christmas

After we got home from the Bellmont family Christmas Eve celebration we thought we might as well dig right into our present we got each other. Some of the highlights are.

Kevin: "Frozen Memories"-Book about MN hockey, High Pressure Drain Cleaner, Work Shirts, an Electric Shaver, Sports stuff and more.

Molly: DVD player, Wild shirt, Bridget Jones movies 1 and 2, The Office board game...I am totally excited about that, the new batman movie and more.

Charlotte: Magna Doodle Pro, books, clothes, Disney movie princess figures, lots of stuffed animals and DVDs and of course....so much more!

Bellmont Family Christmas

We spent Christmas Eve day enjoying time with the Bellmont side of the family at Mike and Ryan's house in Lakeville. While I had to work until 3p.m. Kevin and Charlotte got there at 11a.m. and enjoyed some Rubens for lunch and had fun playing with the Bellmont Boys (Charlotte's cousins). When Kevin came to pick me up from home so we could go back together to the Christmas Eve dinner celebration he told me this story that made me laugh and my heart melt. Apparently Kevin put Charlotte down for an afternoon nap up in Mike and Ryan's room. We brought the travel crib along for her to sleep in and while she has a tendency to climb out of that Kevin checked on her 10 minutes after he put her down and she seemed to be fine in there sleeping, or so Kevin thought. Well, Kevin and our nephew Mathew decided to go sledding down their backyard hill. About 15 minutes or so later Kevin's brother Mike thought he should check on Charlotte. When he got in the room he didn't see her in her play pen. He looked all over and still couldn't find her. Then he heard a faint voice say, "I need help." I didn't sound distressed it just sounded sweet and calm Mike then looked around and saw these little toes hanging out under their bedroom closet and he opened the door and there Charlotte was. She eventually went back to bed and slept for an hour. When Kevin told me that story I couldn't help but laugh and but then also think of my little girl in this closet all by herself made me feel so bad. In the end....it will be a great story to tell her when she gets older.

We had a great time on Christmas Eve and with 5 kids 5 and under it was nothing short of loud, loud, loud but more importantly that meant everyone was having fun. Here are just a few pictures of the day spent at Mike and Ryan's brand new house.

Sledding

On Tuesday last week, Kevin and I decided to take Charlotte sledding. We noticed some kids using the hill by our house that goes down into the lake (frozen of course). So, rather than going to a different spot, like we always do we decided to just walk down the street and see what this hill was all about. My goodness, we certainly were in for an adventure. Getting there was pretty painless. We decided to bring the dogs with and let them run around. Kevin was in charge of the dogs and I was in charge of Charlotte. Being pregnant, the viable option of course was to bring Charlotte on the sled to the hill. I pulled her a couple blocks down the street to the hill and she seemed to like it just fine. So I thought, wow this is going pretty good, no crying yet. Well, we get to the hill and the dogs are just having a hay day with the space to run around. I decide it's time to just bite the bullet and go down the hill. Thinking that this hill wouldn't be nearly as fast nor steep as the one we're used to, I just plopped Charlotte between my legs on the sled and headed down for, what I thought would be a simple jont down the hill. I was definitely mistaken. This hill packed much more punch than I thought. We were going to fast, and certainly not perfectly straight down the hill. To avoid tipping over, I decided to put my put out to slow us down. Well, poor Charlotte, although she was safely on the sled at the bottom of the hill, was covered in snow. My clever slowing skills sprayed snow all over her face. At first she was shocked and didn't do anything but then realized her face was covered in cold snow and she just had a fit....as I would too. Nonetheless, this first adventure down the hill was not so positive for Charlotte so she really wanted nothing to do with sledding anymore. In fact she just wanted to be carried and to go home. We decided to stick it out, for nothing more than to justify that it took us about 15 minutes to actually get dressed for this excursion. Kevin decided to take her down with him and as you can see from the picture, Charlotte wasn't exactly enjoying it. After a couple more turns down the hill, which I loved by the way. I have certainly gone sledding in years past but for some reason, this year was much more fun. I don't know how the baby felt about it, but I definitely had fun!

Well, as were were to head back Kevin is trying to coral the dogs and I am trying to get Charlotte to sit on the sled so I can pull her back. Charlotte of course was now terrified of the sled and was not interested in sitting in it by herself. There was now way I could carry her up the hill and walk her back home.....I'm rather big now so that was just out of the question. There was no way Kevin was going to be able to carry her up the hill and back and also bring the dogs back on the double leash. So, I had no choice but to basically force her to sit on the sled. I laid her down and she refused to get up. So, the pictures you see of her lying down on the sled were out of protest and also included screaming and crying. It's too bad pictures can't capture everything that's going on. As I'm trying to get her up the hill, we're almost at the top, Charlotte decides she doesn't want to ride on the sled, she tries to get out. I am starting to fall backwards on the hill and Kevin is trying to help both of us. Well, in the meantime, somehow the dogs leashes are wrapped around my legs at least twice and Charlotte has kicked her boot off and completely unaware to us has a bare foot stuck in the snow. Honestly, it was so chaotic and ridiculous I was laughing so hard, which made it of course harder to rectify the situation.
Well, the only way to get home was to have Charlotte sit between my legs on the sled and see if the dogs would pull us. While my husband is strong, pulling a 7 month pregnant woman and her 34 lb. child would not have been easy. So, we basically tied the rope to the leashes and Kevin held on and they pulled us home. The images you see of the back of Kevin and the dogs are from me. I just couldn't believe these dogs could do this. In fact, it was down right cool. It was a perfect ending to a somewhat disastrous sledding trip.

Christmas at Aunt Donna's and Uncle Johns'

My sister Sarah and I.

The girls were "working" on Grandma with a very state of the art medical kit. And thankfully Grandma was saved!

We had our first family Christmas celebration of the year at Aunt Donna and Uncle John's house (Samson side of family). This is a tradition we have looked forward to every year. While the menu is always the same it is sooooo yummy that we never want it to change. The most famous item of this Christmas meal is of course Donna's Scalloped Potatoes. I have never had a dish like this anywhere and I am already wishing I would have taken more home to eat. I guess I'll have to wait until next year. Kevin was feeling very sick, a bad case of the flu I'm sure, so Charlotte and I ventured out to this event on our own. She had a lot of fun with her cousins, which she always does. She was more interested in their presents of course than her own. Here are some fun pictures of the girls in their dresses and Sammy in his handsome outfit, all having fun and making lots of noise.

Eating My Words

Well, my last blog entry was raving about the progress of the Internet and all the abilities it offers users and then literally what happened two days following that entry........My hard drive crashed and I lost everything on my computer. So much for convenience. So, I had to search, a few places mind you for a new hard drive and apparently laptop hard drives are not as easy to come by as one would think. I replaced that, while in the meantime feeling vulnerable without the use of my computer, pathetic, I know. My dad had to set up my computer all new and although very pleased that I had a new, functioning computer I was very distraught that I lost everything on my computer, particularly my pictures. Fortunately, I was mentioning this to my sister Sarah and she said that Ben, my brother-in-law may be able to help. I guess he has this device at work that recovers files from hard drives. Suffice it to say, I was able to recover everything ahd saved major money in the process. In the meantime of all this computer dependency mayhem, we also weren't able to locate our camera cord that recharges our camera so we weren't able to take any photos of Charlotte and particularly we weren't able to post any pictures on the blog. After a couple of weeks of searching I finally found the cord frozen to a crisp in my glove compartment of the car. After some thawing, the camera cord worked and thus we have pictures!
Well, the morals to my story are.....always back up your hard drive, remember where you put things and this of course can be solved if you always put things away in the same place, and more importantly, keep in mind that the convenience of computers can also be your enemy and that sometimes the old fashioned way of doing things shouldn't be thrown out the window.

Awesome Ways to Save Money Online

As the holiday season is well underway, I have become an aficionado of online shopping. Now, I know this isn't a novel idea but for me this is an incredibly new thing. Previously, I was just tickled pink that I could do online banking but was completely uninterested in shopping online, not to mention I would get so nervous about using my card online that I would hate risking someone stealing my card number. I have just heard so many horror stories. Nonetheless, I tried online shopping out for the first time this year and I absolutely LOVE it. I decided to use an account that is separate from our checking account and that I just transfer money to when I need to make a purchase so that there is never money in there for anyone else to spend. But more glorious than actually getting over my apprehension to shop online, is that there are so many deals out there it's unbelievable. For anyone who knows me, I am a coupon girl, a sale girl and basically do everything to avoid paying full price for anything.
Lately, I have been using a couple of websites to save some great money and I also just read an article by New York Times (even though I'm not a fan of that newspaper at all it did have a great story on yahoo.com about saving money online) that gave great websites to find coupon codes for thousands and thousands of major retailers. So, I thought I would publish them all for everyone to take advantage of. Here they are:

RetailMeNot.com, FatWallet.com and the Budget Fashionista, CouponCabin.com, Ebates.com, CouponMom.com, CouponCode.com

I hope you all enjoy the deals and I would love to hear more online money saving tips for those of you who also enjoy online shopping too!

Star Wars...the next Generation

So, last week Kevin pulled out all of his Star Wars figures and toys for Charlotte to play with. It amazes me how he kept some of those toys so guarded for so many years. Some of them are in their original boxes and haven't even come out for play....and of course Charlotte wasn't allowed to play with those. Maybe one day she'll prove to Kevin she can treat them with the utmost respect these nerdy characters deserve. However, Kevin did let her play with the eewok (I know I'm spelling that wrong) village. She actually had a lot of fun playing with all the stuff. I wonder what will be considered collector toys from today in the future. I just can't see Dora the Explorer being that priceless in 20 years.

Also, being that it's been near a month since our last blog I have posted some pictures we have taken recently. As for what's been going on with us, nothing unusual but a lot of working and getting ready for the Holiday season. I have pretty much accomplished all of my Christmas shopping. I just a few odds and ends to get. Mostly though right now I am getting ready for my Mary Kay open house this Friday and Saturday and then on Sunday my sisters and I, minus Sarah, are going to see the Transiberian Orchestra. I am looking forward to having a night out. We're trying to think of somewhere fun to eat ahead of time....any suggestions? The event will take place at the Excel Center so somewhere near down town St. Paul would mostly be the location of choice.

Kevin has been busy at work and getting the house ready for a nice long winter. I hope we get to use the fire place downstairs a lot this year. Relaxing by the fire, enjoying some hot tea and watching a movie or reading a book seems pretty nice right now. I suppose I better do all of the relaxing that I can right now before this new little baby arrives, because I'm certain I won't have much of that come March. Kevin recently put up the Christmas lights outside and picked out a great tree for the living room. We decorated it last week and Charlotte had a lot of fun. I must say though, we have about 15+ Police snowman or Santa Clauses. I'm wondering if there aren't any Christmas themed waitresses out there?....because I'm feeling a little underrepresented on the tree. Even Charlotte has at least 3 ornaments dedicated to her.

Charlotte has been chatting up a storm, spouting out new words and sentences every day. She is a lot of fun lately and very excited about Christmas and Santa Clause. I did try to bring her to see Santa a week or so ago and she was absolutely NOT interested in sitting on his lap. Oh well, I'll just have to forgo Santa this year. It is just not worth the tantrum to get a picture.