Sammy is Three!

And we had a fabulous day!  It all started with strawberry waffles, a new favorite.  She had a hard time not stuffing it in her face long enough to take the picture.  It took probably 4 tries to get one without her looking at her food.  Then she got to choose where we spent the rest of the day and where else would a little monkey want to go but Monkey Joe’s?  It’s a bounce house with huge slides.  She decided to invite her best (and sadly pretty much only) friend Hallie to come along. 

Can you tell who has a photographer for a mother? If you can’t from this, maybe you can from these (hint: it’s not Samantha): She is adorable, and yes, she knows how to ham it up.  Anyways, they ran and jumped and slid and played for hours.  It was fabulous.  After they had all run out of energy (I guess the power lunch of Tootsie Rolls and DumDums from the arcade didn’t cut it) we headed home for some real food.  And cake.  Dora cake.  What else?  I am hoping for another theme next year.    Then the gifts:

Funny story – Carter has been concerned about Samantha’s lack of diversity when it comes to her babies.  He was absolutely adamant about getting her a “dark-skinned” baby.   Hallie was thinking along the same lines, but she chose the “light-skinned” version (Carter’s words, not mine).  So Samantha ended up with Bi-cultural twins.  And she loves them.  They are named Kylee and Carlee.  Although Samantha says her R’s with a New Jersey accent, so really, they are Kylee and Kylee.  This has the makings of a very interesting social experiment…She also got some accessories for the twins, and some socks.  Can you see the enthusiasm for the socks?

  No, she really likes them, but I have to give Mike a hard time because he has a thing with socks (not a weird thing, he has just dealt a lot with them at work.  He knows a lot about socks.  Ask him). 

And because when I asked Samantha what she really wanted for her birthday and she told me “a blue light saber and a sword so I can battle the bad guys”, I decided she needs more girly things in her life.  A friend gave me some amazing tutus for her and she loved them!It’s so fun to see her girly side, I need to get her into some dance classes or something. 

Sammy is such an awesome girl!  Here are some of my favorite things about her:

She is so laid back and easy going.  I get comments all the time about what an easy little girl she is.  She is very brave and doesn’t scare easily (Carter makes her go down into the basement with him).  She is an awesome sister, always thinking about her brothers and how to make them happy (and occasionally how to make them scream, but whatever).  She is funny and loves to make people laugh.  She loves to have her toenails painted – purple and pink are her favorite colors, but she doesn’t discriminate, she will tell you they are all her favorite.   She loves everyone, even the bad guys, as she tells us quite frequently.  She loves nursery, although her teachers tell me she doesn’t say a word the whole time.  She loves to sing, although she won’t do that in nursery either.  She is a mama’s girl, which I secretly love.  She can’t say her R’s, so book mark sounds like book mike.   She has an obsession with toe jam.  More than once in a store she has sat down on the floor, taken off her shoes and socks and picked out her toe jam.  She doesn’t love sweets.  She can rarely finish a whole dessert.  Having said that, she still asks for poop treats occasionally, although she has been potty trained forever.  She loves to play pretend.  She has some of the funniest facial expressions, she really gets into it when she talks.  I could go on, but just let it be known that she is a very special little girl and I love her guts!