Highs and Lows

This was a very hard week for me – it was filled with very high highs and very low lows. 

The lowest low was that a very close family friend died unexpectedly this week.  It’s been difficult for me to understand what happened and I know I will struggle with it for awhile.  Fortunately Samantha keeps my spirits up.

One of the highs was that we finally finished a project!  Chris worked to complete the fence – he had to cut off part of the posts, install a tube for the cane bolt, attach the corner, and remove the old fence posts.  He worked his butt off and is so happy it’s done!  I'll post pictures next week.

While he was working on the fence, I tackled the ridiculous weeds in the garden.  I spent a lot of time before weeding right around the plants and never got a chance to finish the aisle areas.  The aisles were crazy – some of the weeds were over 6 ½ feet tall. 

Our pet spider has been growing very large.  She ate an entire cicada this week so it’s not surprising that she’s almost doubled in size.

I spent some time the last couple weeks constructing a float for the Howard County Fair Baby Parade.  I decided to make Samantha’s stroller into a tractor and dress her as a farmer.  I had a lot of fun doing it!

On Saturday we spent a lot of time at the Howard County Fair.  It started with the Baby Parade.  Samantha was up against a lot of really cute babies – a mermaid, the cowardly lion, Pebbles Flintstone, a gardener, the old man from “Up”, etc.

We were very happy that Samantha won third place!  Chris thinks our float was the best – I must have scared everyone by being dressed as a cow to put us down a couple notches! 

 

We got to see a lot of animals at the fair.  The horse pull competition was very impressive – the winning sled weight was 4500 pounds.  Some of these horses weighed over 4000 lbs as a pair and were massive. 

Of course we also had to get a picture on a real tractor:

Our food basket for the week contained hanger steak, sausage, milk, bread, lettuce, cucumber, yellow squash, corn, tomatoes, yogurt, peaches, and plums.  We are getting so spoiled!

There were so many big things from Samantha this week.  She had her half birthday – we celebrated with a cupcake (too bad she didn’t get to eat any of it!).

I tried to post a few videos this week but for some reason it's not working - I'll try to post them next week.  The videos are:

She started saying “Mama” a lot.  It makes my heart melt every time!

 

Crawling is coming very soon as the army crawl has been seen on a few different occasions already.

Tucker has been gaining even more interest as well - he really needs to watch out!  She tries to grab hold of him every time he is near.

 

She has been practicing with the sippy cup – she doesn’t exactly understand that she has to tip it up yet!

Here are a few more pictures from the week:

We still haven’t finished the bathroom but we still have high hopes of being able to use it soon!