Briggs

Our newest addition, Lee Briggs Sampson, joined our family on November 17, 2011 at noon. He weighed in at 8 lb 7 oz and 20.5" long. Amazingly, he's not our biggest baby. Cambelle beat him weighing 8lb 9 oz.

Briggs is a GREAT baby. He actually doesn't have a choice, he has to be good.... with 2 toddlers and a volleyball playing 8 year old I don't have time for him to be anything but good.

It's always so fun to have a new baby in the house. They are such sweet little spirits and it's so fun to see the kids with him. They love "Skully" so much. He got that nickname while I was pregnant. Our kids love the Disney cartoon of "Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and they each pretend to be one of the characters. Beck is Jake, Cambelle is Izzy, Elle is Cubby and Briggs by default is Skully... the pirate bird.

Cambelle, like always, is a great help.... Beck and Elle have to be bribed to help. Oh, and Beck can't stand baby spit-up... it brings on the dry heaves so fast. But so does bananas, garbage cans and poopy diapers... He'll make a great dad one day...HA!

Back to School

Cambelle is off to third grade. This summer flew by....

The kiddos definately miss their big sis while she is gone to school. The first couple days they kept asking where she was or they would walk around the house calling her name and looking for her.

The Mom In Me...

The mom in me couldn't resist taking a "first day of school" picture of Cody before he headed off for his first day at the Police Academy. He was only willing if we were all in it...

We are so proud of Cody for all of his hard work and long hours at the Academy. His schedule is 5pm - 9pm, Monday through Friday and all day Saturday, pretty much for the next year. It will all be worth it though in the end, right...??? That's what I keep telling myself. Next year it will be all worth it.

Cruisin’ the Caribbean

Cody and I decided to celebrate our 10^th anniversary this year by going on vacation together….for the first time without kids. It was AMAZING!! Well, one kid came with us, but he was pretty low key… (I was 3 months pregnant) I guess I won't be able to get completely away for a while still. We were lucky enough to have two of our good friends, (who just happen to be brothers) come with us on our adventure. We spent 8 perfect days in the beautiful Caribbean visiting place like St. Thomas, Antigua, Bermuda and ending in New York. I was so nice to be able to get away and relax and just spend time as a couple. We are definitely going to have to plan more vacations like this one. Here are a few pics of our adventures...

Evacuation training... so fun!!

The view from our balcony on the first morning.... Gorgeous!!

Magen's Bay, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands

Our favorite spot... the ice cream stand. We are so much ice cream it isn't even funny.... ok, maybe a little funny.

The crew of our ship even helped us celebrate our anniversary. They sang "Happy Anniversary" to the tune of "Happy Birthday" since the crew is international it sounded a lot like the "Fa-Ra-Ra-Ra's" from the movie "A Christmas Story"

Cambelle's Baptism

Cambelle was baptised a member of the Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints on February 5th, 2011. We are so proud of our little girl for her decision. Just look at her dad's smile.... definitely a proud daddy.

Time Flies . . .

Has it really been that long since I posted on our blog.... jeesh! Sorry for not updating everyone on our happenings. I guess this will be another one of those catch up posts that tells about everything and anything... those are always fun ... here we go...
We have moved back home to Utah from Colorado. It really was a fun adventure for our family and we are all really grateful for the chance we had to do it... well... everyone except maybe Cody. I think we counted about 1300 man hours on that job in just 3 1/2 months. INCREDIBLE! We are so glad to have our Dad back.


My "reward" for sticking out those 3 1/2 months was that I could get LASIK done! I didn't waste any time getting that scheduled and had my surgery just 2 weeks after we moved home. I am now officially 20/15 (which is even better than 20/20)! I love it!




We had a nice low key Halloween. Cambelle was one of the 3 Musketeers (barbie style), Beck was a Pirate, and Elle was a bumble bee. Too Cute!






Cambelle got her ears peirced. How can you say no to that girl on anything. We thought she would wait until she was older, but when your kids come to you and so diplomatically try and convince you to let them do something, how can you tell them no? She was very brave, even though it hurt ... a lot... She gets to change her earrings on her birthday... she planned it to be exactly 6 weeks to the day so she could wear a new pair on her birthday.






Cody has been busy again with work... which we love and hate all at the same time. Its nice to have work, but it's also nice to get to spend time together again.


I have been busy just being me. Primary secretary keeps me busy, as do two toddlers and a 7 year old.



We are all super excited for Christmas to get here and even had a snow day today (NO SCHOOL!) We saw about 20" of snow overnight. The kids love it!






Hope anyone reading this has a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year because I'm pretty sure I won't post between now and then, but thanks for checking in on us!

Our Adventures...Part Deux

Our adventures in Colorado continue....

Our biggest and craziest thing so far has been Cody's accident at work with a hand power planer. Just for clarification hand planers are NOT meant for hands. This happened right before Labor day weekend, so we got to spend a week in Utah for some R&R. It is healing really well. It looks way better now. I will have to post some current pictures. It is amazing how quickly the body can really heal itself. The cool part in all this is that the guys up here at the construction site like Cody so much that they all pooled their cash and gave our family a huge chunk of money to help cover costs while Cody was down. People are amazing. They all like Cody up here because he is the only mormon any of them have ever met.



We still take our weekly sunday walk down to the river. It is Becks favorite thing about livng out here. Every time he even sees the river he starts yelling " Reeber, reeber".



Our new friend Pauly came over again and made us another fantastic meal. He is completely amazing!




Most recently though we had our good friend Lance come out from Utah and stay with us for a week. The kids absolutely adore Lance (and his twin brother Ryan) so it was an extra special week for all of us. We took a day and went up to Aspen and did some window shopping. I think the cheapest on sale item we found was a t-shirt for $58.
This giant dog is at an antique store in Aspen and Beck loves to walk by and say Hi to this dog.





While Lance was here he introduced Elle to McDonalds sweet & sour sauce. She couldn't get enough. I think she even had a melt down when we took it away.



We spent a day up at the Glenwood Caverns in the Fairy Caves. No strollers allowed in the caves so Lance and I ended up carrying the two babies through the 70 minute cave tour.

The kids had such a good time that Cambelle decided that Lance is their step-dad. Her theory on that is that Lance is the guy who "steps in" when dad cant come because of work...the step-dad. We thought it was funny, I liked the idea of two incomes...











We rounded out the week by driving in to Denver for two days. Cody and Lance went to the Broncos home opener against the SeaHawks. They had third row tickets. Cody didn't want to carry around my pink camera so I'll have to post pictures of the boys at the game once I get them from Lance. The kids and I drove out to Colorado Springs and spent the day with my Aunt and Uncle. They took us to the "Garden of the Gods" . It's a geological wonder where the tectonic plates hit and sent these huge rocks straight up into the air. It was amazing.




We are only out here for another week or so and then its back to Utah. Cody will have to stay a few weeks later than the kids and I, but hopefully it will be life back to normal soon. Although I will miss all these adventures.

The Best Thing I Ever Ate ...

I love the Food Network. The shows make me feel like I can cook. I mean really cook. They always have these little commercials that ask the food network stars "What is the best thing you have ever eaten?" I've thought about that question a lot. And I can't seem to ever fill it in. I've eaten some pretty darn good things in my life, like Citrus Crusted Halibut...YUM...or Chocolate Lava Cake...Double YUM... But nothing has ever fallen into the category of "The BEST..Ever. Until Wednesday...

A new friend, Pauley, came over Wednesday night to cook us dinner. I had been told that Pauley had been a chef, but I wasn't sure how good he actually was. Sometimes people get over-sensationalized..you know. Pauley is now a finish carpenter on the house Cody is working on in Aspen. Anyway back to the story. Apparently, Pauley was a chef for over 20 years. A real chef too. He brought all the food he would need and he cooked up a storm. I just watched. In fact, he banned me from the kitchen. I tried to sneak in once and got in trouble. He was chopping and slicing and mixing and breading like a mad man. I couldn't even keep up on what was going on he was so fast. The house smelled just like a fine restaurant. Even the kids were excited. We all watched. Drooling the whole time. Oh by the way, Cody was allowed in the kitchen as the dish washer. Hee Hee, I love it. When he was finished we had a fantastic French Cuisine meal of herb crusted chicken with a mushroom sauce that was to die for, dirty mashed potatoes with garlic and goat cheese, and fresh steeped asparagus. I don't even know what steeped means, it was so fancy.

This meal by far is the best thing I have ever eaten! Cody completely agrees. The kids do too. We all ate it and loved it. Even the asparagus, which they would have never eaten if I had given it to them. We were all so full by the end of dinner that we were starting to get the sweats. You know what I'm talking about. The "I ate way too much food" sweats. SO GOOD.

Pauley was amazing. I guess he gave up the life of a professional chef because of the 80 hour work week. You're the first one there and the last one to leave when you're the chef. And since he found the love of his life, (his lovely wife Paula) he didn't want to be gone all the time. Sadly though he went into construction and landed this job which he has been on for 2 1/2 years of his 4 year marriage to Paula and she lives in Denver (4 hours away) so they don't see each other as often as he would like.

Paul has agreed to come over every few weeks and cook with me. Give me some pointers. Teach me some stuff. So cool. It's like having food network, live in my kitchen. WooHoo. I'll let you know how it goes. He says I have to cook him a meal first. Uh, ya...what do you cook a chef? Mac & Cheese? I don't think so.

The most handsome dishwasher I've ever seen..

So now I want to know....What the best thing You've ever eaten? I know what my answer is.

Our adventures...

We've had a lot of little "adventures" out here in Basalt, Colorado. We've pet a baby alligator, gotten completly lost trying to find a hardware store, cut 5 inches of Cambelle's hair off, played on a big excavation tractor, eaten a whole piece of pizza by ourselves (Elle) and had the flu. Thats not even half of all we've done out here. It's been fun. Here's some pictures to prove it too... sorry no pictures of the baby alligator, he was too shy...







Some nice guy up at the house Cody is working on invited the kiddos to go and drive his excavation "digger". Beck was a little scared, but when he saw Cambelle try it he was totally excited.





Our first top tooth gone. My baby is growing up. We're gonna need braces soon...




This little monster ate an entire piece of pizza. And not just a little slice, a full on mondo sized slice...no wonder she weighs the same as Beck..




Poor guy, he may look cute like this, but he's dressed this way because he threw up all over himself...twice... nasty flu..



Cambelle wanted a new "do" for school. We also did some school shopping. Here's a mini fashion show she gave us when we got home...

Our New Home.....For a bit...

So we have officially moved to Colorado. It's only temporary though. Cody has work in Aspen, CO until September. He was driving back and forth, but that got WAY to hard on him and me and the kiddos. So since schools out for summer we figured we would all move to Colorado. It's definately an adjustment. But its also a fun adventure that we get to have as a family. Here are some pictures of our new temporary home. There's no real order to any of these, but I'll at least tell you a little about each picture... here goes...

This is the kids' room/office. Beck and Cambelle share the bed and Elle's in the play pen thing. The wall that the picture is taken from is a wooden accordian sliding door, very 70's.

This is the main bathroom. There is access to this bathroom from both bedrooms. Something our family can't seem to get away from no matter where we move is multiple doors to a bathroom. It's getting to be pretty funny.

Thats our front door to the bottom left, and our fantastic patio. The only downfall is the downfall... all the slats on the rail are far enough apart that Elle could squish through so she has to be watched pretty close out there since it is a two or three story fall...

This is how you get to our front door. It's quite a climb and a fall as Beck has almost found out.

This is the kids' favorite room in the whole house. The pink bathroom. Cambelle loves it because well, it's pink. But Beck loves the tiny sink. He now has the cleanest hands in Colorado thanks to this sink. Maybe we'll finally finish potty training with washing hands in the tiny sink after as an incentive. Maybe not, I don't want to get too ambitious.

This is the main bedroom. Nothing too exciting other than the awesome built in. Another fantastic 70's addition.

Here's the kitchen. No dishwasher though. So sad. It looks like Cambelle is going to learn how to wash dishes this summer... heehee

Here's our dining room. It's a table... I know..you're all jealous now of our massive dining hall. (you can see the awesome accordian door to the kids room in this one)

The living room is actually quite nice. Other than the gi-normous ants that like to come visit us. Oh, and the spiders too. The house was vacant for a couple of months, so every cupboard and corner has a little friend waiting to meet my flip-flop.

This is looking from the living room toward the kitchen. Another built-in. I must say, we are not lacking on storage space.

Thats our lovely abode. Hope you enjoyed. And we'll see you all in September.

Love,

The Sampson Fam