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

Elle's Birthday

Elle officially turned 1 on Thursday (the 17th). We ended up celebrating twice. Since we were going to be gone to Colorado on her birthday and Grandma and Grandpa didn't want to miss out.


My mom has a tradition of making a blanket for the babies in our family for their first birthday. Elle's turned out super cute!

On Thursday we went out for pizza ( one of Elle's favorites) and then went back to the hotel for birthday cupcakes.

Elle's first year seems to have gone by SO fast. She is such a cute girl. Oh, and for the record she officially started walking before she turned 1. She's been trying for a while now, but is a little chicken. On Tuesday she just kind of started walking everywhere. Especially to Grandpa. So we are counting it as walking before her first birthday. After all she was only 11 months and 29 days.


Happy Birthday Little One....here's some pictures of the 1st year of in the book of Elle...

Beck's 2nd Birthday

Beck turned two on May 8th. He's our lucky guy that will always have a birthday on Mother's Day weekend or there abouts. (Elle's will always coincide with Father's Day, go figure). We took him and the kiddos to Chuck E Cheese on Friday. Surprisingly enough he wasn't all that spooked by the Cheese. Most kids are terrified.



On his actual birthday (saturday) we had the traditional birthday pancakes. We kept calling them number two pancakes, but Cambelle thought it sounded gross. (She's seven, can you tell).


Later that day we opened presents and had a little family party with our family here in the house. You can see my poor dads legs in the background. He pulled his back doing yardwork that afternoon, poor guy.




On Sunday (mothers day) we had some extended family over for some cake and a little mothers day celebration too. Beck is REALLY into "nandy" (candy). So I decided to make his a candy cake. I went all out and he absolutely loved it. The suckers on the top were so heavy they actually made the cake start to lean and it just about fell over. Ha!

April Fools!

I love and hate April Fool's Day. I love to play the jokes and tricks on other people, but hate being the one to be duped. This year I got Cambelle. I told her I had made her a really special breakfast. She was so excited. I brought over her plate and drink and set them in front of her. When she opened her eyes to see this she was like " umm ... thanks?" " Mom, this is dinner."

I called out "April Fools" and she giggled and thought it was funny. It gets even better. She grabs a spoon to actually eat her dinner/breakfast. The food is not what it appears to be. The "veggies" are made from tootsie rolls that I shaped to look like real peas, carrots and corn. And the fish sticks are vanilla wafer cookies covered in peanut butter and dipped in crushed corn flakes. Her drink of Kool-aid was actually Jell-o too. When she popped a spoonful of "veggies" in her mouth and the taste was completely off she spit them all back out onto her plate and yelled " Mom what is this?" Beck scoops up his "veggies" and immediately shouts out "Nandy" (his word for candy). She hurried and grabbed the "fish stick" and bit in and couldn't stop laughing when she figured out that her breakfast was all messed up and that she was getting cookies, candy and jello for breakfast.

I think Becks confused face when I gave hime dinner for breakfast is my favorite. Even a 2 year old knows this is not breakfast food.

Too funny.

What shall I do next year ?...

Big Helper

Beck is our big helper these days. The more he learns to do, the more he wants to help. He has a special fettish with brooms & vacuums. I think he cleans the kitchen floor more than I do. He loves to get out the swivel sweeper and clean up anything and everything on the floor. Even things he shouldn't. Flipping through my photos on the laptop today I realized, Beck likes to help with a lot of things for instance ...

He loves to help Cody with his tools...





He likes to help give himself baths...



He loves to help me in the kitchen...

and, he absolutely loves to hep baby Elle...

He sure is a cute little guy.

Creative Juices

Something about the long awaited coming of spring seems to get my creative juices flowing. I love to decorate sugar cookies, scrapbook and do all sorts of crafty things. Here is my latest project.

It was kind of out of neccesity. OK, not actually necessity, but for an LDS girl you must have a cute sunday bag. I got called to the Primary Secretary in our ward and have to have a cute bag to carry all my stuff right? I think I'm justifying this to myself. Anyway, it turned out fabulous! I love it. Now I'm trying to come up with an excuse to make another. The pattern I bought has 3 others, so if anyone wants to get some fabric, I'll make ya a bag. Cause I'm in the crafty mood.

I even got Cambelle in a crafty mood. She made this cute little flower all by herself. Way to go sister!

Happy Birthday Cambelle

She's 7!



Cambelle's birthdays are always fun. At least the last couple years have been. I love to see how exciting it is to have a birthday. I wish my birthday was that exciting. We had our traditional birthday pancakes, and a little get together that ended up being not so little. It started out as just our family. Then it was our family, my parents and my sister. By the time we were all together there were about 21 of us. We had cake (decorated exactly as Cambelle asked) and ice cream and an all around good time.

For her birthday she asked for 3 dresses. Dress up dresses. Not just any dress up dresses, but exact duplicates of the "Barbie and the 3 Musketeers" dresses. I started back in early December and I hemmed the final dress while she was at school on her birthday. All my hard work payed off though, she loved them!

It was so fun to see all of our family and friends show Cambelle how much they love her. She truly is a special girl!!

Christmas

This was Elle's first christmas and Beck's first christmas that he "gets it". We had a lot of fun this christmas. Cody's sister Norma was down from Alaska so we spent Christmas Eve at his Dad's house and celebrated a little early with them. We played in the snow and built a snowman, had a fantastic dinner and opened a few presents. Santa even made a surprise visit, which Beck did not appreciate. Even Cambelle was a little worried when the big guy himself showed up on Grandpa Sampsons doorstep. We had a fun filled, exhausting day.

Christmas day was no different. Fun filled and exhausting. The hour and a half drive home christmas eve gave all the kids a great nap at 9:00 on christmas eve so no one was tired at bed time. I think we finally got to bed around 1:00. Elle was the first one up (she doesn't even know about Santa yet, why was she so excited?) at 5:30. The other two kids got up around 7. Cambelle could hardly contain herself when she realized that it was Christmas morning. By the time we got around to opening presents ( we had to wait for Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Ray) Elle was fast asleep again and Cambelle had rifled through every present under the tree to see which boxes belonged to her. The rest of my family showed up aroun noon for the traditional christmas dinner at my parents house and we played games and the kiddies opened even more presents. Then it was off to Grandma Lola's for even more presents. I think our kids are totally spoiled by their grandparents and aunts and uncles. It was a typical Christmas for us and thats just how I like it.

Temple Square

We finally made it up to temple square in Salt Lake this year. I think I have been trying to get our family up there for years. My best friend growing up lives up in Salt Lake so we used her as an excuse to get up there. Emily is so much fun with the kids. We planned our trip before we knew the weather report though and it turned out to be freezing. Actually colder than freezing, it was about 20 degrees. Plus it had snowed earlier in the day. It was beautiful! Seeing all the christmas lights somehow really gets me into the christmas mood. It makes me feel like a kid again.


I am so glad Cody is in a christmasy mood this year and lets me drag him around to these things. Cody has been so good this year. Usually he barely tolerates the whole christmas thing, but this year I think I'm finally gettin' to him. He listens to christmas music in the car with us, he has been to two different "light shows", and he was actually willing to help me get out the christmas decorations. Lucky for him this years decorations consist of stockings and garland and thats it. My parents took care of all the other decorating. I just love this time of year. Merry Christmas All!