Some daily events around the Armour Home

Here are just some random pictures I've taken of Samantha being a goof. She loves to dress up, make messes, climb on things and snuggle under blankets. She especially loves "hiding" under the blankets with Daddy when he comes home from work. He comes home and that's what she wants to do right away, Daddy's such a good sport:)

Here she is making a mess with rice krispies. I had this week where I seriously had to bake something everyday for play group, super saturday etc. Anyway, she climbed in the cupboard and found an open bag of rice krispies. She was just sitting there eating them, so I let her keep them. Five minutes later I looked up to this!! She was throwing them up in the air and stomping on them...so I did what I always do. I take pictures:) She actually helped me clean up though!

My attempts at some Fall Crafts

So, I'm not a very crafty person, so to think of crafts to do with Samantha is tricky!! But I really wanted to do some, so I decided to do a leaf collage. It was actually really fun!! We went for one of our daily walks, but I told her to look for pretty leaves while we did, and she was great at it!! I think it made for a different walk experience because her eyes were on the ground the whole time. So we collected a bunch of leaves and then after her nap glued them on to a paper. So I know, not the most creative, but she loved that she got to glue something and stick it down, I just had to try and convince her not to pull them back off:)


Here she is gluing. I'm not sure why I don't have a picture of the final product. I'll have to take one now!!

So our next craft was making the annual halloween sugar cookies. I know, I'm so creative I'm not sure what to do:) Here she is helping me mix them. She's actually very good at pouring and getting it in the bowl, it's just the stirring where it tends to go everywhere. I tried to not worry though, and just let the flour go everywhere, haha, easier said than done!

So here's a first glimpse at the new cheesy grin that she does. It's nice because she'll actually pose for the camera rather than running over to look at it, but you have to surprise her if you want to actually see her eyes!

She loved the cookie cutting and rolling process. We didn't keep many that she cut out, but she was content just to push the cookie cutters down wherever she could.

The frosting didn't go as well, she just stabbed her cookie and refused to let me help.

Right before this I decided to try and let her use the sprinkles. I thought if I could just get one picture then I'd help her, not a good idea. She dumped the whole bottle on her cookie!! I didn't even get the picture because I dropped the camera trying to save the sprinkles, haha.

That's about all she ate of the cookie:) So apparently for her the making was much better than the eating. We had a great time though, and I think we will continue it as a tradition.

Campout with the Spillanes

So we braved another campout with Samantha over labor day weekend. Her first campout was on the beach for the Armour family reunion. She was only 9 months and couldn't crawl, so camping with a curious little girl running around was definitely a different experience but we had a great time. Samantha loved it!! The only downside was that she wouldn't sleep, literally from 11pm to 5:30am we were up. I finally had to go in the car because I couldn't keep her quite and I didn't want her keeping our friends the Spillanes up. So she crawled around and played in the car all night while I tried to keep her from freezing. I finally went back in around 5:30, got her to sleep by 6, and the Spillanes little boy Gaven woke up at 7. So, mommy only got an hour of sleep, but Samantha slept till nine:) Overall though, I would do it again in a heartbeat! I have so many fun memories camping with my family when I was younger, I definitely want that to be a tradition with our family:)

Here's Samantha playing at the little park they had at the campsite:)

We went on a hike the next morning. Since we never bought one of those huge camping carriers, we tried out the little infant carrier. It actually worked great, even though Samantha is so tall, she was barely over the weight limit:)

This is one of our little family on the hike. Don't look to closely! Remember I'm like 8 weeks pregnant running on one hour of sleep and not enough food!!

Here's Samantha trying to help daddy put the tent away.

The two little ones played in the car while we all cleaned up. This is Creed's hat:) She loves playing in cars, so she was in heaven, although I thought she would have had enough after the night before.

We had a great time and were grateful the Spillanes invited us to go!! We were also glad it was only for a night. Next time maybe we'll be a little braver and go for longer:)

Samantha's First Trip to the Zoo!

So here are some pictures of Samantha's first zoo experience. We went in the middle of August so the weather was perfect. She absolutely loved it!! We will definitely be getting a season pass next year:)

These first two pictures are of her feeding the Giraffes, (well, mom and dad feeding them, she wasn't quite that brave!) which was by far her favorite part. We could have spent all day there. She loved watching their tongues stick out to grab the crackers. Lots of fun!!

Here she is mimicking the giraffes!! It was so cute, at first we weren't sure what she was doing and then it clicked. She seriously did that for the rest of the day!! What a cute girl we have:)

Here she got to pet a baby wallaby. It was so little and sleeping so I wasn't sure if she'd even realize what it was, but she of course did and was excited that she actually got to touch an animal! (Mommy wouldn't let her go to the petting zoo portion...we'll brave that next year when I have a little more control over what she puts in her mouth, including her hands!!) I actually thought the older wallabies were way more exciting. They were hopping all around us, because we were gated in, they could just roam around, so that was lots of fun.

Next we went into this room full of birds. The exhibit is called budgie buddies and was actually very cool. I don't normally enjoy having hundreds of birds flying over my head, but of course Samantha loved it and we didn't get pooped on, so overall a good experience;)

The monkeys were also a big hit, of course!! I think the people around us liked watching Samantha scream monkey sounds more than looking at the actual monkeys!!

Here she's looking at the gorillas and if you look closely you can tell she's doing monkey motions and I'm sure monkey noises as well:) There was a baby gorilla with its mommy that she loved. We couldn't get her to leave or even let anyone else in to look with her!! Looks like her obsession with babies doesn't end with humans!



Here she is exhausted on the way to the car. We bought her a souvenir giraffe, much to daddy's dismay! But she loves it and still sleeps with it almost every night:)

We had a great time at the zoo! I only wish we wouldn't have waited so long to take her. Oh well, there's always next year:)

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Fourth of July

Ok, so I'm finally posting, yeah!! It's only taken me six months. Anyway, I thought I'd start with some Fourth of July picture. We had such a great weekend. Jon gets the fourth off, plus another day whenever he wants, so he had both Friday and Monday off, which was great. On the Fourth, we met our good friends the Spillanes at their ward building for a pancake breakfast. Then we went over to a beautiful park they have right next to their church and played around for awhile. Then, it was nap time for both of the kids so we both went home. Later that afternoon, they came up to our neck of the woods and came swimming. We had lunch with the other Spillanes as well (Strider and Ashley) and then we all went over to the pool and had tons of fun switching between the hot tubs and the pools. The two kids, Samantha and Gaven, loved hanging out in their floaties and throwing the ball back and forth, (well, sort of throwing :) ) Then we all went home, got cleaned up and met at Sonic on our way to this beautiful four million dollar brownstone where we watched fireworks. The brownstone was amazing, there was an elevator and everything, but Jacqueline and I had our hands full trying to keep the two toddlers from breaking, or even touching anything!! But after the fireworks started, that shifted their focus. Samantha absolutely loved the fireworks! She kept going boom boom boom as they went off and then yelling YEAH!!!. It was so adorable. It looks like she is going to be as a big a fan of fireworks as her mom. We had such a great weekend, and it was nice to spend it with friends, since we don't have a lot of family near by. Here are some pictures of the weekend. Sorry, next time I'll put them in as a write, but I forgot to this time, whoops!!


Swimming with everyone, look how cute Gaven looks in the background with his sunglasses and crazy hair!!

Samantha running around at home with her Pooh Bear, of course

In her car seat on the way to the fireworks. She played dress-up with mommy's old jewelry from middle school :)

Samantha and Gaven playing with the fireplace on the balcony, where we watched the fireworks. They had so much fun together!

Watching fireworks with mom...

And with Dad.

Here she is screaming one of her YEAHS!!! During the fireworks, she was literally jumping up and down!!