Samantha's first blog

pamelamyers | September 22, 2016

My mom also made me a special dinner for my birthday, and yes, there was more cake! Sam decorated it with what feels like 800 candles. The mylar pinwheels actually starting melting. Geez, Sam, I hope I’m not that old!

For weeks if not months, Sam has been talking about this special birthday card she bought for me when she was out with Grandmom. She wanted to tell me what was on it in the worst way, and I wouldn’t let her. I kept telling her I wanted it to be a surprise. She couldn’t help herself, so she dropped a few hints (I discovered it was a cat doing something silly). Finally, she got to give me the card!

Ok, Ninja Kitty? That is pretty silly. Thanks, Sammy!

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pamelamyers | September 19, 2016

It’s birthday party time! Well, not exactly. It was time for my birthday dinner. Sam was excited because there would be cake. She has her priorities, you know. Before everyone arrived, there was time for some portraits of the girls.

My two best girls. 🙂

And also an anniversary picture of Mark and I! Seventeen years strong. Hard to believe. Time flies, doesn’t it?

It took  too long for our little family to be, but here we are! I can’t imagine life without our little munchkin.

For my birthday dinner this year, we went out with the family to Miller’s. The food was good, but boy, it was quite a disaster, service-wise. It is worth noting that, despite that, Sam was so remarkably well behaved. She just colored, and played, and talked to us without asking to play on my phone or anything. She must be growing up. She did bring her camera with her though, so taking some pictures amused her for a while.

When we got home, we had some time (not a lot) for the kids to hang out. Ryder always likes Sam’s toys. He serenaded us for a while on her piano/microphone.

At last, it’s cake time! The tired children perked right up for that.

Sam wanted to do most of the pictures. She even took a nice video of everyone singing happy birthday. I like this picture because you can see Sam taking photos.

Ryder and his babysitter. 😉 She follows him around and makes sure he doesn’t get into trouble every time they are together.

Finally I opened my presents. Sam took this picture of me in my new sweater.

It was a great birthday! Thanks everyone!

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pamelamyers | September 17, 2016

I was getting Sam ready for bed and as usual, she wasn’t cooperating. While I was waiting for her to get herself situated and undressed, I took my hair out of my clip so that I would be able to lay down with her when she was ready. We went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. When we were done I said, “Come on Sammy, pajamas.” She looked at my very weirdly and started going back to her room. I wondered why she was looking at me like that and she said, “It’s like your hair controls you…When your hair is down you are like [in a loud, yelly voice], ‘SAM! GET YOUR PAJAMAS ON NOW!’ and when your hair is down, you are like [in a quiet mellow voice], ‘Come on Sam, let’s get pajamas on!’ It’s like your hair controls you or something…”

The next night I started getting snippy again because she was AGAIN stalling about pajamas and she said, “Can you take your ponytail out so it stops controlling you?”

I really think she believes it.

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pamelamyers | September 16, 2016

Happy birthday to me! Although it was a Thursday and none of us were home to celebrate, Samantha made sure that we celebrated sufficiently when I got home from work. She has been waiting very impatiently for my birthday to arrive, although, I’m not sure if it is because she wanted to wish me happy birthday, or because she knows her birthday comes soon after!

After school, Samantha set out to wrap my presents, apparently. I found some mystery photos on her camera. My skirt looks good on her, I think. 🙂

We were about to open presents when Penny decided to help. Um, Penny? We weren’t ready yet.

I didn’t really want much this year, but Sam found the perfect gift. She and Mark both have beach hats with strings that keep the hat from blowing off and my beach hat does not. She told Mark that they had to find a way to fix Mommy’s hat. They did!

A birthday hug from both my girls. 🙂 Zach wanted no part of our celebrations, unfortunately, despite how many times Sam tried to grab him.

This picture was one of my gifts. We had it taken while we were at the beach. I always wanted one of these because I thought Sam would look so cute, and she does!

She loved the idea of being a bandit and tying us up to steal all of our money.

After the presents were done, Sam wanted to take a picture of us. As always, she does a great job!

 

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pamelamyers | September 13, 2016

Mark has been wanting to teach Sam about computers since she seems so fascinated by them (as all kids do). It’s one thing to play on one, but to know how to make a computer work, now that is a skill. So, using something called Scratch, he started showing her a bit about programming. What is Scratch? Yeah, I had no idea either. Basically, it is a visual programming language developed by MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten group to help students aged 8-16 learn about programming. You can create animations, games, interactive stories, etc. on the computer. It is a stepping stone to more advanced computer programming.

Unsurprisingly, Sam loved it! Here they are working happily away. We are hopeful that by using things like Scratch sometimes instead of just playing mindless games, it will give her a leg up educationally. And she has fun. That is important too, obviously. A  little STEM work disguised as fun is a good thing. 🙂

A few days later, my mom brought over her old computer so that we could take the hard drive out before discarding the shell. Mark thought it would be a good learning experience. Sam was thrilled to learn about motherboards, a CPU, a heat sync and the power supply. She actually had quite a few of the parts down pat by the time they were done!

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