This Girl

With all of the Ollie Poodle-ness in the house this year, this girl has not gotten her due face time.  Having a puppy only emphasizes what a sweet dog Mona is.  Ollie does very little to earn his keep apart from looking cute.  Mona works hard defending our house from potential attackers....deer, dogs,  raccoons, moles, squirrels, rabbits, even the UPS/Fed-Ex man and the USPS man.  And then, she sleeps.  It's tough being Mona.  On top of that she has to deal with her little brother, Ollie, who adores her and bites her ears to initiate play.

If you get Mona in the right spot and rub her just right, she will relax and go fast to sleep.

It always makes me so happy that she has a good home knowing she was picked up on the highway as a nursing momma with no babies around.  Who knows what happened and how she was scared.  

Now, she has a good home and a spoiled lifestyle.  She's a very sweet girl.  We love her so much.

The Sampler Family Pics 2016

My sweet friend takes our pictures every year and this year, the colors were so pretty!  She did a great job.  The funny part is setting the stage for these pictures.

The night before, JBS was playing football on the sidelines of JLS' flag football game when he fell and hurt his arm.  At first, I thought he was being dramatic.  But when his pain didn't go away, I suggested we go to the ER.  He insisted on waiting until the morning.  Well, we had pictures at 8am and they had been scheduled for months!  So, we went straight from pictures in two directions.  Babe took JLS and WHS to JLS' football game and JBS and I to the ER for the day...2 broken bones.  Thus, his prosthetic looking arm in the picture.  It was broken.

And then there is WHS.  He came home from school the previous Friday and his two front teeth had been knocked out when his mouth collided with someone's head in freeze tag.  However, one of the teeth was dangling by a thread and we could not get it to come out.  So, every time WHS spoke, his breath blew his tooth forward from his lip.  Of course, it fell out the next day.

This is how the Samplers roll.  It's the story of us and to not have an issue would not be us.

Merry Christmas to all!

My People

I love love love my job.  I drive about 45 minutes against traffic and its the most peaceful 45 minutes of my day where I listen to audible, KSBJ or go in silence.  Then I arrive to a really fun bunch of therapists in a really small space that I love to work with.

Going to miss these guys when we move!

Little Bit Becomes a Wolf

It is so much fun to watch WHS as he excels thru the things he has watched his big brothers do.  Because for him, it has been a lifetime of waiting to do all the things they do.  From the moment he started as a Cub Scout, he has been asking when he gets his Tiger Badge for his uniform.  And he finally received it!

This little guy brings so much laughter and joy to our lives.  So proud!

Flag Football Beasts

This sweet little team was a team of athletes.  It was the best team we have ever played for as we had NO practices.  Most of the boys played another sport, so this was for fun and grins.  They showed up to their games and amazingly went undefeated for the season.

Until....the final game.  We are not choosing to be poor sports, but there were several very pivotal and  poor calls that even the other coach couldn't believe.  So, we lost the championship game.  In a funny twist, the printer of the shirts made a mistake and our boys got "Champions" T-shirts as well.  Which was quite appropriate considering the potentially different outcome of the game with a different referee.

I would still say they played pretty darn well considering they never practiced!