happy birthday to me!

as trevor mentioned, today is my real, actual birthday. november 26. i am four, and next year, i will be five, then six, then seven, then eight... you get the picture. and eventually, i will be 19, and that is old.

i got transformers and transformer underwear and spiderman underwear and skittles for my birthday, this morning.


then, this afternoon we went to chuck e. cheese!



we rode rides and played games and danced. it is a pretty fun place. i got a birthday crown, because i am the king!

then we went and got a christmas tree at hobby lobby! we will decorate soon. i will keep you posted!

birthdays, take two!

over the weekend, we went to oklahoma to see my grandma and pappy and nany and great grandma and great uncle and uncle and aunt and 5 cousins. it was a house-full, and we all had a great time. even the cousin who vomited. as you can see, it is a bit difficult to get a good picture of the seven of us.

elisabeth and i celebrated our birthdays again, and we got a lot of neat presents. i got a transformers outfit and a transformers computer thingie, and some hotwheels, and a sit-n-spin. and mom made my cake out of dirt. she told me later it was actually oreos. if she had told me that at the beginning i might have actually eaten some of it the first time around. you can see here that i wasn't very excited about eating a dirt cake.

it was pappy's birthday too, and he had about a million candles. we had to help him blow them all out. we got him a deal or no deal game for the tv, and i won more money than anyone.

turkey and cake

today we drove down to see my grandma and papa and uncle chris for thanksgiving.

since i was born so close to thanksgiving (i was born the day before, in '03), we always celebrate my birthday when we do thanksgiving. and now that my sister's birthday is also so close to thanksgiving, we celebrate both of ours this day. first we eat gigantic plates full of turkey and other things, and we take naps, and then we eat cake!

i made the rolls for thanksgiving dinner this year, and they tasted really good. everyone said so. it is a tradition now, since i helped make them last year too.

i got a lot of neat presents, including a rocking chair and a remote control car and a finding nemo alarm clock. mom and dad said the clock went off in the trunk for about the last 5 minutes of our trip home, but i did not hear it. i was asleep. this might make us all question the usefulness of the alarm clock later on, when i actually have things i will need to wake up for at certain times. but! it is still really cool.

our cakes were really cookies. elisabeth had hearts with circles. i had a dinosaur! we had candles with our numbers on them, and when you put the cakes next to each other, it said we are 14.

elisabeth and i also got some balloons, but we accidentally let betty's escape on our way out to the car. i hate when that happens. i cried and cried. i cried so much, it felt like " a circle of blood was coming over my eyes." mom and dad explained that that is a sinusy headache that you get when you cry too much.

monsters!

mom and amber made this box for me with little monsters in it. my picture is in there with them, and they are yelling my name!

it is for me, and it is really good! that is how i feel about it, anyway.

snakes and other fun things.

so the other day i was watching this movie with my friend Jess. she is the one who likes dinosaurs. anyway, in the movie, a guy cut a snake's head off, and there was blood coming out. and Jess was really scared. she did not want to watch it because it was super gross! you should never cut a snake's head off. it will grow back, and he will bite you. mom laughed when i told her that, but she better be careful.

my dad finally got back from all his trips, and i am glad he is back. it is more fun around here when he is here too. mom had a headache and so i had to be quiet all the time. he brought me a really super cool matchbox bus with mickey mouse on it! and some cookies shaped like mickey and donald and goofy's heads. i shared them with my sister. dad said he did not actually go to disney world, just to orlando, because he would never go to disney world without me.

also i went to my cousins' house while my dad was in dallas, before he went to orlando. they are fun! i get to ride the four wheelers. i did not even crash into a tree this time.

also i got my hair cut, and mom said it makes me look old. i am not old, i am just three. nineteen is old.

everyone loves my stories lately!

here is an example.

this is a story about a cat named "your own poop."

your own poop did all kinds of things. he danced around. he ate stuff. he howled at the moon.

one day he met a super big gigantic cat named "buttocks."

buttocks looked like he might be a parent.

you know why?

because he pooped!

who is the tooth fairy?

so, halloween was on wednesday, and then the next day i went to the dentist. do not worry, kids, the candy did not rot my tooth overnight. this has been happening for a long time.

a while ago, my tooth chipped. and then it was hurting a lot. so mom took me to see dr. ward, and he said that a cavity made my tooth chip like that. and we made an appointment to come back in december and get a filling. but last week it really started hurting, and mom called, and they got me in to see dr. ward again, and he said that he would have to pull the tooth out. the weird thing is that all the other teeth look just fine. just that front one was rotting and yucky, so there must have been something wrong with it when it came in.

they made me eat some weird medicine and then gave me a "spongebob nose" to wear while dr. ward looked at my mouth. before i knew it, it was all over, and they said i did a super good job.

i got to leave the tooth in a little box for the tooth fairy. she came while i was taking my nap and left me a little bag with some coins in it, including a half dollar (my favorite) and a mexican coin! and also a letter with her picture on it. i think she is actually the lady at dr. ward's office.

halloween

the other day was halloween! i wanted to be batman, and so i was batman. i almost wanted to be a power ranger or a ninja turtle or a skeleton, but then i decided batman. my friend zane was batman also! but he looked different. durko said zane looked like movie era batman, and i looked like golden era batman.

anyway, on halloween this year, we went to church and got candy out of people's cars. that was pretty fun. i went around twice! i got a whole entire pumpkin bag full of candy, and it was really heavy. i still have a lot of it, because my mom and dad will not let me eat it all.

dad dressed up like cakey, and elisabeth dressed up like daddy. mom did not dress up, but she wore a weird hat.

copster lost his body.

so. if you will remember, i got three fish last year, in the summer. i named them nemo, and packter, and copster. i never told you all this, but nemo and packter did not live very long, and they went to be with Jesus. but copster just kept living and living and living. even after he started being mostly upside-down, he still lived for a long, long time. i think he spent the last 6 months upside down. we kept thinking something was wrong with him, but he kept on living.

yesterday morning, my dad came and said, "sam, i need to show you something, and you might be a little sad." he brought me into the living room and showed me copster, upside-down at the top, instead of on the bottom under the shark or a plant, like usual. he told me that copster went to heaven like packter and nemo did. i asked dad if that meant he lost his body, and he said yes. i told mommy when she got home that copster's eyes died. like optimus prime.

so we buried him, by flushing him down the toilet that takes him all the way out into the ocean and then up in the sky to heaven. daddy kept asking me if i was sad, and i was. but now i am really only a little bit sad, because heaven sounds like a good place.

pain

so i got a splinter in my hand, playing outside with my pappy. that is a picture of my bandaids from the splinter.

then i went home from grandma and pappy's house, and i got a big old canker sore in my mouth.

i am an ouchie-magnet lately. i try to be brave, but it hurts to eat with a giant sore on my lip. i prayed that God would make it better. he is, but i guess he takes a little while sometimes, to heal things up.

speaking of God, i told mom that he was angry at her for calling some lady an idiot in the parking lot at wal mart. the lady did not hear us, as she was in a different car. but God did. and he was angry. but she told him she was sorry, and he forgave her. God is nice like that.

on a more serious note, i have also been praying for my cousin daniel. he has something wrong in his belly. we do not know what for sure, yet, but we will hopefully find out soon. he is 3 like me.

we have been busy.

so we are still unpacking and decorating our new house, so it looks more like our house and less like just any old house. my room has pac man stuff all over the place, and also my name above my door. and a glowy frog head night light thing. and some dinosaurs that jess really liked. and lots of other very cool stuff. today a bunch of friends came over after church, and i got to show them my room and my yard. don and i sat together and played world of warcraft. amber and i rocked out some on the drums, and it was a good time.


it is not all play, though. we had to get ready for people to come over, and i have been helping a lot. britney and i put our chairs together for the new table. i got to use an allen wrench and a power drill. i am pretty good at that. later, my sister and i were installing some quarter round under the desk.

FIRE IN THE HOLE!

so i thought i would show you all some pictures from when we went to silver dollar city last week.

i was super duper brave and decided to ride fire in the hole. it has three really big hills that you go down, and on the last one, they yell, "Fire in the Hole!" my plan was to be a power ranger with super powers, so that it would not be scary, but once we got on the ride, i kind of forgot and tried to crawl into my dad's armpit. i guess the ride took my power away, but then i got it back later! there is a picture of me in front of the fire in the hole sign, pretending to be scared. i am tall enough to ride it by myself, but i kind of doubt i will do that for a while.

i also rode the ladybugs and the butterflies and the elephants, and if you will notice on the butterfly picture, i like to make my butterfly go as high in the air as possible. on the flooded mine, i got lots more points on the targets than mom, because she said she is not a very good shot. but my dad always beats all of us.

that brown thing is a corn dog.

the place was decorated like fall, with pumpkins and stuff. oh, and i got to pet a mule! he moved and made my finger touch his eyeball, which i thought was pretty funny.

too big...

for this little sink. we were in branson at our motel a few days ago. dad was taking a shower, and we needed baths too, but check-out time was coming up. so instead of waiting for dad to finish, we got sink baths! these are funner than your average bath. but not quite as comfortable. mom said i used to be able to fit in a sink like this. it is hard to even imagine being that little.

my sister fits, but i do not.

new bed!

so lots of stuff has happened since i last updated you. we have all been very busy lately, and also sick. i threw up the other night and had a fever for a couple days, and a yucky throat. last night i woke up crying, and dad said that is when my fever broke. this morning i felt pretty great!

these are pictures of me with my new bed. i think it is pretty cool, to match my cool new room! mom and britney spent 87 hours putting it together for me, and also unpacking the rest of my toys and stuff.

also, it is a captain's bed. this makes me -you guessed it- The Captain.

newer becomes new

so now we are officially moved into our newer house. "new house" is now "old house." and "newer house" is now "new house." i know it is all very confusing. maybe not as confusing as trying to walk around the place, though. there are boxes everywhere, and we all slept on living room floor last night. that was kinda fun, though. the floor is hard and makes a good sound when you stomp on it. mom loves that, because she has a headache.

oh! something else that makes good noise is my drum kit! my friends from church gave it to me a long time ago, but there was no room for it before. but now that i have my room all to myself (once the boxes clear out a little), there is room for my drums. yay!




dad and elisabeth put them together as a surprise for me, while i was visiting my cousins for a few days in oklahoma. their house was really super fun as usual, but the second night i woke up and thought i was lost.

as you can see, my room is fun colors, thanks to grandma and papa, and i have a plant!

newer house

so yesterday, in the morning, we went to this office with chairs that mom kept telling me not to draw on or jump on or put my shoes on at all. mom and dad signed about 130 million papers, and then they told me we just bought newer house!

i have warmed up to the idea a little bit. i am dealing with it now by saying that i hate new house, and that i like newer house.

anyhow, after we signed all those papers, we went to red robin to celebrate. here i am trying to figure out how my dad can disconnect the top of his finger the way he does. it is magic, i guess.

then we drove down to newer house to make sure the keys they gave us were not decoys and to take some pictures. we crawled around on the floor, then we took a pretend nap on the floor, since there are no beds there yet. dad said the whole experience had made him tired. then we posed in front of the door for about 35 pictures. apparently it is a big deal.

my friends

i have a new friend named "jeff." i know my dad's name is jeff, but this is another jeff. he is my aunt michelle's jeff. they came to visit this week, and we had a super good time. we went to devil's den and ate a picnic with a thousand flies. i threw up after lunch, but then i was okay. mom said it was because of the heat, but i said it was because she made me eat too much sandwich. but who knows. we played on the seesaw, and we walked in the creek and threw rocks and saw a deer.

here is me and my buddy jeff on the seesaw. we decided only boys can be buddies. girls are just girls.) i am not powerful enough to lift him up, so he had to kinda jump a little bit to get himself off the ground. i think i might be powerful when i am 34.

and here is a picture from later when they came to our house, and i read my charlie brown book to them. they said i was "amazing," but i did not even write that book, i only read it.

they brought me a cool optimus prime and a slip and slide, and then they had to go back to maine, which is apparently really really really really really far away. oh! speaking of maine, they also got me this cool as a moose maine shirt. here i was being a super bad monster, wearing the shirt on my head, but after i put it on normal, mom took me to the bathroom to show me how the moose glows in the dark! very cool.

playing in the rain

it has been way too hot lately. so when it finally rained, mom said we should go outside and celebrate!

here are some pictures of elisabeth and me splashing around in the puddles outside.

my favorite part was the stomping, because it made the water fly way up in the air!

i love my mom.

this is what i just told her, so she would know just how much:

i love you even more than the shark loves his tail.

i love you even more than the hand loves his butt.

the best kind of milk

is milk with ice in it. my pappy taught me that.

well, do you??

so the other day we went to the library. it was exciting. i could not calm down, because i love the library.

first we went for baby bookworms, where my sister and a bunch of her friends and acquaintances hang out and sing little songs together, and/or just stare at each other a lot and look confused or mildly amused.

i did not want to sit still through baby bookworms. so mom said if i did not calm down, i would not be able to stay for my preschool reading time.

these are things that i learned are not the same thing as calming down:
1. pulling on elisabeth's arms so she could not do the little hand motions
2. laying on mom so she could not lift up elisabeth for the popcorn song
3. rolling around in the middle of the circle in front of the babies
4. knocking down ivy
5. whining and pouting loudly about not getting to play with puzzles

to make a long story short, we did not stick around for reading time. AND mom said i could not even pick out any books. everyone knows how i love to read, so this was a bad punishment. i guess i convinced her that reading was never a bad thing, and it was not a good punishment to make me not read. so she let me pick out one book.

i picked out this one.

mom laughed and then scowled and said i am too smart for my own good.