Moving time!

Hey ya'll! I'm fixin' to get myself back to Oklahoma! Tomorrow the movers come to pack up our things from my parent's house...and in about three weeks I will be flying back to Oklahoma! This is going to be a challenging move because my things are mixed up with my mom's things and my sister's old things....so I will really have to keep an eye on the packers. I spent today trying to get things organized and easy for the packers, but they still might manage to get my mom's vaccuum or quilt, etc., if I'm not careful.

I haven't written any posts in awhile, I guess I've just been letting Sammie's silly videos speak for themselves. She is doing something different and new everyday. For example, carrying the potty into the kitchen to play with after breakfast. That's pretty new. It was clean though, she has never actually done anything in the potty. Buying it was the first step, now maybe when our lives settle down after the move I'll start on the second step, which is getting her to use it. Over Thanksgiving Sammie started shooting rapid fire "mamma's" out at me non stop, so I had to get a few of them on video for Jim to hear. She would say it sporadically before, but over Thanksgiving weekend was when she finally got the hang of it. Now she won't stop! But it is really sweet and I'm trying to enjoy her wanting me all the time. I should just give up getting anything done while she's awake until she's in school. Actually, I did get a few major things accomplished recently. I finished our family photo album from our last two years in Germany, and I finished Sammie's baby album up to one year old. Yea! I feel such a sense of accomplishment. Ok, back to the things Sammie has been learning...the most recent thing is Ho Ho Ho, and as you can see from the last video she can fake burp on command. It's pretty hilarious right now, but I'm not sure how long that will last! It started with her doing a real burp, and then my mom imitated her and said "you burped!" and well, the rest is history. Now she can burp. I'm sure it makes Jim proud. Speaking of Jim, his replacements show up toward the end of the month, and then he will be working his way home! Can't wait!

Sammie's latest talents

Playing on the potty in the kitchen

Dancing to the fridge toy. Shake that thing!

Sammie says mama

November Things...

Because Jim's brother, Dustin, is deploying to Iraq in a few weeks, we had our Starling family Christmas over the Thanksgiving holiday. Here is a family photo of us, including Dustin's girlfriend, Shelley.



Grandpa Starling and Sammie enjoy some time on the swing before opening presents.


This is how Sammie likes to eat her suckers. Not that she has that many of them. This was her second one, ever. She does this with her toothbrush too. She watches herself brush her teeth and then cracks herself up in the mirror when she puts the toothbrush in sideways like that. Crazy kid.

Sammie and Meg enjoy a ride in the wagon.


Leigh and her sweet son, Liam.

A few weekends ago, some friends of ours from the FA Career Course at Ft.Sill came to visit Sammie and I in Modesto! Fun! Its always nice to have military friends to talk to since I don't really have any out here. They are currently at NPS in Monterey so they had a short drive to get to Modesto. Here is a picture...Eric and Leigh Gust, with their kids Meg and Liam. And of course, there I am with Sammie. We had a fun time. Meg loved playing with Sammie and Sammie loved looking at Liam and signing "baby" over and over again. I took them to our favorite mexican restaurant in town, a family owned place called Familia Juarez. My mom was holding Sam so I could eat, but she ended up kicking her foot up on the table (Sam, not mom) and hooking a plate of enchiladas and rice and beans with her toe, and tipped it all onto my mom's lap and then onto the floor. Poor mom! She handled it very gracefully. Later in the day I took Eric and Leigh on a short tour of Modesto and took them by the infamous home of Scott and Laci Peterson. Not a great thing for Motown to be known for, but hey, now they can say they saw it. Although Leigh said it looked different from the pictures and she didn't believe me that I showed her the right house! Oh Leigh. Then I took them to the Yogurt Mill which is the best frozen yogurt in America. I thought every town had frozen yogurt like the Yogurt Mill, but alas, they don't. I eat as much of it as I can when I'm in Modesto because I haven't found anything like it anywhere else. It's a definite must for the Modesto tourist.

Thanksgiving in Afghanistan

Jim and some of the guys on his FOB decided to have a Thanksgiving Day Parade and they made a turkey float to drive around the base. A couple guys even sat on lawnchairs on the float to wave and throw waterballoons at everyone as they drove by. This must be a new Thanksgiving tradition that I didn't know about...waterballoons on Thanksgiving. But hey, I guess they needed to make the holiday fun since they were away from their families! To round out the parade, a few guys followed on some motorcycles. They said the whole thing was hilarious and I'm sure it was! I'm glad that they were able to celebrate Thanksgiving even while they were so far away from home. Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving!

Fun Times!

Last weekend I went down to the LA area to visit with my college roomies. My actual roommate, Kirsti, and I drove down from Northern California and met up with Katie, Cass, Whitney, and Michelle. We hung out around Third Street in Santa Monica, went to the farmer's market, and walked along the beach. Then we spent the rest of our time visiting and talking and discussing our lives now that we are married or in serious relationships. We sat in Whitney's living room from about 3:30 in the afternoon until midnight just yaking it up...it was great! We had every intention to go to a movie or at least to go rent a movie, but we never made it. We just got to sit and veg and eat and talk. My parents were down in the area visiting as well (with my brother, sister and law, and their baby, Norah, and my sister) and my parents took Sammie for all of Saturday evening and night. I haven't had such a relaxing break from mommyhood ever! Michelle is my only other college friend from our group that has a baby so it was neat to chat with her about parenthood and baby stuff. You can see her and her super cute son, Tommy, in the photo. Unfortunately I didn't get a group picture of all of us, so I guess you'll just have to believe me that they were there! It was a great time to catch up with my girls. :)

It seems to be a tradition that when Jim is deployed, I buy furniture. When he was deployed to Iraq we lived in Germany and I couldn't stand the hard, Euro furniture that our landlords left for us to use in our house. So, I marched myself to IKEA to find a comfy armchair. Well, now is the time for some grown up furniture. Ever since we moved back to the states, land of comfortable furniture, we have been planning to buy nice couches and/or armchairs for the living room. For some reason, this didn't happen while Jim was home. Our next plan was to buy new stuff when he came home from this second deployment, after we had saved up a lot of deployment money. This was a good goal, but I couldn't wait until Jim came home to buy things. I'm sitting here in California in my parents' house, watching HGTV and twiddling my thumbs and thinking about all the stuff I want to buy and/or do to my home in Oklahoma. I decided to pick out and buy our living room furniture out here in California, because the army will be moving me back to Oklahoma anyway. Whether or not this was a good decision, I don't know, but it gave me something to research and shop for and think about, and that made some of the time apart go faster. Now my parents' living room looks like a new and used furniture store. It's a mishmash of my mom's old couches, a coffee table and a piano, and my new couch, recliner, and cool hi-legged recliner chair thing. This hi-legged recliner is the one in the picture and it was my spontaneous purchase. It is also my favorite purchase! I'm sure it doesn't look like much in the picture, but it is super comfortable and it reclines and it has a unique look to it. Anyway, I'm excited, so I thought I'd share it with everyone! Don't worry, Jim gave me the go ahead to go shopping, and I came in under our alloted new furniture budget. I can't wait to have it all set up in my own living room!

After Sammie had one sucker for Halloween she used her sugar high to spin herself dizzy!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Do you like my pumpkin head man? I found this cute pumpkin holder at a craft fair a few weeks ago. I think it is so cute! And look, Sammie is even holding his hand! Well, as you can see from the pictures, Sammie was a monkey for Halloween. My mom even sewed on some pink ribbons so that she would look like a girl monkey! We had a busy October 31st. First we got dressed up and went to story time with some friends and their kids. On the left is Sammie, then next is Cali (she's a dragonfly), then Ava as Dorothy, and Noah as the Scarecrow. Story Time was crowded but fun! It was cute to see all the kids dressed up. There was one boy dressed as spiderman and he had the tight mask on and everything. Sammie walked right up to him and leaned in close and just stared...finally the kid got annoyed and took his mask off so Sammie would stop staring at him! We also went to the in-laws to visit and saw some of their neighbors. Then back to my house where we went to our neighbor's homes too. Not really trick or treating, but more of me just wanting to show off my cute kid! Ani came along too all dressed up as a pumpkin and the neighborhood kids loved that. Ani even got her own goody bag from one of our dog lovin neighbors!



I love her cute padded tummy in this costume! I liked the side view!



Thanks to those of you who posted comments when I asked earlier! I was just interested to see who was out there reading!

California Fires

Unless you've had your head stuck in a hole, you have heard about the California fires. They started on Sunday morning in Malibu. I went to school at Pepperdine, a lot of you know, and the fires were on all sides of campus. Malibu Pres is a well known church just across Malibu Canyon Road from Pepperdine and a lot of students worship there, and it burned completely. My sister in law was on her way to drive through Malibu Canyon to sing with the worship team at Malibu Pres, only to be turned around because the road was closed. She didn't really know the seriousness of the situation until she went back home and watched her church burn on tv. My parents and I watched it here at home as well. A lot of my college friends were part of the Malibu Pres college group (as well as my brother and sister in law) and I'm sure they are saddened by the loss of the church building. Of course the church is the people not the building, but it is devastating all the same. The castle that they showed burning was one that was part of the Malibu hillside landscape. I never got to see it up close, but I saw it everytime I drove by on PCH. It was weird to see so many things burning that I knew from going to school in Malibu. We have some family friends who are professors on campus and they took these incredible pictures of the fires around Pepperdine. The first one is looking up the hill toward the new Drescher Graduate campus and you can see fires on the hill. The other three are taken from the Drescher Campus looking down over the rest of campus. The second picture is looking down over campus and over the ocean. The next two are looking out over campus in two different directions. Weird, weird, weird to see fire and smoke so close to my university. I have many friends that still live in the area, work at Pepperdine, or still go to school there! My sister is in her senior year at Pepp, but luckily she lives off campus and her home wasn't threatened. And she was in her home since it was a Sunday morning so she was safe. Still scary though. The campus was definitely being watched over by God because nothing was damaged on campus except for a few school shuttle buses (as far as I know anyway). No buildings were damaged or people injured. The campus was designed with fire protection in mind, and you can see that it worked! Sprinkler systems, water dense plants, structures built with tile roofs and other fire retardant materials. The emergency system that was set in place for times such as these, got all the faculty, staff, and students relocated from their homes and dorms, to the Fieldhouse, and the Cafeteria. Things went so smoothly that the media isn't even reporting how well it all went! I think the media loves disasters, especially at schools, where they can complain after the fact about all the things that went wrong. But everything went right at Pepperdine, so they don't even talk about what a success the school had in the middle of all the destruction in the area.


Needless to say I am glad that my friends and family down in the LA and Malibu area are safe, and that Pepperdine's campus was untouched. I am not trying to belittle the fact that so many homes and businesses have been destroyed, but I am trying to shed a little light on a story that the media is ignoring.

The Deployment Countdown Continues...

We finally have only three months left in Jim's deployment and both of us are ready for it to be over! It is very nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I know the holidays will help the time to go by fast for me, but I don't think they will be helping Jim's time. Sammie is learning something new everyday and I am always amazed. I can't wait until Jim is home so that he can get to know his little girl. She can say fish and tree and something that sounds like shoes. She can sign ball, baby, please, eat, drink, milk, mommy and daddy. Actually, she does a combo mommy and daddy sign with her thumb poking at her ear instead of her chin for mommy or her forhead for daddy. It's pretty cute. Sometimes she does the eat sign to her forhead instead of her mouth and it's hilarious. But then she corrects herself. I think her favorite sign is please. When she wants something I ask "what do you say?" and she rubs a little circle on her chest for please. It is so hard not to give in to her when she comes up to you with her sweet face while signing please! Usually it's food that she is asking for! But this morning she escaped my mom and knocked on the bathroom door as I was getting ready for a shower. I peeked out and said hello and then said, go find grandma!, and then I tried to shut the door. But then she gave me the most sad face and vigorously signed please on her chest and my heart melted, so I had to let her in the bathroom with me. This resulted in my mom almost having a heart attack because she couldn't find Sammie! I guess this story just goes to show that I'm a weakling and Sam gets whatever she wants. Hmm, I need to work on my resolve.

She also loves to meow and bark and quack along with other animal sounds that she is working on. Today she decided to help my mom with the laundry by putting unwashed clothes into the dryer. Later we went to story time at the library for the second time. The first time she stayed close to me and didn't want to get up to do the hand motions to the songs or participate at all. But today she was up and getting jiggy with her almost 14 month old self, and exploring the keys and purses of other moms, and checking out babies in their carseats and signing baby at them and then trying to touch them. So basically I was running around the entire story hour kiddie room trying to keep her from stealing keys and beating up babies while all the other moms got to sit on the floor with their kids who actually paid attention to the story time leader. Oh well. I guess she had fun being around the music and the other kids!




I took this picture at Apple Hill which is in the foothills east of Sacramento. It is a great area with over 40 family owned farms, vineyards, and apple orchards. It's a great place to spend a sunny fall afternoon. Sammie loved bouncing up and down on my dad's shoulders! We also went to IKEA in Sacramento and I was having flashbacks to my shopping days at IKEA in Germany. Always trying to decipher the tags and to calculate euros into dollars. Filling out VAT forms and eating Swedish chocolates and cookies all around the store. Etc., etc. Around every corner I could point out a piece of furniture that I own and I surprised myself on how much of the store I actually owned! And I was remembering what IKEA stuff my Germany friends had in their homes. Mostly I remember the Golby's entire living/dining room full of IKEA! Do you guys still have all of it? And the Spahr's leather IKEA sofa, I'm pretty sure I saw it in some of their latest photos. Anyway, enough rambling here. I miss all of my Germany friends! You know who you are!

Can't wait for this deployment to be over! I made packing arrangements today for my stuff to get packed and shipped back to Lawton in December. So that is a step in the right direction! If you read my blog please leave a comment, if you don't mind, so I know who is reading! Thanks! I'm just interested to know who is out there!

Fun pics

This is what happens when you do two ponytails with wet hair and then take them out at bed time! You get foofy hair! Sammie and Ani were playing on the deck yesterday and I thought this was a cute shot. :)

My little walker

Sammie shares some of her talents

More OK pictures

Here are a few action shots of Sammie having fun in our home. She loved climbing in her toddler rocker that Beth and Zeke gave her. In this picture she's drinking her milk and watching a Baby Einstein, and in the next picture she's on my bed with the remote control. I took a picture of her on my bed when she was a newborn, so I wanted to take another shot of her as a big kid!


Sammie and Tucker had a fun time at the pumpkin patch. Tucker was more interested in the dogs that were in their pens on the other side of the place than the actual pumpkin patch activities, but Sammie had a good time just toddling around and picking up warty gourds. She must be my daughter if she likes the warty gourds!

Our trip to Oklahoma

Sammie and I just returned from a trip to Lawton, Oklahoma to check on our house. We spent almost two weeks there and enjoyed our alone time together in our own home! We spent a lot of time with my friend, Robanne, and her son Tucker. Robanne's husband is deployed as well, and her husband will return in January about the same time as Jim. The kids enjoyed playing near each other, not quite with each other yet, and Robanne and I enjoyed time watching the Bachelor and Grey's Anatomy and chatting about Army drama and our lives as single moms. One afternoon we went to a pumpkin patch out in the country and got some cute shots of the kiddos. Oh, big news! Sammie started walking while we were in Lawton! I think that seeing Tucker run all over the place encouraged Sammie to attempt to do the same. She's not running yet, but she sure is toddling around! Anyway, that made it a little easier at the pumpkin patch since she didn't have to crawl around.

The latest cool thing

So I wanted to show everyone the neatest baby bike seat ever! It's called the i-Bert and it sits in front of you, instead of behind you. You can see how the legs slant forward so there is room for your knees while you are pedaling. Sammie doesn't like putting her helmet on, but after we start moving, she's totally happy. :) I think she loves having the wind in her hair! And I know she likes being up front where she can see everything that is going on around her. I'm looking forward to lots of family bike rides when Jim gets home, but I'm going to get as many mommy and Sammie rides in as I can while the weather is still nice!

Sam loves the bathtub. If we run out of things to do in the evening Sammie will spend extra time in the tub hanging out and playing. It's a great way to calm her down too, if she's been cranky. This worked especially well today because she has a cold and hasn't been feeling well. Poor baby! On Wednesday we will be flying to good ole Okielahoma to visit our house. I need to show my face around the neighborhood so the neighbors will know that I do in fact, still exist. I am looking forard to feeling like a grown up and being in my own house again! I just hope Sammie does ok on the plane with just me to hold her. She is such a busy body and a wiggle worm. Wish me luck!

Jim in Afghanistan

For anyone who doesn't know, Jim is deployed to Afghanistan right now and he will be returning in January. He has grown what is called an Afghanistache which I totally love. Ok, not really, but if Jim's happy, then I'm happy and he can shave it off when he comes home! I already had him shave it off for R&R! Jim's post is far away from direct supervision and so his team gets away with longish hair and non Army regulated mustaches. Jim has gotten to see John Childress in Kandahar a few times. I'm sure it's always good when he can see a friendly and familiar face. This picture was taken quite a while ago. I don't think they have seen each other recently. We are ready for Jim to come home!!

Dog Heaven

Dog Heaven, what more can I say? I basically planned our Santa Cruz trip around
wanting to take Ani to the beach. There was a dog beach really close by that was awesome. All the dogs were off leashes and were running around in and out of the water having fun and making new friends. All the people were really friendly and were "dog" friendly obviously. It was so nice to let Ani run around freely without worrying that she was going to bother someone. One time Ani ran out into the water to about chest deep while trying to get a tennis ball and she totally got taken out by an incoming wave! Poor Ani! I couldn't even see her for a few seconds, so it was kind of scary! But then she resurfaced and all was well. She wouldn't go near the waves after that!

Santa Cruz

I took Sammie and Ani to Santa Cruz for a few days to check out the beach. Sammie loves being outside so she really enjoyed walking on the sand and stepping in the water a bit. It was pretty windy outside so even though it was sunny, we didn't do the swim suit thing.

Life

Hey, this message is a shout out to my friend, Marie, who just passed the half way mark in John's deployment. Yea! Hang in there chica! Go to flatdaddies.com to get a flat daddy of John! I'm sure Anna will love it!

In Starling family life, we are going to Santa Cruz tomorrow for a few days. I'm excited to take my girls (Sammie and Ani) to the beach. It will be nice to get out of Modesto and do something fun! Jim seems to be doing ok in the Ghan, as Marie calls it. They just got their AFN satellite to work, so he is pretty happy. He is about 7 1/2 months into this deployment and he is ready for it to be over. Hopefully things will go quickly these next few months. I have a trip planned to Oklahoma as well as other fun fall actitivities to keep the time busy for myself. I just realized that I will be 27 when Jim comes home. Twentyseven!? How did I get here? Wasn't I just in college? Well, I'm not 27 yet, so I'm going to revel in my last three months of 26-ness.

I'm cool

All of a sudden Sammie has this new interest in her sun glasses. She wore them around all weekend and even kept them on in the pool! When she saw herself in the mirror she just loved it and couldn't stop smiling at herself. Sometimes she tries to put them on by herself, but she puts them around her neck, like a necklace, and they stay there while she crawls around for a bit. It's pretty funny.

Fun in the kitchen

Samantha's cousin, Norah, came up for the weekend to visit. The girls had fun playing in the kitchen together. They liked pulling out every single plastic sandwich bag from the box as well as emptying the kashi box of all its bars. What fun! Sammie does this funny thing with Norah, she likes to pet her on the head, like she does to Ani, our dog. She doesn't do it hard, but it makes Norah so mad! Her face screws up for a few seconds and then she lets a huge shriek out! I'm trying to teach Sammie to be gentle, but I think she is just so curious about having another little person around to play with!

Sammie likes to walk!

Sammie loves to walk and just last week she took her first few steps all by herself! She can't steer too well with her walker, but she loves to practice and she usually has a huge grin on her face as you can see from the picture! I'll be in trouble when she really starts walking! I know I'll never have a moments rest!

Lots of Grandparents!

Samantha is officially 1 year old!

I'm sure all moms say it, but I really can't believe that an entire year has passed since Sammie was born! We had a fun day...we took some pictures outside in the front yard with her Birthday Girl shirt on. We also went to the park and swung on the swings. Sammie also tried her first bite of sand and then went back for another. Strange girl. We had cake and ice cream to celebrate and had the Starling grandparents over, as well as Sammie's great grandpa and grandma Wood, and great grandma Cherry, along with cousin David. It was fun watching Sammie open presents and do silly things for the crowd of people staring at her. She sure loved the chocolate cake! Also today I noticed that she just cut her 7th tooth! This probably explains her fussiness and crankiness over the past few days!

Crawling over Ani

Dancing Sammie!

Family visits

My brother, Lucas, and his wife, Diana, and their daughter, Norah, along with my sister, Erin, came up to Modesto from the LA area to visit this past weekend. I was so focused on taking pictures of the babies, that I forgot to get pictures of the rest of them! Sorry guys!

Almost 1 year old!

Samantha's 1st birthday is on Monday and I can hardly believe it! I doesn't feel like a year has gone by since I was 9 months pregnant. The time while Jim has been gone is bittersweet. I want the time to pass quickly so that he will be home again, but at the same time, I don't want Sammie to grow up too fast! I want to enjoy her as a baby because it won't last long. She loves to walk around holding onto my hands, but she hasn't yet taken a step on her own. Shouldn't be too long now. She can sign "milk" and just over the past few days she has started signing "more" and "drink"! It is so cute! I have been trying to teach her those last two for a while now, but I wasn't as consistent as I could be, so I am very excited to see that she is learning to sign anyway. She can make dog and cat sounds, and yesterday she was looking at a kitty cat book that my aunt Peggy and cousins Jonell and David gave to her and was meowing all by herself! Ok, enough rambles from mommy land. I'm sure new pictures will be up soon of the birthday party!

Sam stuff

Samantha is getting two more top teeth! It has caused some cranky days. She loves to spin herself in her exersaucer which you can see in the video, it's pretty funny! I think she's an ambi-turner because she can only turn to the left. Hehe. She loves to walk while holding onto someone's hands and she has started making animal noises...she can do a dog and a cat, it's pretty cute!

A few videos of Sammie

Photobucket Album

I gave in, now I'm a blogger too!

Yes, it's true, I am officially a nerd. Sorry to those of you who already have blogs, I guess I just called you nerds. :) But you know I love you! I guess I kinda thought a blog was nerdy. Until I realized how cool it would be to post videos on my blog so that Jim could see Samantha grow up and do big girl things. So, here it is....the Super Star News! I'm going to give this blog thing a chance. I hope it doesn't let me down..... :)