God Bless Texas

In a few short hours I will be in the motherland!! TEXAS here I come!!

I am headed to Dallas tonight and then Staci and I will drive to Abilene in the morning. We will spend the weekend at our Alma Mater home of the McMurry War Hawks (our new mascot) for a weekend of reminiscing and fun!!

I will post more about our trip next when I return but I leave you with this...

Abilene, Abilene, prettiest town I've ever seen. Women there don't treat you mean, in Abilene!!

King and Queen of Country

My Dear Husband did what any man would do when he heard that George Strait and Reba were headed to the area. He bought his country loving wife tickets to the show!! Let me tell you, it was the best concert I think I have ever seen! I never thought I would ever get to see them individually let alone together. It was a dream come true!

The concert was in Louisville on Saturday night. We left Lexington around 5 pm and got to Louisville where we ate dinner at California Pizza Kitchen (yum). Then we headed downtown to the brand new KFC Yum! Center home to the Louisville Cardinals (Boo). The building is state-of-the-art and it's beautiful.

Here we are headed into the concert

Leann Womack opened the show, we got there just in time to hear her sing "I Hope You Dance" and one or two more. I don't really care all that much about her music, but everyone knows that song.

It was just a short while later that Reba graced us with her presence and man can that woman perform!! I'm pretty sure she sang almost all of her 35 #1 hits, or at least it seemed that way. She put on a full concert and totally lived up to all the hype I've heard about how amazing her concerts are. My one wish that didn't come true is I wanted George to come out and sing, "If You See Him/If You See Her" with Reba that she originally did with Brooks and Dunn in 1998, but no such luck :( However, Leann came back out to sing, "Does He Love You" that Reba did with Linda Davis in 1993 and it was pretty awesome!! And of course Reba's encore was Fancy where she came out in a red dress and brought the house down!

Reba and Leann "Does He Love You"

During the break between Reba and George we got to see a piece of Kentucky's finest nearly battle it out over a little spilt beer. The F-bomb was flying all over the place, but peace was resorted and The King of Country was up next!!

One fine looking man!!!

I mean can anyone argue with the above statement that George Strait is a gorgeous human being?!?! Even if he is almost 60 years old, he has still got the good looks that he was blessed with. And he was not a disappointment on Saturday when he came out in his Wranglers, button down shirt and black cowboy hat...mmmm!!! George sang just about every song I could think of. If you don't know he has 57 #1 hits!!! So I don't think he sang all of them, but he picked all the good ones. I got extremely excited when he said, "We've had a lot of number one hits because of my wonderful fans, this isn't one of them, but it's still my favorite." When Amarillo By Morning started and the crowed when nuts I had to lean over to the stranger next to me and tell her that I am from there!! She probably thought I was crazy! I know my husband looked at me like I crazy at the point :)

George sang for almost 2 hours! We got home around 1:30 am extremely exhausted, but it was totally worth it!

Thank you Aaron for a night I will never forget, I love you!

Upward Basketball

About 3 months ago I volunteered to be the head coach for an Upward Basketball team. At first I was nervous about being the head coach, becasue I wasn't confident that I knew enough about basketball to be the head coach. Nonetheless I was assigned to be the head coach of a Kindergarten team and we were going to be called the Hilltoppers (after Western Kentucky University).

We had one practice in December before the holidays and then our season was in full swing after the new year. We had two more practices before our first game on January 15th. The season was eight games long and luckily we didn't have to cancel any of our games due to bad weather!

I had five kindergarten boys on my team who ranged from no basketball experience to one boy who plays basketball everyday and is quite good (watch out he might just be playing for UK one day!)

We had practice every Monday with another kindergarten team. It was fun to practice with another team, because that meant we had 4 coaches (more help!) and got to know 10 kids.

This past Saturday was our last game and I have to say that I am sad to see the season end. Mid-way through the season I was counting down the games until it was all over. But now that it truly is over and I will not see the boys on my team anymore I am sad that the eight weeks went by so quickly!

Our game on Saturday was the best game we had all season. It was so cool to see how far the players have come. They all scored!! And they started passing the ball to each other when they were being double teamed. Upward doesn't keep score on the kindergarten teams, but if they did I am positive we would have gone undefeated!!

So here is my shout out to the Hilltoppers (McKean, Anderson, Clay, Landon and Chase) for their excellent season! And I hope that we are able to see each other soon!

2.21.09

So you might be asking yourself what the significance of the date in the title is? Well that my friends is the date that I met Aaron for the first time in St. Louis, MO. We were both so nervous the first time we met, but who wouldn't be. I remember, we met at the hotel to leave one car. Then we started trying to navigate around this foreign city. I knew right then and there driving around this city that I was going to marry him! I just knew that if we could work together to find our way around that we could get through anything in life together. And from that day on we have been together. Not always physically together, but together in heart.


Yesterday was our 2 year anniversary and we spent the weekend in Gatlinburg, TN. It was so nice to have a weekend away to just be with each other and have nothing do to. We ate at some great restaurants, did a little shopping and of course took in all the sights that Gatlinburg has to offer (if you've never been just imagine Branson on steroids!!). It was great to reminisce on our first trip together meeting in St. Louis. Here we are at the top of the arch. This is the first thing we did after we met!



We have now been married almost 7 months and it is amazing to think how far we have come. Every time I think there is no way I could love Aaron any more than I do right now, he does something to make my love grow even stronger. I know this is going to sound cheesy, but the Brad Paisley song truly says it...I thought I loved you then!

I love you Aaron Samson, you're the best thing that ever happened to me!!

From this moment...
E

C-A-T-S! Cats, Cats, Cats

In November I was fortunate enough to score some extremely cheap lower arena tickets to the UK vs. Tennessee basketball game. Once I got the tickets I decided to make the tickets Aaron's Christmas present. I had the tickets for almost a month before he got them and let me tell you keeping them a secret was really hard! I am not very good at keeping secrets...I love to share good news! So here is Aaron on Christmas morning after he opened his tickets. He was very surprised!!

So last week it was finally time for the game. Oh I forgot to mention this was going to be my first experience attending a UK game. For those of you who don't know anything about sports or basketball. Kentucky basketball is like football to Texans! Kentucky fans love their Wildcats especially when they are winning. When UK lost to West Virgina last year in the NCAA tournament you would have thought someone had died. The next day at church everyone was walking around with their sad faces on!! Needless to say UK basketball is a BIG deal and this was going to be a first for me! I was excited!! Here we are before the game started. I am sporting my blue with a UK face tattoo!

The atmosphere at the game is electric and contagious. I had no affiliation to UK until I met Aaron, but let me tell you, it is easy to get wrapped up in all the excitement of basketball! I cheered when Josh Harrelson dunked on a Tennessee guys face and yelled when the refs made a horrible call. I think my favorite thing about being at the game was all of the things that go on that you don't see on TV. From the cheerleaders and dance team to the reporters on the court there is so much to see during time outs. We had a special treat for this game! In the second half during a time out the cheerleaders spell out Kentucky with their bodies on the floor. They always have someone special come out and be the "Y". At this particular game John Wall (famous Cat from last year who was picked #1 by the Washington Wizards) was in attendance and he was the "Y". The crowd when wild when he came out as the "Y". It was pretty awesome!!

If any of you are following the Cats this season you will know that they are not having the greatest season. The are 1-5 on the road in SEC games. They play really well at home which was great for us to be in attendance at this game. UK dominated Tennessee and came away with a big "W". I must say that my first experience at a UK game was a great one!! Go CATS!!!

West Virginia

Aaron and I headed up to West Virginia to have Christmas with Aaron's parents on Friday after Aaron got home from work. We left Lexington around 8 p.m. and were driving to Hurricane in on again, off again snow with Mic and Murry. I was a little worrried the roads were going to get bad, but we made it there safe and sound. My brother-in-law and his fiance (Ryan and Jordan) were already there.

Saturday we all slept late and took our time getting ready for our family pictures that were at 1:00 p.m. I forgot to add that the snow finally caught up to us and it snowed about 4" during the night!! For our family pictures we took all 4 dogs to the park and met the photographer for one picture with everyone and the dogs in the snow...it was freezing, but hopefully we got a cute picture. Then we dropped the dogs off at the house and went to the studio to take the rest of the pictures. This family session was our gift to Bob and Gail for Christmas.

Later Saturday evening both sides of Aaron and Ryan's family all came over for dinner. Just to give you a mental image there were about 16 people and 4 dogs. Needless to say it was kind of like a circus. So much so that our little 19 lb. dog, Murry, who has everyone fooled to believe he is the sweetest thing ever, bit Aaron's 10 year old cousin, Abby on the leg so hard that she had 4 little bruise marks from his fangs!! After some tears and Aaron and I feeling so bad we banished Murry to his crate, we continued on with a game of Scategories. Murry cried the entire time he was in his crate. I think he knew he was in trouble. Abby came back over on Sunday, she and Murry made up, he felt bad :)

We went to church, ate lunch and then headed home on Sunday in just enough time to start some laundry, clean up the house and make some cookies for our college bible study that we host on Sunday nights. It was a fast and furious weekend, but it was nice to see Aaron's family.

The pictures up above are of Aaron and Ryan with their 93 year old grandfather, Pa-Pa. And me and Jordan with him too! He is such a sweet man. Everytime he see's me he tells me I'm waiting on that Samson girl. There has not been a Samson girl in almost 70 years and he thinks it's about time for one. I just say Aaron and I will see what we can do!

Happy Monday!

Back on the saddle again

So I gave blogging a chance early last year, but I wasn't the best at keeping up with it. I was blogging about my travels with my job, but a lot of times I found it hard to keep up with the blogging while I was on the road. Then in September I got a new job that does not require me to travel.

Now that Aaron and I have been married for 5 monts I thought it would be a good idea to start documenting the rest of our first year of marriage and all the years to come. And I promise to keep up with this blog and maybe I can even get Aaron to make a couple of posts as well.

With the beginning of a New Year and 360 days left in 2011 Aaron, Mic, Murry and myself have a lot of exciting days ahead of us. So here's wishing you and yours a Happy New Year!!

~Erin