Beach Wedding

Samson Family

Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Ryan Samson!! My brother-in-law got married on September 12, 2011 to my now sister-in-law Jordan Tischler on the beach in Kitty Hawk, NC. Both families came together for a beautiful beach wedding to witness Ryan and Jordan getting married. It was followed by a very fun party!! Even this pregnant momma shook it on the dance floor :) I figured this was the last time before I got any bigger!!

The rest of the week went something like this. Wake up, eat breakfast, go to the beach, come back for lunch, go to the pool, get dressed for dinner, go to dinner, go to bed...repeat. Sounds pretty rough huh? As you can see we were either by the water or eating the entire time we were there. Even Mic had the same schedule we did. He swam every day and loved every minute of it!! He was so tired at night he could hardly keep his eyes open.

We celebrated Aaron's 27th birthday while we were at the beach with some delicious hamburgers made by Terry Mills...best burgers ever!! It was a great way to conclude our wonderful week in North Carolina. I hope to be able to go back one day soon! If you've never been I highly recommend it.

Here are some pictures from the week.

Erin

Aaron's cousin Travis, me and Aaron
Me, Aaron, MaMa Bea, Ryan, Jordan, Bob and Gail

Me and my adorable husband!

After Aaron's birthday dinner.

Baby Bump Progress

Two posts in one day...how lucky are you?!?! I just wanted to give everyone a quick baby bump update. I will take a picture every 4 weeks so you can all see how Harper is growing!

Enjoy!
Erin

16 Weeks

20 Weeks

Baby Girl Samson

First off I must apologize for the lack of posting on the blog. Things have been a little busy for us the past couple of months and I have completely let the blog slide. My goal is to be better about blogging now that we are expecting a little one!

That's right, in case you didn't know we are expecting our first baby in January 2012!! We recently found out we are having a little GIRL!! And we couldn't be happier. Here is the latest picture we have of her. Look at that adorable button nose!!

Last week we had our friends over for a reveal party so they could all find out together what we were having. But to shake things up a little bit, Aaron and I didn't find out until our friends found out. Here's how it worked. We went to the doctor and during the ultrasound the tech told us to look away when she was determining the sex (we didn't peek). She wrote whether is was a boy or a girl on a note card and seal it in an envelope. I (Erin) then took the note card to a bakery where they were expecting me. I picked the cake up after work and then waited patiently for everyone to arrive (again I didn't peek, I promise)! Once everyone arrived Aaron and I cut into the cake together and we could both tell right away it was PINK inside!! When we held up the piece of pink cake everyone cheered! It was so fun to celebrate that with our friends and it was definitely worth the wait!

The cake after we cute into it!

Aaron and I with the note card the ultrasound tech wrote on!!

Now that it has set in that we are having a little girl we have started buying lots of pink stuff! We have even already painted her room and will be picking up her furniture this weekend. I'll save the pictures of the room for when it is complete. It's going to be so cute!!

So now the waiting begins...I am 20 weeks and half way there. These first 20 weeks have gone by fast, but I get the feeling the next 20 will not go as fast. We can't wait to meet our little bundle of joy!

We plan to name her Harper Elizabeth Samson and we can't wait to know more about her. We dream about who she will look like, who she will become, will she be tall like Aaron, will she have my personality, what will she be when she grows up? One thing I know for sure is that she will be raised in a loving Christian environment where she will know Jesus and that he has a plan for her life!

Keep checking back and I promise to be better about posting information about Harper and her progress!

Love,
Aaron and Erin

Legends Game

Last night several members of our St. Luke UMC family braved the cool rainy night to watch the Lexington Legends play baseball in a double header.
Our crew, pre-rain!

Me and my hubby!

If you don't know Lexington has been getting pounded with rain this month with the wettest April recorded in history. We came close to becoming the wettest month ever (16+ inches), so close! Needless to say we weren't surprised when it started raining AGAIN!!! However we got this beautiful rainbow for sticking it out through the rain!

That rain only lasted a few minutes, but it wasn't long before the next one rolled in. The temperature dropped 11 degrees in a matter of about 20 minutes and the rain was much stronger. Our group still wanted to stick it out and before you knew it we were the only people still in the stadium.

St. Lukers in the rain!

Jamie and Brooke braving the rain!

Eventually the weather had dropped down to 53 degrees and we were soaking wet! I was too cold to stay for the rest of the game so we headed out. Once we got home and saw the news, they had post-poned the game so I'm glad we left when we did. But all in all it was a great night with great friends!!

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!