Ice Cream and The Sea Center

The Fantastic Four

Popsicles:

Messy Faces (and clothes - sorry Moms!):

Posing for the Camera:

Lots of Hugs:

Reese demonstrating how easy it is to go grocery shopping with a baby:

Mr. Potato Head was a big hit with Connor and Isabella:

Who is more dramatic, Reese or Samantha?

Drum Circle

Poor Isabella just wanted to be left alone and Samantha kept trying to hold her hand

Samantha's Back in Town

Although Lollipop got to enjoy 5 days of undivided attention and daily beach walks as the "only child" while Samantha was away at Grandma and Papa Robinson's house.....

She was thrilled to have her little sister home.

And we were happy to have our little girl home too. Unfortunately she came home not feeling well but the Mr. Potato Head set that Grandma and Papa bought her seemed to perk her up.

Thank you Grandma and Papa for taking her :)

Ostriches, Emus, Miniature Horses and a Giant Castle

We woke up this morning feeling very adventurous and decided to head up to the Santa Ynez Valley, which is about 40 minutes north of Santa Barbara, and do some site seeing.

The first stop was Ostrich Land. We have passed by this place several times and I have always wanted to stop. Ostrich Land is like a zoo for Ostriches and Emus. You are able to get really close to the giant birds and feed them. They do not raise any of the animals at Ostrich Land for meat which is good news for these odd creatures however they do farm both the ostrich and emu eggs so there are rarely any babies born there.

I must say that from afar you could see these giant birds running gracefully through the fields with their feathers flowing and gorgeous big eyes however as you get closer to them, they are quite the opposite. There cuteness sort of wore off when you saw how aggressive they were. They were hissing and pecking at each other as well as all the visitors. I was a little intimidated to feed or get near them.

These are all the "Feeding Rules". It is basically saying that if you do any of the above wrong, you will get pecked/bitten! After reading this, we decided to hold off on feeding them until we gave them a once over.

When you walk in, you are greeted by about 20 ostriches that are ready to eat (bite)!

The emus were a lot less aggressive than the ostriches. They are the 2nd tallest bird in the world next to the ostrich.

I didn't want Samantha to think her Mommy was a wimp so I did feed them. You can't tell from this picture but the ostriches were pecking super hard and it was not easy to hold onto the dish.

I used the two-hand method as suggested by the feeding instructions for the emu's which I think saved a few of my fingers!

We made it a true family affair and brought Lollipop along who was having a stare down with a baby emu.

Click to view the Ostrich Facts larger - I promise you will learn something new!

The next stop was to visit the miniature horses at Quicksilver Ranch. Samantha is obsessed with horses ever since she rode the pony at the fair so we were excited to see her reaction when she saw these. She kept saying, "Baby Horsey" and "Samantha Ride Horsey".

Lollipop had to sit this one out, "No Dogs Allowed" :(

Our final stop was the Sunny Fields Castle Playground in Solvang. This is the nicest and cleanest play structure we have ever visited.

It is amazing to me that we saw all this in half a day!

I am in LOVE

with my TOMATO PLANT!

Each day I notice that 1 or 2 green ones have ripened into beautiful red tomatoes

I am being very diligent each day with watering it (can't say the same for all my herbs that died recently) but this tomato plant has given me hope that I can regain my green thumb

It makes me so excited to begin landscaping so that we can have a whole yard full of fresh vegetables, fruits and flowers. And Samantha can run around on the grass instead of the dirt.

Hopefully soon it will happen!!!

Samantha Counts to 10