Our favorite part of the day?

4:30 pm, our backyard, some sawdust, 2 pets, and golden sunshine....mmmmmm.

She filled up her wheelbarrow and started pushing across the yard, telling me, "Goin to I-om-in." (Wyoming).

(Mosquitos ARE NOT our favorite part. They have it out for my girl...even WITH bug spray on.)

Just a couple weeks ago she couldn't reach this elevator button....

Our girl's growing like a weed!

Fall afternoons call for baking!

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At school.....

Putting away her wipes all by herself. Her teacher actually taught her how to do this!

My little love.....

Painting with a feather at school today. I send her every day with a nice little clip to keep those bangs out of her eyes, but she's been resistant since she was a lil' thing.....ripping out those bows. GrandSue did give those shaggy bangs a trim this weekend, which helped a lot!

Anyhow, Q is in heaven with any activity involving paint!!!

K's party

All eyes on the cake.....

And THIS is the moment he's been waiting for.

Celebrated K's 2nd bday on Saturday afternoon. He's 9 days younger than Quinn! She had a blast at his party and Chelsea even had a little cake for Q, too. Of course that was a HUGE hit with our girl!!

Little Kitchen

For her birthday I knew Quinn was ready for a little kitchen. She had been using the ones in the school classrooms regularly, and so it was finally time! Of course I didn't dig the plastic ones available for purchase and the wooden ones were a little expensive....and they were all a little larger than I felt she needed. So.....I surfed the internet and was inspired to build one from items we already owned or found in someone's trash.

But.....my brilliant husband listened to my plan and looked at pictures of what I wanted and convinced me that a better idea would be to have him build one from maple plywood. That way it would be exactly what we wanted. So we spent just $30ish on the whole kitchen (mostly for wood and a few cuphooks and some fabric).


We took the faucet out of our wetbar (that is really just our computer area and on the "to do" list to turn into an office). The sink is a metal bowl from my kitchen. The stove knobs are also from our wetbar--originally blue, now black. The side rack that holds hanging items is one that was in my closet for belts at the old house but was sitting in a drawer here, unused. The curtains hang from a dowelrod Matt rigged up. I bought the fabric at JoAnn's. Q's teacher brought her some wooden mushrooms from Russia this summer and Q loves em, and so we knew the mushroom fabric was perfect. I love its vintage look!

Matt still wants to add two burners to the top, above the knobs. He has a cool plan for making them with some copper inlays, just needs some time to get them worked up.

All of the utensils we already had--thrift store purchases, mostly. The spices are empty bottles/jars saved by friends and family. She got a new teaset from Aunt Meg for her bday, some dishes from Mimi, Grandbob and GrandSue gave her a little sandwich toy set, and we bought her the little espresso cup/saucer at IKEA this summer and saved it for her bday.

The apron was one I used as a little girl, made by my Grandma. Love that.

So, the kitchen has already gotten hours of play!

Matt knew to make the shelves extra sturdy, because the question wasn't whether she'd climb on em, but when.

And here's her little table and chairs. Mr. Whiskers is waiting patiently for a bite to eat!

Her favorite part of the day?

When Daddy comes home, of course!

And this is Hop. Her favorite frog. She would carry him everywhere, if we'd let her. She decided he needed to ride in style for our Thursday afternoon walk. Measuring cup worked perfectly. :) He used to have a green and blue back, but she picked all the paint off. So now he's just orange.

Roadtrip and something new!

Saturday morning we got up....loaded into the car with our favorite frog HOP (and a few dozen puzzles, books, crayons, snacks, diapers, etc.)

...Drove north of Dallas, and met our NEW TRUCK!
Well, new to us, at least.
It's a 2005 Dakota.
We LOVE it, though there will be a tear in my eye the day we depart ways with the Ranger. The Ranger was Matt and my first big purchase together when we got married and I have so many good memories of our early days together in that truck.

But, the Range is on it's last legs so we knew it was time for something more reliable.

So here's Matt's first few minutes in his new baby:

And after we picked up the truck we stayed the night with Tiare, Mike and Kai. Q loved seeing baby Kai, but best of all were Mike's "tooookieees." We had a fun visit and I am so glad they let us crash with them last minute and spend the day together! (tired babies)

I was on my own with Q on the way back, since Matt drove the Dakota. She was SOOOO good! She's not a happy traveler, typically. She usually gets bored after about an hour and then acts horrible. This trip was actually so pleasant! Here's the view from my mirror: (don't worry, I just held the camera out, wasn't looking into it while I drove).

Yup, it's a book-reading girl!!!!
And some art to pass the time....
Here's the picture I phone-ed to a few folks who knew we went to look at the truck. It was our "we-got-it" announcement. :)

The after-party....

...included some circus training...

a bit of light cooking....(Daddy made her a kitchen for her bday! Better pictures to come soon)

...and a tea party with some good sports!

LOVE seeing our sweet friends playing with our little one! And don't you just wanna squeeze those baby legs peeking out from under her tutu? Better do it while you can, because I have a feeling there isn't much baby left in this girl. booo.

A little party

Last weekend we did a little 2 year old party with a couple of Matt's best friends and their wives (and one dog and one soon-to-arrive baby!)

We did a tree theme--I had found some napkins I loved at Ikea a couple months back and used those for my inspiration.
I made burlap placemats with treetrunks cut from Q's hand. I also put some tree branches in glass vases and had a photo from each month of her 2nd year.
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Of course Q wore her 2 shirt!

And her hat from Joey and Lindsey!
Since she'd already had many cakes, we went with birthday ice cream cones this time! They were a big hit.

The food included "spagggghhhhetti" (hand movement included) and "spicy-meat-a-ballas," salad with "blackbabies", garlic bread, and a great 2-shaped cheese ball that Lindsey made.

The invitations:

THE napkins:
Here are some photos Lindsey took at the party:Luke and Alie came, too. They had a few fights for our entertainment. :)
Trent gave Q this cat and she LOVED it!Of course she had to show it to Beaux! (Jacque gave her the tu-tu!)
She can't take her eyes off the cat.....
Thanks, sweet friends, for celebrating our girl and for being such important parts of her life! She loves each of you....even you, Doey. ;)