Some recent Quinn-isms

At Mimi's birthday dinner--
Mimi: Quinn, who made the bread and lasagna? (expecting her to answer, "Mommy.")
Quinn: (without skipping a beat) God.

On a walk last week Q said, "Momma, hold me and stand up. I'm a little grumpy." (For some reason she wants me to stand up when I am holding her whenever she's upset at all).

A couple Saturday mornings ago she got the remote off Matt's bedside table, started pushing buttons, and said, "I'm texting Mooski."

Today in the car I was saying something to her and she answered:
Quinn: "I can't hear you. I'm putting in my contacts." She had Hop (her frog) up to her eye as she said this.
Me: Is Hop putting them in with his feet?
Quinn: (disgustedly) Mom, that is his HAND.

I wouldn't even call it surviving!

We came through our roadtrip in fine form! We are tired, dirty (why does riding in the car a long time make you feel that way?), messy-housed, but most of all we're happy! So blessed we were able to spend our "thankful time" with our great friends, drive through some beautiful Oklahoma and Texas scenery, and enjoy time as our little family.

Happy Thanksgiving from Our Little Turkey!

Hope you are counting your blessings today! God is good!

She's getting into this baking thing!

And just in time for some fun holiday kitchen projects! Decorating sugar cookies will rock her world!!

And be still my heart....she was looking at the recipe and she pointed at an "m" and said, "Look, it's Mimi's letter!"

The very best part of our camping trip was the BBSP Nature Center! The volunteers there are wonderful and they let Q touch 3 things--

A tarantula--the man taught Q how to pet it with "one, one finger." That's what she demonstrates for anyone who wants to watch, now. We learned that when tarantulas molt and get a new skin they can regrow any body part that has been lost--such as a new leg! Pretty cool.....
An Alligator--these babies were born in September and were caught by the rangers after they were out of their eggs. They keep them 2 years and then release them back into the wild.
Q got 2 rounds of Alligator petting--we went on both Saturday and Sunday because she loved it so much!!
Here she is watching the gators in the tank.

And on this display of the life cycle of an alligator Q is explaining to Daddy, "This is the egg, and it opens and the alligator comes out and you eat it." Hmmmm, guess we live close enough to Louisiana for that to work.....

And a snake! We love when people ask Q what color snake she petted and she says "black and 'ellow and 'ed." Nope, not a coral snake. :)

This was a stuffed raccoon Q insisted on sitting next to for a picture.

This display showed the difference between Alligator and Crocodile jaws. When you pushed the button the mouths opened and closed. Q watched them do this at least a dozen times!

They have these little stools all over the nature center for kids to be able to see the displays. Q LOVED them and spent forever just dragging the stools from one place to the next, climbing up, taking a peek, and then repeating the whole thing again.

We also saw lots of life fishes, black widows, snakes, a legless lizard, turtles, salamanders, and touched snakeskin, wasp nests, bird nests, bird eggs, leaves, pods, bones and skulls, feathers, and I can't even remember what else! I LOVE this nature center because it is so kid-friendly and hands-on. And the volunteers answered all our questions, pointed out parts of the exhibits to look at, taught Q how to touch the animals gently, and even kept an eye on the whining Alie tied up outside (one of the guys even went out and petted her several times). They gave Daddy a tree guide, too! We will definitely want to go back and see our

Works for us....

Felt good on my lips....

So some of my little family's favorite people in the world moved 3 hours away recently (I know, how rude...we TOTALLY did not approve that...) And we've been dying to see them ever since. Another friend and I had been tossing around the idea of a one-day road trip visit (with 3 kids in tow).
Night before the trip 1 kid has a cough and runny nose, both of our families had been out of town all weekend and the family we were visiting had a sleep-deprived Momma and new baby yet were allowing our crazy crew into their home.....but we did it! I am thankful for my friend A and her "let's do it" attitude, because, as crazy as 6 hours of driving in 1 day with 3 kids and lots of stuff to get done at home seems, it felt so good to say "yes." And my friend C for not even blinking when our kids scattered toys from one end of the house to the other and totally threw off their regular schedule (yikes--no naps for anyone!)
And I am Sooooo glad we did! It was great to get to hug our friends' necks, hold the baby, watch our kids play together and catch up a little bit--even though we only got in about 5 minutes of adult talking between all the kiddos.

So, as Good Ole Tim sings, even though things can sometimes feel a little crazy, they sometimes feel a RIGHT crazy....

And yes, we did get lost and went about an hour of of the way, the kids dumped food all over the van, one of them covered herself in ketchup and milkshake and had to have a quick bath, and mine screamed the last hour of the drive. But we remember that with a smile and agree with Tim:

Oh oh oh I wanna go crazy

You can go crazy too

Oh oh oh I wanna go crazy

I wanna go crazy with you

Thanks A and C....any time I go crazy, I totally want it to be with you!

Oh to enjoy toast that much......

Have I ever said I LOVE lazy Saturdays when we all get to eat a s-l-o-w breakfast together? Mmmmmm.

Last of Q's school pics....

This is from Q's last day of school a few weeks back. Pumpkin Pancake cooking day!! She LOVES those things, so she was very happy!

Turkeys

We have been studying turkeys in our little kitchen school.
see here
and here
and even here.
SO we were excited when we saw that the Nature Center at BBSP was having a presentation for kids about turkeys. They had an AWESOME turkey puppet and the ranger read a book. Unfortunately all the other participants were middle school boy scouts, so she tailored the book to them, but Q still got to see the pictures and hold the turkey. I learned several things I didn't know before!

A bunch of turkeys:

Observation Tower

On Saturday while we were camping Matt and I decided to put Q in the pack for a nap and take a hike. Matt had spotted an observation tower on the map that sounded interesting. Well, our hike turned into a lot farther walk than we were thinking, and Q gets pretty heavy after a while. And it was cool weather, so we didn't think to pack some water. BUT...the 2 lakes we walked around were beau---ti-ful and the observation tower (that big, big thing, according to Q) was pretty sweet! She looks a little dazed in this pic because she got a rude awakening. Matt bent over at the bathrooms to drink out of the water fountain, and Q, in the pack, felt a little weightless in her sleep when he bent over, so she woke up scared and screaming.
We also didn't take the camera on our hike, so this one is from Matt's camera phone.
On this walk the path went about 20 feet away from an 8-ft alligator. Yikes!

The Famous Un-Yun

When I opened up our Halloween decorations last month I stumbled upon some paper decorations I'd made my freshman year of college to decorate our door when the staff kids came around trick-or-treating. I pulled this bat out and made it fly in Q's face and say, "Unnnnn-yunnnn-yunnnn." At first that scared her, but then she wanted me to keep doing it. She became a little obsessed with the bat, whom she named "Un-yun." She loved to say, "Un-yun's at home" over and over. Now she calls all bats "un-yuns" and I bought her some little plastic ones at a halloween clearance last week. She adores them! The real Un-yun is in a box in the garage, waiting next Halloween. Q can tell you all about it. :)

A Lil' Wading....

Just couldn't resist some chilly-water wading today!

Of course Q fell in all the way. Good thing Momma had brought extra undies and pants!

Buddy's Pecans

When we were in Beaumont a couple weeks ago Quinn re-named Eddy "Buddy." He gave her some shelled pecans to eat and also let her play with some in the shell, and every time she eats pecans now (which have become her fave snack) she says, "Just like Buddy has."

For Amy.

Q's new camera

Us kids got Mimi a new camera for her bday, so she gave Q her old, broken one. Q loves it! She took at least a hundred "pictures" last night and made everyone say cheese.

My baking partner

Yesterday was our first round of baking together! My girl and I made some red velvet cupcakes for Mimi's birthday dinner. Q was totally into it! She was a little concerned how loud the mixer was going to be, but it turned out to be just fine, not near as loud as that pesky blender she hates.
The bad news--Alie got into the cupcakes cooling on the counter while we ran an errand and ate 5 of them before we got back. Quinn would love to tell you the story. :)

Brazos Bend SP

Friday night we headed down to BBSP. We hadn't made a reservation because when we'd looked online earlier in the week there were tons of spots. When we got there, though, all the tent sites were full. The ranger did offer us one shelter site that had been a cancellation and said we could put our tent up there. Well, when we got to our site it was getting ready to rain, so we went ahead and just used the shelter. It turned out to be perfect! It poured in the night and a big rainstorm came in and it was downright nasty. We were thankful for non-fabric walls at that point! And the next morning when we were all tramping around with muddy feet we were again thankful that it wasn't on the tent floor that we'd have to clean later. The shelter was just a cement slab and empty inside, but at least the roof blocked the rain.

Quinn loved the door.

We surely hadn't planned on enjoying the shelter as much as we did, but it turned out to be awesome and we'd even consider getting one again for wet/winter camping. Nice and roomy, too! Plus it's only $5 more than a tent site.....

Daddy is a master camp-stove chef! I tried my hand at making some pancakes this weekend and it really made me appreciate how good he is! It's hard cooking getting stuff to come out right on that little stove! Yea for Daddy and yummy pumpkin pancakes! And of course eggs and bacon.

Does my heart proud to see my girl drinking out of some REAL camping dishes!