7 months

Today the Tot turns 7 months old! This little nose scruncher is such a great baby. She started sleeping through the night two weeks ago. She can sit up by herself for a while until she topples over and busts her little nose. She has progressed in her attempts to crawl to one knee forward and one arm forward. Just one more of each to go! She is really such a laid back baby. She can go for hours w/out a nap and doesn't sleep bad that night if she misses napping. We are fortunate to have had two wonderful babies! Happy 7 months!!

Flight of the Butterflies

Our little butterflies had a great Halloween! Q enjoyed pretending to actually fly everywhere she went and the Tot watched her like she was crazy. Q was a little hesitant at first to ring a doorbell and say "trick or treat" but she got the hang of it after a few houses and didn't want to stop after we had finished all the houses in our neighborhood. About half way through the night, the Tot fluttered home to bed. It's tough on little butterflies to stay up so late. We had a great time and got a lot of candy. Now we just need to get rid of it all before I eat it all up!

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Patch

We went to the pumpkin patch on the busiest day of the year or maybe it was just the only day this fall when it hasn't been raining. Everyone had the same idea to get in a day of patching before the rain started again! It was so crowded and miserable that we did our required pumpkin pics, the kids ran through the hay bale maze and we left. Some friends from church went with us so we had someone to share in our misery. I wish we could have gone back and had some fun there but the rain has not allowed that to happen.

Sisters at the patch

Every time we sat the Tot on the pumpkins, she went for the closest stem. Tasty!

And this is the face you get when you don't let her eat a stem!

Our little fam minus the Dad who was working!

I like this expression on her face for some reason.

Love this prop they had there! Thankfully this lady was standing behind me talking to her so she looked in the general vicinity of the camera instead of chewing on the tree or something!

Going home! Whew! They wanted ice cream but the lines were so long! We left and went to Baskin Robbins. Much less crowded! Q & Chloe leaving the patch!

Honorary Cheerleader

We were home for senior night at the Cougar Football game. My brother took Q to see my niece, Lindsay, ride the fire truck to the game. The cheerleaders always ride to the stadium on a fire truck, not really sure why. Anywho, Q was excited to go watch them. I stayed behind to make popcorn balls w/ the rest of my family as I cannot truly experience Halloween unless I have some popcorn balls to eat! A few minutes later, my brother called to see if it was okay for Q to ride the fire truck w/ the cheerleaders. I knew she would be so excited to ride with them so I let her, but I was having a little anxiety about her falling off! I was so relieved when she made it back safely!! My brother took these pics for me since I wasn't there.

Q & Lindsay

Getting ready to ride!
Sorry this is out of focus but the pom pom is nicely focused!
If you click on this, you can see the excitement on her face! I'm sure she talked Lindsay's head off the entire time.
So high up!
Thanks to the cheerleaders for making our 4 yr old's day! She even got to have her own pom pom and throw it at the end, just like the real cheerleaders! Yea!! On a side note, I wish I would have known so I could have dressed her cuter!!

Western Days

Q's school has a Western Days event instead of a Fall Festival. All the kiddos dressed in their western finest and spent the day riding pretend ponies, going to a petting zoo, and playing other fun games. I missed most of it b/c I was volunteering but here are some pics I was able to get on my 15 minute break.

Moseyin' (spell?) on down the hall.

Doing a little parachute gallop
Story time....and what is interesting here is the little girl next to Q has taken to being a cowboy w/ some serious low ridin' jeans!
Listening intently
Yee haw! Ride 'em Cowboys!

Forward Motion

Our little Tot has started the forward motion of crawling. Granted, that forward motion culminates in a face plant, but it is still technically forward movement! I don't know if I'm happy about this development! You can see how red her nose and cheeks are. This is from falling on her face repeatedly. She is getting the hang of it!! Of course, it helps when you have the incentive of sister's makeup vanity to chew on. Looks like our weekend will be spent installing some baby gates. Happy crawling, Taiter Tot!

Candy Corn Anyone?

Butterfly

Here are our pretty little butterflies. Q chose red wings and the only wings they had in the Tot's size were white. I think it makes them look like an angel and devil butterfly. We really wanted the Tot to be a caterpillar but I couldn't find a costume I liked. I think they look cute as sister butterflies!

Fall Festival

Our church hosted a fall festival this past weekend. Our little butterflies were aflutter with excitement! Except everyone kept calling Q a ladybug! She would yell, "I'm NOT a ladybug!" every time someone would guess that!

This guy had more fun driving than the kids had riding. He was going really fast and doing all of these loops. It was fun to watch!

I think she thought she was super girl or something. It cracks me up that she wore the mask on the slide. She insisted that butterflies have masks.

A little coin toss

Nice pink hair spray

Egg in the spoon race. Click on the pic to see the look of concentration on their faces.

Cake walk. Oh and I lost Q's pumpkin in the move so she had to take this old navy bag as her trick or treat bag. We are so white trash!

Day 4

As a reward for the cessation of thumb sucking, we took Q for a night at Great Wolf Lodge. This place is a little kid's heaven. Now, I would definitely recommend waiting until they are at least 42" tall so they can ride some of the bigger water slides but there is a small area for the shorter kiddos so if you're really anxious, there's no need to wait. When we arrived, we were informed that trick-or-treating was about to begin so we decided to do that before getting all wet in the water park. Since we didn't know about the trick or treating, Q didn't have a costume so she went as a swimmer! Then we headed to the water park. Q was so excited! I cannot believe how fearless she was. She went right up the stairs to the huge water slide and went down without a whimper. She and Trav did all the activities that night before story time began. The Tot and I hung out and watched them. Thankfully, it is so loud in the water park, that no one could hear her screaming. She is quite vocal these days. Then we went to story time which was a little spooky since it was Halloween & the girl's microphone didn't work so she was trying to read to a huge group of kiddos without an amplification. Let's just say many people left before the book was even half over! Next came the difficult task of getting everyone to sleep despite the excitement of the day! Q finally went to sleep but was up bright and early at 7 am. Needless to say, the water park does not open until 9 am. WHAT?! They definitely need to open a little earlier. We stood in the lobby trying to distract her for 2 hours until she could swim again. I took the Tot up to the room for a nap while Trav and Q played some more. That afternoon, I finally got to do some fun stuff w/ Q while Trav watched the Tot. She was excited to show me all the fun things to do. It was really a great trip and we even ran into some old friends while we were there. I hope you all get to visit the Great Wolf Lodge someday. We told Q if she continues to do without thumb sucking for a year, maybe we'll go back again. Aren't we generous!! HA!!

Trick or Treating

Battling it out for some candy!

Finally, the water park! This is the kiddie section and she was over this after one slide. According to her, it was for babies!

We did put the Tot in the water but she wasn't a fan. So she spent most of the trip hanging on dry land.

This lily pad thing was one of Q's favorite things to do. She wasn't so great at it but it really made me and Trav laugh!

Story time!

The Tot was not all that interested in the story but did love exploring her Daddy's face.

A pic w/ the Great Wolf himself.

Look at this ginormous mantle!

We hope this is the last time she is this close to a bear!