9 Nov
i say baby but today she tells me, “mommy, i a big guhl now, don’t cah me baby, ok?”
oh, too soon! too soon!
jasper was all about dinner until this song came on and then she says, “i can’t eat, i have to dance wight now!”
i think that says it all, don’t you?
9 Nov
saturday was all about shooting and hiking but sunday was a day of muddy hands and gardening…
we spent a large part of the day planting onions and garlic while jasper lilith ran around the backyard as the head of her little pack…
jasper telling roan and mocker exactly what she wants them to do!
apparently, roan was a wolf and jasper was a horse… but only when the rings were on… very specific rules, she has…
i think roan is lucky he got away with just the rings yesterday 
jasper and her wolf… “mommy, don’t pet him! he a wiud [wild] animul!”
got it!
a muddy girl, her rings and her dogs/wolves – couldn’t have been happier
8 Nov
ere we are at the state park!
we picked a easy and wide trail to walk on with a side benefit of being a horse trail as well so jasper could see horses…
she saw all the hoof prints and said, “huse footpwints! they going this way! letz go this way too! come on, we don’t want to miss them!”
and woe to the jon that suggested going down a trail that didn’t have hoof prints
the ever present jon and jasper pose
pop, there were deer tracks all over the place as well! and once jon pointed a deer track out, jasper started following them and pointing them out herself!
they even overshadowed the hoof prints for a while… just for a while though…
“heuh’s a deuh twack, too! daddy, ah you going to go hunting this deuh?”
when jon said no, she then asks, “well, how come you weuh shooting then?”
off in her own little world – running, galloping, playing wolf, playing horse, just being a girl out in the woods…
jon and i were figuring out how far we went and where we were on the trail and when we sat down, jasper jumps up and says, “my tuhn!”
then she starts pointing to the map and saying, “ok, so fust [first] we went theuh and then we went theuh and that’s wheuh we saw the huses and…”
and on and on and on… she pretty much just walked us through our trail experience
and then she turned around and said, “ok, now letz get stahted!”
so off she went…
which meant, off we went too…
8 Nov
jon went to the shooting range yesterday and we finally decided to join him… the range is pretty close to one of our favorite state parks (mineral wells) so it makes for a good day of shooting and then hiking…
and, lucky us, the weather was perfect!
so we packed a picnic lunch, loaded up the car and headed off for the day…
jon and i were both curious to see how she handled the loudness of guns being shot (she isn’t always a big fan of loud, abrupt noises)… neither of us figured it would be a problem in the long run but we did wonder if she would hate the booms and bangs at first…
she didn’t… it was a complete non-issue – the first gun that went off made her jump and shout, “OH! WHAT WAS THAT!”
but she wasn’t scared, just startled… good, good thing that!
we showed her how the guns were making the noise and it was just background noise after that first shock…
easy peasy…
on the way there, we stopped at academy and got jasper and i some ear muffs… notice jasper’s pink ones? yeah, she loved ‘em!
in fact, she put them on as soon as we got them, wore them for the entire trip there and then didn’t want to take them off when we were done at the range!
jasper and i just hanging out… she doesn’t look too happy, does she? at first, jasper wanted to wander and i wanted her stuck like glue to my side which meant that neither of us were really that happy with the other
but it didn’t take long for the two of us to work things out – i relaxed a little, jasper figured out what her boundaries were and after that, it was gravy! the good thanksgiving type gravy!
and when she got bored sitting and watching her daddy shoot, she happily played in the dirt…
look! she even found a pink stool to sit on!
it was a lot of pink g0ing on there
we take an apple break and get all sticky and even more dirty!
mmmmmmm, apple….
jon takes a break from shooting while jasper tries to convince him that she needs to shoot to while he eats some of her apple!
(it was a no go on both sides…)
i was worried about jasper getting bored and rambunctious but jon kept his shooting fairly short (only about 1 &1/2 hours instead of his normal 3 hours!) so the time actually flew by!
jasper loves binoculars! so she got a kick out of checking the range out like this
too cute…
jon and jasper lilith take off down the range to check his targets…
jon pointed out the holes on the targets and jasper goes, “oh! so that’s where bullets ah going!”
and, of course, she had to help her da take the target stand back!
and now jon is packing up to go and we are off to mineral wells state park!
we had a good time and will definitely be going back to watch jon shoot some more – maybe next time, we will take one of the 22’s and let jasper shot a couple of rounds!
and jon? we are also going to have to hit that farmer’s market in weatherford, too!!
now on to the hiking trails!
6 Nov
the flying fish is one of our favorite seafood haunts and off we went for a happy friday night dish!
afterward, we wandered downtown until way past jasper’s bedtime…
i love strolling, people watching and chit chatting as we meander around – plus who doesn’t love a lit-up city at night?
jasper lilith is telling me what the signs say: “wed stop sign, mommy!” “gween sign, mommy!” “gween means go, go, go!”
also she seems to have a bit of a death grip on jon’s head, doesn’t she?
“itz windy, momma! wind is twying to blow me away! daddy, hold on to me tight!”
me thinks she just wants an excuse for her daddy to hold on to her more
nice expression, jon!!
at this point, jon is asking me why i am taking so many pictures of us just walking downtown… i don’t have a good answer to that but i still keep clicking away!!
too many pictures? naw...
i think it is all the smearyness of it all – i love that look… although i think it wasn’t too soon after this shot that i promised jon that i would put the camera up and quit blinding him with my flash… and by promise, i mean i was threatened with bodily harm until i put that camera up…
so what did i do? yeah, you had better believe i put that camera right up!
1 Nov
no rain this weekend!! yay!
so we have logged in a good amount of park time these last couple of days
and her tricycle has been along for the ride!
it’s an off road tricycle!!
notice the purse?
jasper came to the park today with her purse and wouldn’t let it out of her sight! she carries it on her handlebars or on her shoulder and let mommy or daddy hold it while she plays?
she doesn’t think so!
what a face!
and it isn’t just her purse that decorates her trike – she also likes to pick up bird feathers and attach them on to her handlebars!
so here she and i are trying to make sure her latest batch of blue jay feathers stays put!
jasper likes “the big guhl swing” most of the time but when she wants to go really high? she likes to revert back to the “wittle itty bitty swing”!
and by high, i mean, high!! she wants to “go highuh so i can touch de twees, momma” high!
that’s pretty high…
but i do my best while trying not to swing our daughter into space
looks like she is enjoying herself!
i know we were!
1 Nov
not the board game but the actual land of candy…
see?
that’s a lot of candy!
jon and jasper are having a good time going through it all!
happy candy times!
1 Nov
yep, i used halloween as a verb – that is what jasper kept calling it! not trick or treating but halloweening!
“are we going halloweening yet?” “is duncan going halloweening wit’ us?”
we have a great tradition here – the mommas take the kiddos out for trick or treating while the daddies stay at home to hand out candy (and drink beer!)…
then once everyone gets home, the kiddos pile in a bed for a movie (or just go right to sleep) and the adults get to stay up and be adults… with jon-made margaritas, bad horror movies (love me some lost boys!) and all that kind of generally goodliness
and now it is the day after halloween and i was “allowed” to sleep in – i can’t remember the last time my two-legged alarm clock let me sleep in past 8 am!!
which worked out perfectly since last night was a very late night with friends – thanks jon and jaz!!
so when i finally crawl out of my warm and cozy bed, i got to sit down with some homemade monkey bread, hot coffee and my laptop to go through all the pictures i took last night of the two halloweeners – what fun! i love looking through pictures!
we had quite a duo last night – a purple princess and a ravaging zombie!!
here are jasper lilith and duncan posing for david (while i sneak in a snapshot of my own!)…
the sweet princess and the cannibal of a zombie, huh?
then jasper looks behind her and sees that duncan is all looming with his pose…
and she doesn’t really like it… you can tell she is thinking, “i know that is duncan but no lurking over me!”
duncan made a great zombie – he really got into it!
it is a good thing jasper wasn’t scared or freaked out by him – that might have made last night a bit tricky
“we at the douh! letz go halloweening now! we weady!”
so says the jasper…
and so off we went into the night!
jasper takes trick or treating very seriously!
duncan and jasper hand in hand… man, heather, i can’t get enough of shots like these!
duncan watched over jasper while heather and i walked a bit behind… we chit chated, reminded them to say thank you after they got candy, took pictures and generally just ooh and ahhed over the sweetness and coolness of our two children…
and the weather? man, it was gorgeous!! almost a full moon and the perfect halloweening temperature!
and off they go, hand in hand again!
“trick or treat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
jasper liked to announe that “i am a pwincess!” and then often she would even throw in a little twirl to boot! i am not sure that she wasn’t getting more candy for cute little actions like that!
it is a good thing that she isn’t afraid of the dark! but every once in a while, if she started to dawdle behind us, she would gasp a “it too dahk! it spooky!” and run to catch up with us!
duncan really got into the zombieness of his outfit!
off they go to the next house!
heather, those are our children! our babies running to the next house for candy as quick as they can… ouch…
(also, heather, look at duncan – he is running but still looking back for jasper!)
she was so cute running around in that dress – watching her little legs pumping under that skirt really tickled me!
this was the one house that got a scared reaction from jasper!!! congratulations strange house, you won the prize!
they had scary music and a person was hiding behind that floating skeleton… when the person jumped out, jasper gave a scary, “OH!” and started to turn back around to head my way! but by the time, she got fully turned around, she figured it out and finished the turn out to head back to the candy…
i am sure it didn’t hurt that heather and i were both reassuring her from afar but the pull of candy was stronger than her fear of the unknown
(and i was barely laughing at all, thank you very much!)
they are proud of themselves – must have been a good candy haul at that house
and off our babies go again – running into the dark as happy as can be! duncan growling like a zombie and jasper squealing like the happy purple princess she is!
what a happy halloween night that was!
and the haul? oh, man, i don’t know what she is going to do with all this candy!!
oh, wait, i know… eat it!
happy the day after halloween everyone! i hope the moon was as good to everyone else as it was to us…
31 Oct
happy halloween from texas!
here are our night time glow-in-the-dark jack o’lanterns!
hope everyone has a great one filled with way too much candy!
we love everyone!
