jon was off in the hill country guiding his first hunt this weekend so jasper had me all to herself

and she made the most of it!

we had our first classmate birthday party bash yesterday!

and all i have to say about it was that she had a lot of fun with her classmates while i was very glad that the mom kept the party short and sweet…

ok, well, i have more to say than that (who am i kidding?) but that really is the gist of it

pizza first!

jasper and sutton (they seem to be fast friends these two – sutton is one of the kids that always gets really excited when she sees jasper come into the classroom) having a great time with each other…

it was really interesting to see how different the boys played vs. the girls – the boys were throwing things and getting mad at things and the girls?  well, they were just playing – they would play together for a bit and then move off to play on their own and then come back together again after a while…  and when one of the boys would have a Loud Moment, all the girls would turn and look at him….  clearly, it is at a young age that we girls start to watch boys and wonder, “what is wrong with them?”

what??  i’m just saying…

kenny (the bday boy) had an animatronic dinosaur that was quite the hit with the kiddos and with jasper in particular!

(arnetta, we might have to readdress the pony issue that we talked about before – she loved this thing!)

jasper and sutton waiting for their cupcakes…

and now that everybody had their cupcakes, all the moms start to make the necessary motions to head out the door as soon as their kids are done…

really, lots of kids?  keep.  it.  short.

and all of us moms had the same idea

(i like our relaxed style of hanging out and bday partying much better but i couldn’t help but appreciate this style as well!)

and then we were home for a bit so i could change out of my mom attire, put daune attire back on and then head on over to leigh’s for a night of jasper entertaining the crowd with her dancing and adult hanging out once the kids went to sleep!!

jon, we missed you!

mom, i thought you would get a kick out of this!

jasper is busy playing with her barn and sometimes, it is Very Important for her to being wearing a hat!

a cowboy hat, to be precise

and since this is the closest thing i have to a cowboy hat, this is the hat she wears – you should see her when she rips it off her head, rodeo-style, and cries out, “yeeee-haaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!”

i tried getting pictures of that but the resulting photos looked like weird exercises in what not to do when taking action shots!!

yeee-haaaa!

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?

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

i caught a sweet little moment here…

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…

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!

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!

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!

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!