We have had GLORIOUS weather these last few days, as I know most of the Midwest (and maybe rest of the country has had). If you know me at all, you know I am a sunshine girl who just about wilts into oblivion during the winter. I live for days like we've been having, barefoot days, days filled with wide-open windows and wonderful breezes. Ahhhhh.

One of my favorite poems of all time, by ee cummings, is perfect of this time of year:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes


(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)


how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake

and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


Anyway, so the above collage is just a mixture of some of funny face pictures I took when Quinn and I were goofing around last night, enjoying the lovely evening. The kid gets funnier and funnier every day, and he knows it. He knows some of my favorite faces and does them to get a laugh. It cracks me up every time.

Last week, Quinn and I (and Oliver) ventured to my parents' house for the first time without Andy, who had sales meetings for a couple days. We had soooooo much fun. I love my hometown. It is a much simpler place to be with a toddler--everything you'd want is there, and it's all closer and cheaper. My mom, Quinn, and I got into the zoo for $9 total!! We went to the Children's Museum, the library where I grew up and worked for 4 summers, the zoo, 2 parks, my dad's office, and to see the "blowers" (explained below). We ended up staying an extra day because we had so much fun, and Quinn has asked each day since when we're going back to Illinois. It will be soon! The above picture is at a park by the zoo. It was a very cool park that included a pirate ship.


Above, Quinn plays with his new "spy glass" that Grandma bought him at the zoo--perfect for a pirate-loving kid (though I must reiterate that he only likes nice pirates, since bad pirates are in the news an awful lot these days!).

Here my very tired boy hitches a ride from me at the end of our zoo visit. Quinn wore himself out each day, and I carried him more than I have for months.

Ever since I bought Quinn a pinwheel when he was about 8 months old, he has loved things that spin or "blowers", as he calls them. Really loves them. As in, can spot a "blower" for miles. As in, we've watched videos on youtube many times that are simply footage of a blower blowing in a field (riveting, let me tell you). :) As luck would have it, my parents' neighbors have a blower in their yard. Quinn loves that blower and always asks my parents how it's doing when he talks to them on the phone.

So, my parents had the brilliant idea to take Quinn to a "blower farm", which is an area about 15 minutes from their house that is acres and acres of wind-energy blowers. I think there are 240 of them. They are HUGE, and I thought Q was going to turn inside out from excitement when he saw them. It was freezing cold, rainy, and windy, but he did not care. It was a wonderful treat. ;)
Quinn, Poppa, and Oliver loved hanging out together. Quinn had a great time with my mom too, but I didn't take any pictures of them. I'll get more next time.

Spring Pics

So, I just haven't really been into blogging lately. I feel badly because for over two years, I've been faithfully keeping a journal for Quinn, filling in his calendar, and blogging; basically, I've been carefully recording his life. I think that partially because of the season of life I'm in and partially because he keeps me so busy I have all of a sudden not kept up with much of anything! We really are having so much fun. I personally have no idea what terrible two's are about; I think this is a super, super fun age. Now that spring is attempting to return, at least every few days, we've been truly invigorated by the freedom of going outside. With blogging, I'm going to try to do better, starting with this brief, picture-laden entry. Enjoy! We used Easter as an excuse to give Quinn this Step 2 climber outdoor toy. It's a fort, castle, pirate ship, rocket, climbing wall all in one. He loves it!

This was some really bad bedhead he woke up with the other day. It was hilarious to see what he would look like with curly hair. :)

Flying a kite on Easter. Kites are only a dollar at WalMart! Kites, bubbles, and sand are all good, old-fashioned, cheap fun. :)

We have LOVED having his sand table. I prefer it to him sitting in sand in a traditional sandbox. He loves to dig with his trucks--so satisfying! I'm thankful for this garage sale purchase I picked up last year.
You know spring is back when the yard needs to be mowed. We've had TONS of rain, but we have had some really nice days too, which have given us beautifully green grass.

We made Easter cookies from scratch. I make very few things from scratch, especially cookies. Making these reminded me of HOW MUCH BETTER things taste made from scratch!!

Here is Quinn with the ADORABLE Levi, my friend Amanda's son. I can't get enough of Levi's hair, big eyes, and dimples. So cute!
I just love this pic with Grandma Mary and Grandpa Dennis wearing silly hats with Quinn.

When we were having such a hard month last month, we cheered ourselves up by buying Quinn a new digger toy. The next morning, he couldn't wait to try it out and was very apppropriately in his truck jammies!

What's better than a new Step 2 outdoor toy? The box it came in! It made a great "playhouse", and it takes up a big space inside now! Here Quinn plays with Papa Bruce in his house.

Quinn's been very in to pirates lately, but he'll be quick to tell you NOT the scary kind. Of course!
Last Friday, we went to Conner Prairie, and Quinn had a blast seeing the animals and saying hi to the chickens.

Papa Bruce joined us for Easter, and we had a great time.

Lastly, I thought I'd post a picture of me and my handsome date from a wedding we went to. :)

Happy Easter!

Spring Smiles

I love my handsome boy. And I love the spring.

There is nothing, no circumstance, no trouble, no testing, that can even touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and Christ, right through to me.
If it has come that far, it has come with a great purpose which I may not understand at the moment.
But as I refuse to become panicky, as I lift up my eyes to him and accept it as coming from the throne of God for some great purpose of blessing to my own heart, no sorrow will ever disturb me, no trial will ever disarm me, no circumstance will cause me to fret, for I shall rest in the joy of what my Lord is!
That is the rest of Victory!
--Alan Redpath, former pastor Moody Church

I am working to live my life this way, as I deal with the reality that we have lost another baby and have experienced another precious life going straight back to the arms of his/her Heavenly Creator. Just like six months ago, I feel I must post about this before going on to post new pictures of our Quinn. The last three weeks have been more trying than any of my life, as we experienced the ups and downs of thinking our baby wouldn't make it, then hearing its beautiful strong heartbeat, then finding out it wasn't going to make it after all. I really don't think I can even reflect on it much yet, as the pain is too fresh and still too shocking. But, I can say that God is good, despite the pain on this earth, and I praise Him for His faithfulness and the way He has worked through so many people around us to show us love and support through this time.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

It's so warm here, we're wearing shorts today! I can't remember a St. Patrick's Day that's been this warm in a long time. I hope Quinn the Leprechaun brings you some good luck.

I really don't have anything to post about, so I thought I'd just freshen up the blog with a few cute pics Papa Bruce sent me from our trip to Florida and one of the snowman we built in our backyard right after we got back.

We are just plugging away here, staying as entertained as possible and happy to see March approaching soon. March brings promise, although no guarantees, of warmer weather, and we'll take that. Two years ago, March had several 80 degree days, which I remember well because Quinn was just a baby and we went for our first walks outside in the stroller. Here's hoping that's on the horizon for us!

Quite the picturesque background, eh?

Hmmm . . . do you think they look alike?

So fun to build this HUGE snowman! We rarely get enough snow here to do this. Since Andy and I are both six feet tall, you can see how big this was! I used Q's t-ball tee as a tripod to take this picture. : ) Sadly, our snowman was a mere melted mound with a wet scarf only 24 hours later. It was fun while it lasted!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sending you all lots of love!

Florida Fun!

**Caution: Lots of pictures ahead ! I don't feel like making collages! :)
Well, we're back after our annual getaway to Sarasota, Florida. We decided last minute to go this year, and we stayed at a different place than usual, a condo located right on Siesta Key Beach. If you're not familiar with that beach, it's often listed on the top 10 beaches in the world lists, for obvious reasons (see scenery !). While the weather was a bit cooler than we would have liked on some days, who can complain when the weather at home was in the teens? Oh, not to mention, about three hours after we flew out to Florida, our area got over a foot of snow, topped then by another 4 inches right before we came back! So needless to say, there was no complaining from us about sunny weather in the high 50's somedays!


I love taking beach pictures; I feel like I can't ever take enough. Still, I don't know if I captured just how great a time we had out there. Quinn was in hog heaven with all the sand to dig and roll around in and all the wide open space to run and run. He took over 2 hour naps every day because he just wore himself out with all the playing. He was perfect on the flights too, sleeping half of them each time. He thought every bit of the trip was thrilling, from the moving sidewalks in the airport, to the big airplanes he could see out the windows, to the de-icing machines spraying orange stuff on the wings, to the pirates that fly the planes. Wait, the pirates?! Yes, I realized after he got a bit nervous about seeing the "pirates" that he thought I was saying pirate instead of pilot! Those words really do sound a lot alike! After a pilot gave him a special pin with wings, he got over his fears. ;)

So, sorry about the overload of pictures, but maybe seeing warm pictures will help us all remember that winter doesn't last forever!




The pictures above and below are my two favorites. I love how you can see Q's little footprints leading out to where he plopped down. And the one below . . . I could look at my two happy boys all day!


Quinn thought the waves were pretty neat, waving back at them and commenting on how they come in and go back, over and over!


I just love holding-hands-walking-down-the-beach pictures. I can't take enough!


Papa Lou and Ruthann bought Quinn the best sand toy they could have possibly picked out. He LOVED filling up his dump truck, then dumping it out.



Again, I love my happy boys!




On Friday, we were so surprised when Papa Bruce came walking into our condo! He flew down to surprise us and Johnny. We had so much fun with him there too.

He and Quinn went for a walk down the beach on their own and had a great time. I love these two pictures. You can really see the love in the above pic and below where a proud Papa is taking pictures of his grandson.So, while we had a great time on the beach, we also spent lots of time with Andy's Grandpa Lou and his wife Ruthann, and Andy's brother Johnny. Johnny's girlfriend's niece, Haven, is about 9 months older than Quinn, and they had the best time together. Haven is the sweetest little thing in the world, and she has declared that she is going to marry "baby Quinn", as she calls him (even though he weighs more and is taller!). They exchanged quite a few hugs and kisses, and Quinn was even able to play at her house while her wonderful parents babysat him to let us go out for dinner! He's talked about her every day since, and I imagine he will until he sees her again next year!

Above, Quinn with Nikki and Uncle Johnny

Below, Q with Ruthann and Papa Lou

Lastly, Quinn making a sand angel. :)