August Randoms

A couple nights ago, Tara and Chad invited us over for dinner. I shot their wedding a couple years ago (when I was 7 months pregnant with my crazy kid) and maternity photos, and whenever we get together for shoots we always have a great time. So it was fun that they invited us over for dinner.

Baby Kohen kind of makes Sutton look like a giant.

When I wear my glasses, Tara and I are pretty much twins. I should've gotten a photo of Adam and Chad. Maybe next time. And Tara, I know you're reading this....there will be a next time soon! :)

The other morning, Sutton and I were playing with his train track. I went into the kitchen for a second, and when I came back, Sutton was in the bucket where we keep his trains and he wanted me to push him around.

We have this whistle that looks like a mouth that he loves playing with. Attractive. :)

Adam has started up his masters class again on Thursday nights. Last night, I ordered us a pizza and we watched Thomas the Train on the couch and ate pizza for a little mommy-son date. It was fun.

And we'll end with a silly video from today. Two funny things about Sutton: if he doesn't know the answer to a question or doesn't want to answer, he just repeats the question; and he never says "yes," it's always "okay."

The Steel Wheels

Saturday night, we went out to Yoder Heritage Day in Yoder, KS to see one of Adam's favorite bands, The Steel Wheels. The lead singer is from Yoder, so it was neat to see him singing back in his hometown...his parents were there and his dad even went up on stage to sing one of the songs with them! Very cool.

We arrived a bit early to get a good seat and to walk around. Sutton had fun running around and climbing on things...ALL boy. It was interesting people-watching too. Yoder is an Amish community, and I was so tickled to see the little boys that were Sutton's age, how they dressed and played.

It was so humid that night, the kiddo was drenched in sweat. 

Saturday was very rainy, and we were afraid the concert would have to be moved inside, but after getting ominously dark, the clouds parted and we had great weather. They constructed this makeshift lighting set up that rose up behind them after their first song. :) It was pretty funny.

These two photos of the band were both when his dad was up there singing with them. The song he was up there for was written from a song that the lead singer's grandpa used to sing to him when he was little, it's called Red Wing (that link will take you to the music video). GREAT song.

We first heard about The Steel Wheels because the lead singer's sister is Adam's high school youth leader's wife. Did you follow that? :) (His youth pastor Neil was actually the one who directed and produced the music video I linked to above.) Adam saw them there and went and introduced Sutton to them, so that was pretty neat.

2-year-olds aren't amazing at sitting still for an hour and a half, so Adam and I both took turns walking around with him during the concert. We got ice cream from a nearby ice cream shop that was yummy.

We headed out while they were still playing since it was already after Sutton's bed time and we still had a 40 minute drive ahead of us. We got to our car and some people told us that fireworks were about to start. So we decided to stay. Bad idea. Sutton hated them because we were really close to them and they were really loud. So I ended up sitting with him in the car, but we couldn't leave because there were huge crowds of people blocking all the entrances since they were watching the fireworks. Adam took advantage of that time to go back and get a photo with the lead singer, Trent Wagler. He was pretty excited. :)

Quirks {26 Months}

I don't know that "quirks" is the correct title for this post, but since I'm not doing monthly posts for Sutton anymore, I just wanted to record a few of the things he does a lot at this age.

*Sutton has started asking us to "wook" (look) or "watt" (watch) all the time. If he's doing something that he thinks we need to see or that he's proud of, it's "Mommy wook!" And he really enunciates the K at the end "wooK wooK" over and over until we pay attention.

*Adam pointed out last night that Sutton has me wrapped around his little finger. It's true. He's started wanting me to carry him more often, and I sometimes oblige because I just know that carrying him is something I will miss when I can't do it anymore! And when (or if) we have another kid, I'll have to carry that kid and Sutton won't get that attention as much. The purpose of writing this down is that when he wants me to carry him he comes up to me and puts his arms up and says "carry you?" Cutest thing.

 

Wants to be like Daddy. 

*I took him into the movie theater for the first time to buy some tickets for Adam and my dad to go to a movie. Even though we didn't go any farther than the ticket counter, he LOVED it and still talks about the "moomie thea."

*He likes to have us chase him all around the house and he yells "I GET YOU!!!!" even though we're getting him. Lately he's started a variation of this...he puts his head on the ground with his bottom in the air and yells "GET YOU!!" until we push him over.

We took a walk around the block one rainy day and he loved splashing in all the puddles in his rainboots.

*The kid is obsessed with mac n cheese. Probably 95% of the time you ask him what he wants to eat, that'll be the answer. He's started playing more with stuffed animals and he likes to tell us that they need to eat. We'll ask him what they want. It's always mac n cheese.

*Stuffed animals...he has two little puppies and a hard plastic turtle that he carries around all the time. He's started holding them out to me and saying "Turtle cwying." And then he holds it close to his heart and says "I hold him." He started sleeping with one of the puppies every night. So now for bedtime, we need a pacifier, two blankies, and a puppy.

Posing like his Daddy's baby photo.

*He got his first RC car last week. He loves it. It's very simple and has just two buttons. He loves driving it around the house (luckily we have hardwood floors upstairs), through tunnels, through people's legs, and out in the driveway.

*He's started playing with my hair a lot. Not sure why this came about. He likes to rake his fingers through it, or pull it, or just get his fingers all tangled up in it. We're having to talk a lot about being gentle and being nice...this is probably why a lot of moms say short hair is the way to go. I'm just not a short hair person, and I totally thought at 2 years old, it wouldn't be an issue! He makes up for it though...Adam has taught him to say "Mommy's pretty" (I melt), and so sometimes he'll tell me that my hair is pretty.

 Buddies watching Diego out in Mommy's studio.

 *He's really gotten into songs lately. He loves being sung to, though he doesn't really sing. I taught him Itsy Bitsy Spider last night and he loves it. I've had to sing it about 1,986 times since then. He tries to do the motions. He also started helping us read Goodnight Moon, which is his favorite book.

*Still very OCD about a lot of things. Things need to be put away, his shoes can't be dirty, he doesn't like food on his hands when he's eating and wants us to wipe them off between bites. Still don't know if this is something that will last or if we can break him of it. Adam and I are NOT this way. We may have to send him to live with my brother in Colorado who IS that way. Love you, Michael. :)

 He gets so excited when I make coffee in the mornings and I don't know why because it's not like he gets any. Ginger took this photo of him at her house last week having "cah-wee!"

Hiking

Last weekend, we went hiking at Elk City State Park with some new friends. The trail there is 15 miles long, and while we didn't quite do the whole thing :), the part we did was so pretty. We'll be going back again soon.

Sutton likes riding in the hiking pack...he just talks and talks the whole time. Poor Adam has constant jabbering in his ear. This day, he kept saying "BIBLE! BIBLE!" :) The trail is marked by blue paint on trees and rocks so you know you're going the right way. Sutton loved finding the blue spots and was so proud each time he did.

Shae is 6 months pregnant and we hiked over 3 miles. Crazy lady.

This is Harley. He met us at the trail head and hiked with us the entire way. I called the number on his collar when we were back at our car. The lady who answered said they just live across the street and Harley is a rescue dog. His previous owners must've hiked there a lot because any time he hears people over at the trail head, he goes over and hikes with them. He was sweet and we were sad to leave him.

Adam got Sutton wet with a water bottle and he thought it was hilarious. Just had to mention that the wetness in the photo below isn't all sweat.

Weston and Shae were troopers, riding in our car 2 hours each way with Sutton. He was pretty good until the final 30 minutes of the trip when he started crying and getting mad from being in a car seat so long and not having a great nap.

On the way home, we stopped in Howard, KS for dinner. We found a tiny restaurant called Toots and had sandwiches and ice cream. A fun adventure. :)

The Boots

Adam found Sutton these cute rainboots at Goodwill.

Sutton's obsessed. He wears them everywhere.

Playing, walking, running errands...they're multi-purpose boots.

And they're not "shoes," ohhhhh no...they're "BOOTHTS."

He wears them when we go to the Y in the mornings, and when I go to pick him up, they tell him to go get his shoes. "No! BOOTHTS!!" ExCUSE me.

He's so funny carrying them around by their handles inside. He likes that he can put them on and take them off by himself. Whenever we drive somewhere, there's a constant dialogue in the backseat: "Boothts off. Boothts on." Repeat.

Boothts are good for playing with Diesel.

Poor Diesel doesn't have any boothts.

Boothts are also good for jumping. :)

The Studio {Before & After}

I came across the "before" photos of my studio and realized that I never posted them! I think it's so fun to look back at (what is now) my amazing studio to see what it looked like just a year ago.

Just to re-cap the scenario for anyone new to my blog, I ran my photography business out of a studio in downtown Wichita from December 2008 til September 2011, when I moved my business back home. We've lived in our house since September of 2008, and had a separate building in our backyard that Adam had always used as a shop for his RC hobby. When I moved my business back home, I first used our guest bedroom as my office, then we decided to make our back porch into a studio for me. But the screened-in porch would be difficult to control temperatures in, so then we decided to renovate Adam's shop.

Best decision. I love it out here. It was one of those God-things...most people think we built this out here when I decided to move back home because really, who just has a random building in their backyard? It's so perfect.

We'll start with the before photos. This is the view from the doorway..it's mostly how it looked when Adam used it for his shop. There was a paint booth around that table on the left that they'd already demolished by the time I took this photo.

The HiTec sign is covering a door that we decided not to use. The wood was rotting around the door frame and it just didn't seem very stable. Below is the view from the wall you saw above. You can see the entrance on the left.

There was just a small window on the west side of the building, and I wanted lots of natural light. We found some windows for sale on the side of the street in our neighborhood (once again, how does that just happen?), so Adam's dad Ed started cutting out the wall for the new window.

The window hole from the outside.

Remember Sadie? She was essential to the renovation process. :) We miss her.

After the window was installed, Ed finished up all the sheetrock and trim work before we started painting. Below, you can kind of make out the 4 "white" colors I tried out before deciding that none of them were white enough. If you've ever seen my house, I'm a bright-colored paint kind of girl. But when using natural light for photos, the surrounding wall color will reflect off your subject's face, so I knew I had to paint the walls white.

Here you can see the installed window and new door.

Adam and Ed took down the nasty ceiling fan and installed track lighting for me.

I couldn't do without ANY color, so I painted the wall where my desk and supplies would be this great teal color.

And we painted the door. :) Ed also built a covering for the heater that you can see in the above photo, and he and Adam installed all the flooring.

Now for the finished product! I had an idea for a solid wall of shelves, but didn't know exactly how I wanted them. So one night after the kiddo was in bed, Adam and I went out here and used painters tape to tape off where we thought the shelves should go. Ed measured our tape and built me these awesome shelves! They're perfect. I even have a fridge for my Dr Pepper.