50 weeks

travelin'

Lauren and I are out of town to attend my cousin's wedding.

We've been doing a lot of traveling lately 

& 

thankfully our little girl remains a cooperative traveler.

As she get's older we encounter new challenges in the traveling arena.

Our latest is movement.

Now that she's a walker, sitting on a flight for a couple hours isn't always her idea of fun. 

So we pack new or unfamiliar toys & interactive books {flap books/touch & feel} to keep her busy in flight

and do our best to let her move through the airport before take off. 

I captured this photo traveling over Labor Day & it quickly became a favorite of mine...

Labor Day Weekend

After we realized we wouldn't be moving at the end of August, we booked tickets for Knoxville to celebrate the holiday weekend.

I came in a few days early to share some Lauren time. My aunt Betty was visiting from South Dakota and we enjoyed some shopping excursions, lunches, cocktails and a lot of smiling and clapping for Lauren.


{taking a break to ride a tiny merry-go-round while shopping}

Matt joined us on Wednesday evening and the holiday weekend began.

My parents threw a party on Thursday evening.
They rented a loft downtown and had their favorite musician Otis Gibbs play.
If you're a fan of folk music, check him out.
The McQuinn's are pretty big fans... this is Lauren's third time hearing him live.




It was a wonderful evening full of family & friends, drinks, food, great music...
but our night didn't end there.
Matt and I went along with a my siblings and a few others to the bar afterwards.
It's been a long time since either of us were hanging with the 'after hours' crew,
but we kept up and enjoyed our little adventure out.

The rest of the weekend we spent at the lake.

{this is the only picture I have of the lake itself & I took it by accident. When unloading the car, my camera dropped on the ground, so this picture was a test to ensure it still operated.
Next time my camera needs to go to the doctor, direct me to this post.}

Sometimes I forget how relaxing The Pour House is...


We ate summery foods like watermelon & cheeseburgers.
We drank beer & floated in the water.
We played Cards Against Humanity & laughed around a fire.

A pretty perfect weekend.



Lauren still loves the water.




Now that she is walking, things were a little more interesting on a floating cottage,
but we kept her busy and let her spend lots of time in the water.






We rounded out our weekend with Sunday brunch at one of our favorite spots in Knoxville
{discovered that Lauren is a big fan of brunch. BIG}
and some cheers for Good 'Ole Rocky Top.


All in all it was another amazing weekend for our family,
full of fun, love, & lots of memories.

Come to think of it, we've had a lot of those types of weekends this summer.

lucky.

Christmas

Lauren's first Christmas was full of joy, travel, and a lot of love.

After singing 'Mele Kalikimaka' for a week in Hawaii, we had a quick Christmas celebration in Knoxville...




where Santa paid an early visit to Lauren.




We traveled to Iowa to spend a white Christmas with the Grandma & Grandpa McQuinn and the rest of the family.
We spent Christmas Eve with Grandma & Grandpa







and Lauren woke up Christmas morning to another visit from Santa Clause.




Matt's sisters and their families made it home for Christmas Day and our big celebration began!




This is the barn that Grandpa McQuinn made for Graham & Hayden.. it was a hit, with both the kids and the adults.
I can't wait to see what he makes for Lauren...
I have visions of a doll house.
{wink, wink Grandpa}




It was so special to see Lauren with all her cousins.



Claire and Lauren are the only two girls and it's obvious they share a special little bond.


We even had the opportunity to see a few friends...


although our 'get-togethers' have changed, dramatically, in the last few years!

We had a wonderful Christmas,
our most special yet,

thanks to one little girl.

Merry Christmas!

Day 6

Day 4

Day 3

Lauren met the ocean today...

{five things}

If you are a faithful follower of this blog, you've probably noticed the severe lack of updates. You may believe this has something to do with my new role as a mother and this is how the blog will continue from now on.
Wrong. {I hope.}
I have full intentions of being a better blogger and documenting all of our adventures, especially as new parents.
But lately, I've been a little busy.
These five things may help to explain that…

{1}
Lauren had her first road trip. Little Bird can travel.
My mom and I set out with Lauren for the windy city to attend our dear sweet Kathleen's baby shower. We left on Friday morning and Lauren did fabulously. She was happy and slept most of the trip, amazing us with her content demeanor during an 8 hour road trip.

{Lauren after an 8 hour road trip + an hour of traffic}
Lauren had the pleasure of meeting a few of her dear sweet 'aunties' and we had a wonderful afternoon celebrating Kathleen and sweet baby girl Grace.

I had my first night out, dinner with friends, to celebrate Kathleen's 30th birthday.  I loved catching up with everyone and enjoying a relaxing glass of wine, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't itching to get back to my dolly girl.
We ventured for home on Sunday, the day that Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and several other states were riddled with tornadoes. We made the decision to get a hotel in Indiana and stop traveling around the time the severe weather warning went into effect.  We stopped in Edinburgh, Indiana. Our hotel happened to be in the area of an outlet mall, so we stopped to do some Christmas shopping before checking in. While heading to our car, post shopping, a woman standing outside the Coach store informed us that a tornado had touched down to the South and we were welcome to take shelter inside the back room of the store. Obviously, we took the offer. It was slightly scary to think that we were hunkered down in a Coach store with my dear sweet babe, but it also reaffirmed that we made the right decision by stopping, as the storms were directly in our path home. After about 15 minutes, we were released from our 'shelter' and since we could see our hotel from the front of the store, we safely and quickly made our way to settle in for the evening.
Thankfully we didn't experience any severe weather, but I learned a little lesson about being safe rather than sorry, especially with Little Bird.
What else did I learn?
That a baby requires an incredible amount of items when traveling.
I don't believe this will be the last time I mention this…
We've got quite the itinerary ahead of us.

{2}
My mom celebrated her 50th birthday last weekend.
Her birthday party was last Friday night and we had an incredible evening celebrating.
She laid a few ground rules early on… no surprise party and something small and intimate. My father started from there and planned a truly wonderful evening.
My parents best friends, The Wilkenings, flew in and my dad rented a loft in downtown Knoxville for the weekend.
That's all that Annie knew.
The evening started with a wine tasting. A friend of my father's, who owns a local liquor store in Knoxville, arrived at the party with two wine reps. Together they prepared both a white and red wine tasting for the party guests, which consisted of our family and a few close friends. My mom loves wine and the education that comes with a tasting, so this was the perfect way to start off her celebration.
While we sampled several wines, a chef was in the kitchen preparing a delicious Italian meal, of caprese salad, cesar salad, grouper and chicken parmesan, and tiramisu. We also had an awesome cake prepared by a local bakery, decorated with my mother's favorite wine. As we finished up dinner and got to visiting, the real surprise was under way.  My father had contacted one of their favorite musicians, Otis Gibbs, and had scheduled a surprise performance for Ann's birthday party. I've mentioned Otis in a previous blog post and even Little Miss Lauren had the opportunity to hear him live this summer.
When he walked in my mother was shocked.
And she is not an easy woman to surprise.
We had a wonderful evening, celebrating an amazing woman, wife, mother, and friend.















{3}
I'm a big fan of birthdays. Both yours and mine.
But this year, mine sort of snuck up on me.
I usually have a birthday countdown and celebrate the entire month of November.
This year was different.

Last year for my 30th, Matt surprised me with a trip to Chicago and I began 30 with a trip to Saks to pick out a pair of Christian Louboutin heels and ended it surrounded by friends and drinks at a bar.
It was fabulous…

but somehow a low key day, spent with my husband and our sweet sweet sweet baby girl was even more amazing.

What a difference a year makes.


{4}
Each time Matt has traveled back and forth to Colombia he has taken a good amount of baby items back to Colombia. His latest trip was his last haul, before he hauls us back with him.
It's been interesting to try and prepare for our lives 'con bebe' in Colombia. The wardrobe, the necessities, toys… trying to decide what I think I can find in Colombia and what I absolutely need from America.

It's going to be an adventure...
{and while it is fast approaching, I am having a hard time fathoming that final pack job…}

And last but not least….

{5}
We are homeowners.

No, we are not leaving Colombia.

Let me start from the beginning.
When I traveled back to Colombia in July, Matt mentioned that he had been thinking about buying a home in Knoxville. I was quite surprised by his proposal, but as we began talking about our five year plan I began to understand his house proposal. Through the following several months, not a lot went on in the house hunting front. Matt would send me a few emails with properties, most of them older homes with the potential for some upgrades. When Matt arrived for Baby McQuinn's birth, he got pretty serious about 'Project Let's Buy a House'. He contacted a realtor and our first house hunting excursion happened to be on my due date. House hunting continued after Lauren's birth and the house we were looking for evolved from something older to something on the newer side. The day before Matt went back to Colombia, he had a few new construction homes he wanted to check out before he left. I chose to stay back with our little darling. Matt came back excited and with pictures and drove me by the site of the house the following day. Within 48 hours, we put an offer on the house and had a contract. We closed on the house last Friday and are currently waiting on a few things to get finished up.
So the last several weeks have been filled with paperwork, countertops, fixtures, shopping, phone calls, emails, more countertops...

There are probably a lot of questions that go along with trying to figure out why we bought a home that we aren't going to live in full time. While I am not sure I can answer all of them, I can say that we were ready to have a place to call our home. While it is wonderful to spend time with our families when we are in the US, we have missed a space that is ours, that holds our things, a space where we can be a family. I think our new little addition really motivated us to create a little more stability in our lives and while we are far from what some define as 'settled down', we feel good about our family and our exciting future.