Over the weekend, Claire's dad went on a 4 day trail running adventure. I'm all for adventures, so I encouraged him to go. Plus it was part of a program for veterans and since the original red (the big red sounded too gum-ish) is a veteran, and it was Veteran's Day weekend, it was pretty much were he was supposed to be. I've done more than my share of time away from Kyle but we've only had a handful of nights away from him since Claire has been born. It wasn't a walk in the park (our kiddo is somewhat of a live-wire and parenting her is best done in a tag-team approach) but I had the help of solid backup (aka grandparents) and overall, it was a good weekend...maybe just a little more tiring.

I by no means need a reminder to realize how lucky we are to have Kyle for a husband and for a dad ( spending years away from him basically makes it impossible to take him for granted). He works his butt off every day for us and although he is pretty focused and determined when it comes to his work, I have no doubt that he wishes that he could spend his days with us instead (can you blame him? we're pretty awesome).  So being sans co-parent and seeing everyone's "grateful for veterans" posts on facebook, made it pretty clear that thankful doesn't quite explain how I feel when it comes to the little family we have and the time that we have together. We'll always be wishing we had more. It's part of being the growing family stage of life...never enough time. But the time we do have together, isn't wasted.

On our last day without Kyle, we had some time to kill, so we went to the park and swung through Starbucks on the way. Although Claire is a milk-hater, I decided to see if the novelty of having her own mini-"coffee" would be enough for her to enjoy a steamed milk (with cinnamon of course). It totally worked. She was in love with her "coffee" and packed it around the park with her asking me to cheers with her.

In case you're wondering, yes, I did bring my big camera to the park with me just to photograph my toddler with her babycinno. It's worth it as long as I don't drop it in a puddle.

Judging by her face, I'm pretty sure she initially thought she was getting away with something. 

Getting away with something tasty...

Really tasty...

 Finding different spots around the park to sit and drink her "coffee" was half the fun.

When you photograph your child as much as I do, you catch some funny expressions. This picture cracks me up. The one handed coffee-hold has something to do with it.
 

 Then there is my favorite one. I'm obssesed with the vintage feel of this edit. I basically have to force myself not to use it on every picture.

Then, since this is reality, the sweet little posed pictures of my darling child sipping from a holiday Starbucks cup was soon followed by this.

But that 's a different story.