Monday, July 14, 2008

Life is good

Abby says "friends like these make life so good"... Thank you to all of you who came to celebrate the Life is good store with us! We had fun & we were blessed by your excitement & encouragement. Friends like you really do make life good...



Abby: "Ryan, you need a hat for this party"

Abby: "See, dontcha feel better?"

Ryan: "Not really, it hides my new cool buzz cut"

Ryan: "In fact, I am going to ditch the hat... dare to be different!"
Abby: "OK... but don't ever say I didn't tell you..."




Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Helping Hands

Little hands can help too... getting ready for the Grand Opening party at the store on Saturday night. We hope to see lots of friends... including Abby's little friends too! We will have hors d'oeuvres for our grown-up friends & adventurous little ones from Paesanos, Rio Rio & Zuni Grill and some PB&J for the little friends who are not so adventurous. We hope many of you can make it!


Monday, July 7, 2008

Little Miss Independent

Yesterday when I walked through the front door with Abby & bags of groceries, the telephone was ringing, so I put her down next to the groceries. By the time I wrapped up my call, Abby had helped herself to a nectarine from one of the bags. That's great, I thought, only it needs to be washed. So I took it from her intending to wash it, notwithstanding the very loud protests... in the few short seconds it took me to give the nectarine a little bath, Abby found another one & taken a bite out of it too... so we both had an afternoon nectarine break (not quite as ripe as I prefer)! She would have finished off the nectarine, right down to the seed, but I took it away at the point she dropped it into an empty Sprite box that was by the back door for the recycling bin. She loves to put things into containers & take them out again. She had the nectarine on its way out of the Sprite box & onto the "semi-clean" kitchen floor when I confiscated it. This was after she had put it in her play refrigerator, oven & sink... each time she carefully placed it in the appliance, closed the door, tossed her arm into the air as if to say "ta-da" & then opened the door again to take it back out & move on to the next appliance... & it also made its way into the little cup holder on the lid of the ice chest. That nectarine had a happy, adventurous, well-travelled life! My friends & family who give me grief about not letting Abby eat off the floor & play in the dirt should be so proud!

After snack, she played with (mostly climbed on) her play kitchen for a while. The first time I caught her climbing on the kitchen, she had climbed on top of it & then over it onto the window sill behind it. Of course, I did rescue her immediately rather than run for the camera... but I sure wanted a photo!

By the time she went to bed last night, she had matching bruises on either side of her forehead. One she earned by excitedly crawling right into a wall at my parents' house when I asked her if she wanted to go outside with Grandpa... she forgot the wall was between her & the back door. The other one she got when she hiked a leg over the side of the bathtub & climbed on in while she was not so patiently waiting on me to wash her earplugs for bathime... Wow! I did not know she could do that yet! But she barely even cried, as I leaned over to make sure she was ok. One big adventure after another. Life is good. :-)




Friday, July 4, 2008









Celebrating Freedom

Look who celebrated her freedom by walking! She has dabbled in walking for weeks -- taking a few steps and then shaking her head "no" and sitting down. She decided today was the day to go full forward. Perhaps she was inspired by all of the kids in the parade we went to this morning with the Purintons. Who knows? Anyway, this video is not great, but it's the only one I could manage to catch today. After the first little clip of walking & crashing, the rest is video of me trying to persuade Abby to give it another try while I had the video ready... of course not! Yes, if you are wondering, that is a bag of popcorn in her hand... you just never know what she is going to latch onto.


After an hour of practicing her walking, we went to Cori & Shane's house for a yummy shrimp boil that Jake's mom & sister made. Abby loved hanging out with her cousins, Grayson & Jackson. It was fun to see her playing like a big kid...






Photos by Shane Kyle
www.flickr.com/photos/sixtytwotwelve

Thank God for our Freedom

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Groovin'

Check out the wiggle cam! Perhaps we should be concerned that our girl likes to "shake it" so much at such a young age... but thankfully we have a few years before we need to worry... right now we just enjoy the show...which she puts on at even the slightest hint of a beat. Shake it baby, shake it!