Abigail's 9th birthday

I can not believe that my baby girl has turned nine.  Where did the years go?!

Abigail got quite the birthday celebration this year...first she got to celebrate early in Florida, then when we got home, her grandparents McKee came to help us celebrate.

On Friday evening, her friends arrived for her first sleepover birthday party!  She forewarned us that there would be lots of squealing...and there was. :)  All of the girls got along great and we had a really fun time.

We had a purple horse theme for the party.

 

 Celebrating!

 I made her a sleeping bag for her American Girl doll (the tutorial I used is here) and we gave it to her early so that her doll could use it for the sleepover.  Abigail was totally surprised and quite speechless!

Birthday breakfast

After her grandparents and friends left on her birthday afternoon, she opened presents from us.  Here she is with her sundress and matching doll dress (a birthday tradition).

A study in unbridled glee: below is Abigail jumping up and down when she realized that with her American Girl gift cards from us and her great-grandparents, along with birthday money from aunts and uncles and the money she has been saving over the last year, she had enough money to buy her long-awaited new doll!

We headed off to the AG store to get her new friend.  Meet Angela Rachel -- complete with hearing aids and earrings, just like Abigail!

We came home in time for birthday dinner.  This year Abigail requested steak and shrimp (apparently we have moved on from the macaroni and cheese stage...nothing like moving from the basement to the penthouse in one leap!), collard greens, broccoli, and strawberries.

Then it was on to her birthday cake.  She soooo wanted to blow out all candles in one blow.

She did it!

Our family

(My head is oddly warped in this one because my camera does that to anyone who is too close to the edges of the lens.  It's very frustrating when a picture is otherwise a great one.)

We are so very thankful for our sweet, sunny, bright, sparkly, never-give-up girlie-girl!

We love you, Abigail Rose!

Happy 9th birthday!

Our weeks ~ March 11 & 18

Our calendar has been insanely full, but we are surviving and even enjoying the togetherness in the midst of the busyness!

Our spring soccer season has started, so Thursday afternoons are spent at Homeschool Soccer League.  The kids love playing; I love that it is only 2 hours every Thursday afternoon, with no extra practices/games on other days of the week.  Unfortunately, the weather for our first two sessions reminded me of my soccer days in upstate NY -- COLD!!!  Both days had wind chills in the 30s!  I am thankful that my two kids' age groups are playing on side-by-side fields on the parking lot edge of the ball fields, so I sat in the van and watched them instead of sitting outside.  It makes for not-so-good pictures...but it's better than freezing. :)

 

We have a neighbor who has access to too-ripe-to-sell and/or overstock produce at one of our local grocery stores, and when she gets an overabundance, she shares it with neighbors -- I was very excited to find this at my front door one morning!

The kids and I made a quick trip to Florida to see my grandparents one more time before they head back to NY (they are snowbirds).

David enjoyed working on the new shed with Grandpa Minota and Great-Grandpa O'Gorman (getting to use a power tool was a happy thing, too!).

My brother Caleb and his wife Cassandra celebrated their first anniversary while I was there, so my mom and I got to keep my niece -- their surprise honeymoon baby :) -- overnight.  It was wonderful!

The kids went swimming.  Well...Abigail tried but couldn't bear the cold water.  David swam like a polar bear.  I sunbathed and didn't even try to swim -- I don't like swimming until the water hits 90 degrees!

We celebrated Abigail's birthday a few days early with some of our Florida family.

I failed to get any pictures of the kids with my parents -- grrrrr -- but here is a nice picture of my parents!

Since we got home, Bruce and David have been working on the building that will soon be our new church home.  David loves these workdays!

We finished these two weeks with Abigail's 9th birthday, but that event warrants its own blog post. :)

Our week ~ March 4

We had a week that was a combination of slow-at-home and on-the-go.  We started the week with our usual piano lessons and art class, except that our art class took a field trip to the fabric store, which was a very exciting event! :)  Each of the kids chose their own fabric because I will be teaching them how to sew, starting with a pair of pajama pants.  I turned around at one point to find all of my students lined up in the empty fabric-display cases. (These pictures are poor quality because I forgot my camera and had to use my cell phone -- boo!)

 

We stayed busy with school all week, of course...we are almost 80% of the way through our school year!  This is a typical school scene for us; the kids were working hard and Mindy was supervising.  She does this for a while before she settles in her window seat for morning naptime. (Samantha was observing, too, and wearing the new outfit that Grandma Minota had sent for her.)

In the middle of the week, we got snow!  (This is an exciting thing when you live far enough south to not see it very often.)  It was a "Georgia blizzard" -- it filled the air with flurries for a few hours but nothing stuck.  It's hard to see in the pictures, but if you look really closely, you can see some flakes.

 

David was very excited to get a double-yolked egg for breakfast one morning. :)

In typical Georgia fashion, one day we had snow...the next day it was warm enough to play outside in shirtsleeves.  David was off playing with a neighbor friend; Abigail was engrossed in her own happy imagination-world!

I have been busy with secret sewing for a young lady whose birthday is coming soon.  Mindy likes to help me when I sew.  In this picture I was ripping out seams and she put her paw on my arm to "help" me.  She does this all the time -- she also does it with the kids to "help" them write on their school papers -- she is quite sure she is one of the people in our family!

Isn't she beautiful?!

I have been knitting new dishcloths again lately because my supply needed an overhaul.  This is pretty much the only thing I knit at this stage of life...it is mindless and easy and enjoyable...and I can always use a new, pretty one in my kitchen, so they don't go to waste.

 One afternoon, Abigail and I spent a lazy hour sitting on the porch swing enjoying the sunshine.  We were playing one of our favorite word games together and decided that our "x" vocabulary was way too limited, so we pulled out the dictionary.  The "x" section is only the front and back of one page, so it's no wonder we don't use many "x" words -- there aren't many to use!  Sunshine + good company + words = happiness in our house. :)

This mockingbird serenaded us while we sat.  HER vocabulary is certainly not limited in any way.  Boy, can she sing! (Sometimes she imitates a cat, too, which always makes us laugh.)

Our household is full of laughter, which I love.  We all especially enjoy making Abigail laugh, because once she starts giggling, she is helpless!  She will probably never thank me for this picture, but I wanted to capture the unbridled laughter of my still-eight (but-only-barely) little girl!