Crazy Abigail

I love my four year old daughter - she comes up with some of the craziest ideas. Here are a few of the most recent.


We were enjoying a beautiful day outside and Abigail announced out of nowhere that we were going to do some 'hard work'. This consisted of filling my red mop bucket with grass she hand plucked from along the back fence line. She wanted to help daddy out so that he didn't have to mow as much and she probably did this for an hour. Then we moved onto cleaning out her sandbox for a bit and that occupied her for another 1/2 hour or so. She can be the happiest, hardest worker when she gets into a groove. I love seeing that character trait in her and can't wait to see how that manifests itself later in life.


She has decided that she doesn't like the 'long' story time in her bible study class and petitioned to be moved down to the 2's because they don't have a story time. I have helped out in her class and I think the story time is like 5-10 minutes at best. She is going through a phase when she wants to be like baby. My go to illustration of how much better being a big kid is that baby can't play the games at Chuckie Cheese but she gets too and baby can't eat pizza which she also gets to. So far they haven't made a lasting impression on her and I am sure I will be hearing about this a lot still.


Our friends the Rollins are having their third child and that means that their eldest two Kate and Amelia will likely be bunking up. Abigail is OBSESSED with bunkbeds and another daily conversation is first asking why God let the Rollins have a baby, why we don't have another baby, and how she is going to sleep on the top of the bunkbed and Olivia will be sleeping on the bottom when we do have a baby. She has also already indicated that when we have another baby she is going to Vincent's house again - I think she had declared that a few days after we came home from the hospital with Olivia. I keep trying to tell Abigail we don't even know if we can have more kids and we certainly don't know when that would be, but she is undaunted.


Today we had several conversations about the nails in Jesus' hands. She was asking lots of questions about what happened when he died and we had some good conversations today about that. We pray daily that she will come to know the Lord and hope that seeds continue to be planted towards that direction.

When I was in New Orleans one night after dinner Jeremy told Abigail that he had to do dishes after they ate. Her response was "do you even know how to do dishes?" Ha Ha! Also, when Abigail and Jeremy went to the Cal basketball game while I was gone they gave out free navy blue stocking caps with the Cal Bears logo on them. Abigail was wearing it on our walk yesterday and was concerned that someone would think she played for the Bears since she was wearing the hat. Nevermind that at that time she was pushing Jeremy's measuring wheel around the block. Yes, we got several comments from the neighbors. They think we are crazy (and especially since we were doing this again today).

She Crawls (sort of)

A quick look into her new skill! It doesn't look as impressive on video, but she can really get around.

* Some folks are having trouble loading this one. I have reloaded it once, but still getting an error message. So sorry if it doesn't work!

Indiana Visit

We had the pleasure of a visit from Jeremy's parents this past week and thoroughly enjoyed our time. Well, almost all of us did. I don't have any photos of Richard because he caught a nasty flu bug and spent much of the time in bed. Hopefully his next visit will go a little better!

One night, they watched the kids and Jeremy surprised me by taking me to see Wicked after dinner at Zachary's. It was SO fun! It was also the first time I had left Olivia to be put down without nursing and she went down fine but was up much of the wee hours of the morning (I think due to getting a cold). It was worth it - what a fun surprise from my thoughtful hubby!


We got to watch the Superbowl with Jeremy's folks which was a treat. We went to Gail and Mike James house (Amanda Burtch's folks) who are also fellow Colts fans and cheered away. We even broke open the Colts pinata that my Aunt Diane had got us a long time ago during halftime. Both girls wore their Colts gear to church that day. Ashton Coffey and Olivia hung out for much of the game. It was a lot of fun, but a disappointing loss for Jeremy!


The girls hanging out - Olivia has mastered the army crawl and parades around the house eating things off the floor, much to my dismay.


Made an outing to Little Farm in Berkeley, which has great views along the way. You get to feed goats and cows, which Connie (a real farmers daughter) enjoyed. Abigail took the second photo of us pretending to have a wild time at the park (except for Daddy).

Also went to a wildlife museum.

This was probably Abigail's highlight. One morning when grandpa felt okay he treated her to a doughnut from the 7-11 down the street. What a treat!

Once they left, all I heard from Abigail the next day was who am I going to play with, what are we doing etc - Grandma does a great job of being Abigail's playmate while she is here. She gets up with her at 6pm to color, lets Abigail boss her around, and even pretends like she is the baby and Abigail is her somewhat deliquent mommy (she wouldn't feed the baby but kept telling her to cry). I am so blessed by wonderful in-laws and I never want to see them go (they are way too helpful)! Thanks for the visit Smiths!!

New Orleans Trip

My 92 year old Maw Maw (grandma) passed away last week (photo at left from last summer when we last saw her). Jeremy was gracious enough to let me go and it was a wonderful trip. The funeral was a celebration of a woman faithful to God, her family, and her neighbors. Lots of funny stories were shared and ways that we saw God work in so many of the lives that she had touched over the years (for example: my cousin Melissa now wants to be a nurse and was strengthened in her faith from spending some extended time with her). She was a gracious, hospitable, and wonderful person! After the funeral we all gravitated to her old house, which was badly damaged in Katrina and semi-recently purchased by another couple. They are in the final stages of renovating the place (you can hardly recognize it) and were so gracious to let us take a tour when 20+ of us showed up in their backyard (we didn't realize they had started living there yet). It was neat to see the place that I have to many childhood memories of continue to be used in a way that would make Maw Maw and Pa Pa smile.

I was just thinking of all of the ways God was gracious to our family on this trip. Here are some of them: allowing my mom to fly in from Bangladesh in time to see my Maw Maw before she was unable to talk and being with her when she passed, giving me a husband that let me go for five days and being wise enough to keep Abigail with him, providing last minute plane tickets for only $271, providing a wonderful church family so that it only took a few hours to find three different families for Abigail to spend some time with while Jeremy was at work, being able to spend five days with my mom, and making Olivia ridiculously happy the entire trip (wonderful on the plane, napping in the Ergo at the funeral and French Quarter and where ever we dragged her in New Orleans, charming all of the older folks and family at the funeral, sleeping through the night in a pack n play (she was having trouble with that prior), providing joy to Aunt Myrtle during an afternoon visit, charming all of the BART riders on the way home when it was 1am New Orleans time, and eating lots of meals happily from her carseat).

We had a delicious dinner at Aunt Myrtles after the funeral. Under the watchful eye of my Uncle I came back to Olivia in a pile of wipes (and eating them too). We all had a good laugh.

Mom and Olivia; Mom with her siblings - it was so fun to see them all together and sharing moments of their childhoods.

What FUN we had cheering on the Colts and Saints that Sunday afternoon/evening. I became well acquainted with all of the Saints cheer songs and the drama of the game, while Olivia slept obliviously to the screaming, fireworks and cousins jumping into the pool.

My mom got to spend some great time with her grand-daughter, who loved her. The second photo was from our day in the French Quarter. We had such a nice time eating beignets/cafe au lait, walking around the quarter and along the river front, and driving the scenic route along St. Charles. I joked that our husbands would have hated our afternoon, which consisted of aimless walking and looking at the pretty houses with no hope of sustenance at the end :) We did have a wonderful lunch at the Seafood Pot before we left - can't beat seafood gumbo (even if the butter on the bread we couldn't tell whether it was butter or cheese it was on so thick).

Go Colts

We all cheered the Colts to victory last weekend and are looking forward to doing the same this weekend! Olivia wore a cheerleaders outfit we got as a gift for Abigail and our eldest squeezed into a 18-month onesie somehow since she had to have on Colts gear too (it's covered up by the sweatshirt in the photo). I think that Jeremy has declared Olivia is wearing this outfit to the nursery this Sunday. Abigail wore it when the Colts won the Superbowl, so he might think it's a good luck charm :)

Skiing at Tahoe

Last Saturday, Jeremy and Abigail went to Tahoe with two other daddies and their kids (one of them being her really good buddy Vincent) to Diamond Peak to try their hand at skiing. We spent much of Friday afternoon 'practicing' in our living room after we rented skis from Any Mountain. She liked falling and doing jumps (Jeremy picking her up in the air).

Jeremy said Abigail overall had a good time (Olivia and I stayed at home). They stayed on the bunny hill the whole day which had a small chair lift. When she got going too fast, Abigail would just fall down, which her and Vincent thought was hilarious. Hot chocolate was a big treat at the end of the day but they only took one break for lunch and were otherwise on the mountain the whole day. Sounds like a great first trip to get exposure to the wonderful world of skiing. We are planning another trip up in March.

They left our house at 5:45am and didn't get home until 9pm. Abigail didn't take a nap the whole time, since the car they traveled in had a DVD player. She watched hours of movies, but it kept her happy on the long trip.

Here's some videos of the day. Jeremy says that they make Abigail look much more impressive than reality. Regardless, we were proud of her!

Polka Dotted Kids

For Christmas, I got the girls matching dresses at Old Navy.

On the left, another photograph of Olivia looking slightly petrified in her sisters arms. She looks a bit more relaxed in the other picture.

Last Sunday, since there was only one service, we went to Sweet Tomatoes (one of those all you can eat salad bars Jeremy detests) because they have a breakfast brunch on Sunday mornings that is over by the time two services at church gets out. It was okay, but Abigail was most excited by the fact that the ice cream machine they have for lunch/dinner was working at 10am and her parents let her have some chocolate ice cream after breakfast.

The girls are starting to take baths together. They both think it's hilarious.