Monday, December 29, 2008

About Abby...

I know the grandparents have been anticipating an "Abby" post for a while, so here you go!


Abby LOVES the moon. Every night she says, "wanna see the moon?", which is her way of telling us she wants to go look for it. When she does see it, she gasps loudly and points and says "MOON!" very excitedly. Also, whenever Garrett or I are on the computer, she sits next to us and asks to see the moon, so we have to do a google image search for the moon so she can see pictures.

One time a few months ago we were at a friend's house and Abby was eating Nilla Wafers. She took a bite out of one, then took a close look at the remaining cookie and noticed that it was a crescent shape. "MOON!" she said excitedly.

She loves baby dolls and is obsessed with pushing them around in her new doll stroller from Santa.

Abby LOVES shoes! She is always putting on my flip flops, heels, sneakers, anything she can find, and walks around in them.

She tries to say full sentences, but it's all jibberish until she says the last word. "Blah blah blah lalalalal play?" "Blah blah blah lalalala shoes?" "Blah blah blah blah friends?"

Abby likes to play. Every time I pick her up to take a nap or go to bed, she whines, "Play? Play? I wanna play!"

She's very social. She knows the names of all her friends and is always asking to go see them. "Friends? Friends? Play? Go see friends?"

She can count to ten, and can also count objects (up to 10).

Favorite foods: chicken nuggets, apples, olives, grapes, CHEESE

Abby loves to draw with crayons or pens. Every time she finds paper to draw on, she first brings it to us and says, "Abby? Abby?" and won't be satisfied until we write her name on the paper.

She likes to see her cousin Chris on the webcam. "See Fris? See Fris?" (we're working on the hard 'C' sound)

She tries to manipulate her way down from the kitchen table, or from the shopping cart. She'll say she wants a hug ("Huck...huck..."), and then when we pick her up to hug her, she'll try to wiggle down out of our arms so she can go play. She is NOT happy when we put her back where she was!

Abby refuses to chew soup. I don't know what it is, but every time I give her soup, whether it be chicken noodle, spaghetti-o's, or vegetable beef, she just puts scoops of it in her mouth and swallows it right down. So, I usually feed it to her myself and before every bite I say "Chew it up!" and I chomp my teeth up and down to show her what I mean. So, I give her the bite, she swallows it, and then once her mouth is empty she chomps her teeth up and down to mimic me.

"Time out" has proven to be pretty effective with her. We just put her in the corner of the room and ignore her for about 1 minute, then go back and tell her to say sorry. Sometimes she's VERY stubborn and won't say it, so she stays in time out until she does. In some instances I've had to go up to her 5 times before she said she was sorry.

I can't believe our baby is almost two years old! Time flies when you're having fun!


Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Merry Christmas!!


Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Sometimes...

Sometimes I see pictures like these and I want to cry.



Does she have to grow up so fast?

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

A little congrats....

...to ME!!! And to my friend Abbie. (I always feel silly having to add "my friend" whenever I talk about Abbie, but I just have to clarify because really, my daugher Abby has nothing to do with this).

I'm sure all of you know that Abbie and I have a food storage blog, Safely Gathered In. Hopefully you all have our button on your blogs!!!!! (just kidding...sort of)

Anyway, Abbie and I recently wrote an article (a guest post) for a very popular blog called Money Saving Mom, and today (Tuesday) it was published! Money Saving Mom gets over 1 million hits a month, and we are already seeing the numbers on our own blog go up. A LOT. Another piece of exciting news is that we have been invited to guest post every month (or every other month) for the forseeable future. We are SO EXCITED! And, it won't be much extra work because most of the guest posts in the future will be posts that we've already written for our own blog.

Ok, enough gloating. I am just so excited. Abbie and I have put a lot of time and hard work into our blog, and we love that it is a success!

To read our guest post, click here.

Friday, November 21, 2008

It's that time of year again...

I could watch this video clip ALL DAY:



In fact, I have been watching it every day this week to get psyched for the game that I probably will not see much of (darn that mtn channel!). But I'm really, really hoping to catch the last quarter (at LEAST) at a friend's house. Actually, this week they aren't our friends because they will be wearing Ute attire. Man, Church will be really painful on Sunday if we lose...

And in case anyone is interested,
here's a description of that final drive of the game, from John Beck's perspective.

GOOOOOOO COUGARS!!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

It's a Girl!!

My little sister had her second baby this afternoon.

Aunt B

Congratulations, Emma and John! She looks just like her big brother.
And congrats to John's sister, who delivered her first baby today in the hospital room right next door to theirs.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

A Day at the Lake

Garrett had the day off last Friday, and the weather was gorgeous so we went to the lake and had a picnic.

The leaves are finally changing... it looks much better in person.



Throwing rocks...looks like she's a lefthand pitcher. Jealous, John? (John's been trying to teach Chris to be a lefthand pitcher ever since Chris was born)


Abby fell in the mud. She wasn't too happy since she hates being dirty!
In other news... can you believe we're already halfway through November?!? Time is flying, and I can't wait until Thanksgiving!!