Thankfulness in July

Taking a page from a pastor friend who is currently in the middle of a family-move from the DC area back to Georgia, I would like to begin sharing my "Thankfulness" moments for the past month. I intend to keep this up, as I believe it to be very important to not only gripe, but also to celebrate the good things going on in our lives.

So, my list of things from July that I am thankful for:

Time with family - we began with a trip to the beach for the 4th of July and got to spend some quality time with my side of the family.


Time with family 2 - Annys parents drove from Wyoming to visit us, and bring Abby her very own, custom built toy box. Our time with them was spent hanging out, but we also got to do some touristy things, and had some amazing crab mac-n-cheese!

Time with family 3 - Our trip to St Louis was just what my mind needed. A complete break from the office was incredible, and the fact that I wasn't thinking about work meant I could open my mind to whatever came. I would say that I appreciated the wonders of my wife and daughter more in the course of that weekend than in the months prior. It was good to get away.

Abby with her cousin Ellie.

Abby with her cousin Ada.

Abby's first concert - We went last weekend to see the Dangertones, a local blues band. We had not seen a live show in a very long time. They're a good show, especially at 4 in the afternoon!

Anny's braces are finally on - After months of talking about how to fix a problem with her teeth, Anny is a proud owner of her own set of braces. Her story in the fall is that she wanted to see how her students feel! Anny was hiding them from everying, including me, but I think she has come to terms a bit more about having them. (which is good, since she'll have them on for at least 18 months.)

A lot has happened this month. I'm thankful for all of it.

Feel free to post something similar. Like I've said in the past, I'm not the kind of person to "tag" other people. It was a very nice exercise for me to do for me.

Wordless Wednesday

45/365 Playing in the Sand
Originally uploaded by armonroe

More Wordless Wednesday at http://www.wordlesswednesday.com/!

(Taken by our friend Stacy at the Dangertones Concert at Jellyfish Joels)
http://www.dangertones.com/

St Louis Summary - a Quick Post

Okay, here's the rest of the St Louis Summary, because now it's long gone and not necessarily blog-worthy:

Abby got along wonderfully with her cousins. They played and interacted non-stop and loved every minute of it. Moreso, us parents loved how well it went!

We had a lunch with Paul and Sarahlynn and only Paul and Sarahlynn. The girls stayed home with Anny (and Paul)'s parents and we hit up a nice restaurant at 2 on a Friday afternoon. I highly recommend this to everyone and anyone - sitter for ALL of the kids and a double date. It was heaven.

So much has happened since then that I want to post about, so this is the summary post you get. Sorry.

Met Them in St. Louis! v1

Friends, I have been negligent in my blogging again, but have all intentions of making it up over the next few days! I refuse to do a step-by-step of our trip to see the family in St Louis, but I will touch on highlights. I think I will break it into categories:

1 - OUR Kiddo
2 - The Kiddos Together
3 - Parents

Today is dedicated to OUR Kiddo!

We decided to fly out late on Thursday and return mid-day Monday, mostly for Abby's sake. We ended up doing a LOT of walking around the airport, and stopped for some dinner. It was actually an ideal place for her to practice walking great distances while safely in the sight of her parents.

Once we got on the plane we grabbed two as close to the front as we could that were together. Ended up sitting next to a very nice woman who slept for most of the trip. It's always awkward to be the person bringing a baby/child onto a plane. I am always looking over my shoulder, wanting to apologize in advance. Turns out that on the flight out, we didn't have to apologize for much! Abby was a little fussy because she was being cramped, but went to sleep before we were out of Maryland airspace and slept until after we landed.

Once we landed, though, things changed. I can imagine that it's a little intimidating, though, to fall asleep in a cramped plane and wake up to a big cousin poking your leg! Abby was a trooper, and then she really woke up. And stayed up. For many hours. New Rule: Do not let Abby nap at 5:30, even if it's on a plane.

Over the weekend she was great with her cousins, but that's for the next post. :o) (Yes, just to build anticipation...)

On Monday we flew back, this time planning on landing before dinner, so that we could try to get Abby back into her "normal" of the Eastern time zone. She fell asleep between lunch and the airport. We let her sleep as long as she wanted to, which was pretty amazing. We checked in, still asleep. We got through security, including a very thorough check of both Anny and Abby because the buckles on her overalls set off the metal detector. Still asleep. She finally woke up when we found a place to sit down.

She was great in the airport again. I think that she has some extroversion in her system. Abby knows how to work a room already, and she sure did work the airport! I think she went out of her way to make eye contact with everyone at Gate 4. It's really neat to see people gabbing on their cell phones, irate about something at the office just stop and smile. The scary thing is that it looks like she understands that, so she will work to make that happen. Very cute.

On the plane we managed to get the inside seats on the front row, sitting next to a woman who had just met her 7 month old grandson for the first time. It was a great situation for us. Whenever Abby was on the floor our "friend" would put her leg out so that Abby could not get to the aisle. Brilliant. Abby also began the flight on a good note with the flight attendant by clapping for him whenever he was on the loudspeaker. It was even cuter when they welcomed "ladies, gentlemen, and Abby to flight...." She heard her name again, so she got excited again.

We tried to occupy her, and had success at it. It helped us that we didn't play all of our cards at once. We started with her book. Moved on to playing with a water bottle. Then snacks came. Then she pooped, so it was a lot of fun to distract until we got through the (very light) turbulence. After a clean diaper I showed her the clouds out the window, and when that got old I showed her that the windows could be closed. We had two windows, so it was twice the fun!

Abby fell asleep during the descent, but we knew better than to let her sleep this time! As soon as we got to the carpet inside BWI I began to gently wake her up. By the time we got to the baggage carousel she was awake and chipper again, walking all over the place with Mama. When my brother and his wife got there, Abby was in even more heaven. (They were life and money savers by picking us up from the airport, so we bought them dinner.)

GREAT trip from Abby's perspective. I'm looking forward to our next trip out, which will be at Christmas time.

Next post will be about all three of the girls. If you're itching for pictures, check them out HERE!

It's Been a While

Lots has happened in the last week. Some I can blog about, some I can not. Anny has already blogged about our visitors HERE, and all that I would add is that it was very nice to have them with us. (Editors note, though: I'm proud of Anny using links! She's learning quickly.)

I always forget how hard it is to take a few days off and follow it up by actually going to work for a day! Our whacky schedule has me off again at the end of this week and the beginning of next, so it's even more weird! Luckily not too much work piles up for me when I'm gone during the summer. I keep tabs on email just in case, but voicemail it out of the question. My office knows that they can get me by cell if they need something, but are always respectful of my time away.

The highlight of my time away was just plain old hanging out with the family. We had granduer ideas of going downtown and packing our schedule, but really just hung out a lot. I finally inflated Abby's little pool and used it as a great tool to wear her down a little each day so that bed time was easier for us all. :o)

Oh yeah, and we had a bunch of green beans from our garden with dinner one night!! We have a cucumber that's close and a bunch of flowers on our squash plants. I think our peppers got planted too late and might e useless this year. Oh well.

What have you been up to for the last week?

My Thoughts, Bottled and Packaged for You

Anny asked me yesterday, very honestly:

"Do you just sit around and think this stuff up all day?"

She knows better! I was with her all day! There was very little "just sitting around" on Saturday when we helped to host a surprise birthday party for our friend Charlene. We did the farmers market, breakfast, and some cleaning house before leaving at 10:30 ish to get to their house. The only time for thinking was in the car, when we were talking.

(insert joke about Rob choosing between thinking and talking, and rarely doing both at the same time.)

So, what was she so baffled about? A picture concept in my head*.

As I've taken up the Project 365 Challenge over on our Flickr account (HERE). Project 365 is where you take a picture a day for a year. In our case, we're taking our 365 days of pictures of Abby. We have missed a couple of days already, but have made up for it in other days. Our project is the 365 days between Abby's First Birthday and her Second.

The real reason that I began the project is that I want to take better pictures of Abby, not just more pictures. (If I kept all of the pictures that I have taken in the last 13 months, there would be no room for any more on the three computers in our house) I was tired of taking the same picture over and over. Right now, Abby is still gaining toys like it's going out of style, but she's also gaining personality and style.

I've got a ton of ideas from other people, and scenes that are in my head for pictures of Abby. She's always game for a camera and I'm always game to take pictures. We're perfect for each other.

Feel free to pop by Abby's Project 365 anytime. I'll link to it on the sidebar starting today.

*The particular picture-idea I had just come up with was using all of her foam bath-time letters for a picture of "alphabet soup." I'll do it one evening when I think about it. My proble is that I think of them at odd times when I can't follow through....