Abby's Dup-day

Abby had such a great day on her birthday. She can't really say the word birthday, so she says "dup-day." She kept saying all day long "My dup-day come home today!" She received a few cards in the mail this week, and they contained special little "bonuses." (thanks grandma Debbie and Great Grandma Rowlett). She was so excited. And both times when she was instructed to go show mom what she got, she dropped the additive and ran over with the card, screaming in delight.
Thursday morning, Jodi went out and got her 24 balloons and came home with them - and Abby went nuts. This is a girl that totally loves it when she gets one balloon. Come in with 24, and she'll hit the roof.

She spent the better part of the morning pulling the balloons around, separating them out by color then bunching them up again, and relishing the joy that comes from having 24 balloons. Maybe she gets it from me - I remember getting a stuffed animal in a basket tied to balloons when I was young, and it was the coolest thing ever for me. Or maybe it's just that balloons are so cool.
Foregoing the traditional cake, we opted for cupcakes. This way, we figured Abby could help decorate them. We had bought sprinkles and little stars that could go on them, and she had fun spreading the icing and putting the stars on.



Abby's finished product. She is so proud!

So after singing, blowing out the candles (in three puffs; one for each candle), and eating cupcakes (Abby only ate the top off of it where the stars were, then didn't want any more), we moved on to the goods. This was the part she had been waiting for - she knew there would be presents coming, and every day since she has been asking if it's her dup-day again and if she can have more presents. I'll just post a few pics of her opening them - and please ignore the wrapping paper. She doesn't know the difference, and we wanted to use it up and not have to worry about moving wrapping paper. Yeah, yeah, we're cheapskates. But honestly, it's just ripped off and discarded, so it's not that important.


Cheeseball

She looks thrilled. I promise, though, she really does like it.


This was her big present - a baby doll that came with a stroller and a bunch of accessories from Nona and Doo-dah.

It's obvious that she did like this one.
So the baby doll went over real big, and it has those little cups that you can pretend to feed the baby and the liquid disappears, then you put it right-side up and the liquid comes back (I'm explaining it bad, but I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about - these things used to be amazing to me, I couldn't figure them out). Abby was also somewhat confused about how it works. Where did it go?

All in all, though, the day was quite successful. I think that Abby had a really great day, and in the future will remember that a dup-day means a good day. Oh, and in nursery today at church one of the leaders was saying that Abby was 2. I was informed that she emphatically and repeatedly corrected him and said she was 3. They all had a good laugh about it.
In other news, Jodi was authorized to take the Nursing boards this week and signed up. She originally wanted to take them in Richmond, but there were no available dates for a month. After making some calls, she discovered that a testing site in Vienna (VA, not Austria) had an opening today (June 1). There was also an opening next week, but she chose not to take it because it's our last day in our ward and there is a work party that we were going to go to. So she gave herself 3 days to cram. And she did - and let me tell you, some of the questions are completely ridiculous. ever wonder about the colors in hospitals? I know that they try to choose colors that are somewhat soothing (and who decides that? Maybe some people are calmed by a jet black room, ever think of that?), but I never realized that the nurses were in charge of that. Okay, I don't really think that they are, but the wording of one review question pretty much said that. I understand that the topic of wall colors is one of the crises faced in our nation's health care, but I don't think they ever lectured on it.
So she took the boards today and I'm sure she did well. She will still have to be on pins and needles until the results come back, but at least it's done. Now she can focus on more important things like what colors we should make the walls in our new place.

Happy Birthday Abby!!

She's growing up so fast.

Birth

6 months

1 year old

1.5 years old

2 years old

2.5 years old

3 years old

More pics of today to come...

BBQ and bathtime

Holidays don't come all that often around here. And in the next few years, they may even be less frequent. So we took advantage of the beautiful day on Monday and went to a local park and cooked hamburgers and hot dogs. Being the ever-so prepared guy that I am, matches and some sort of fire producer were obviously forgotten. Luckily, I'm full of enough hot air on most days to get something going, provided I have enough girl scout water. And an empty hot dog bag works perfectly as a plate. Other than those two problems, which we got around, everything went off pretty well.

The wind was blowing really hard - Abby is holding up some sort of plant life, which is blowing straight sideways.

It took a bit of coaxing, but once Abby realized that hot dogs cooked outside are the same as the ones Lisa her babysitter cooks inside, she gobbled it down.

Hmmm...I'm just not buying what she's selling.

We brought Abby's chalk along, and there was a concrete base to the table. So Abby got to have fun under the table....

and beg for scraps.

There was a great playground there that Abby was loving, but then in the nasty bathroom, due to an overzealous desire to maintain some sort of sanitary conditions, there was a small accident. I knew about it outside of the bathroom because Abby was kind of shouting it out to me. So, to her dismay, we were forced to cut our fun day a little short.

We were able to treat Abby to a bath that night, though - I say treat because she absolutely loves taking a bath (most days). And it can sometimes be fun - with enough soap and the right strategy, you can get good results.



So yes, in continuing our preparations for moving, we have made the decision to cancel our cable. Why? Self-punishment? Money? The little voices? Maybe a bit of all of the above. It's only two weeks, and we don't watch that much anyways. Sometimes we'll be talking with friends, and they'll go on and on about Lost, 24, West Wing, or some other show that's on that is really popular. And they'll turn to us and ask about it, and we might say something lame like "I've been lost before, and it sucks." Because we know nothing about any of the shows. Are we weird? Are we really missing out on something? Or are most people able to keep up with shows on a weekly basis? I guess TiVo can come in handy for that, but we're too cheap to go with that - we do it like in the 20th century, where if you miss the show, either wait for the rerun or it's gone forever.

And here's the quote of the week:
A commercial comes on about some store that claims their cotton clothes are organic. I ask how in the world they can call cotton organic (thinking, in my limited mind, that only food should be labeled organic). Jodi says it's how they grow it. "Organic cotton?" I reply. "How can it be anything but organic? They shave it off sheep!"

Wow.

Jodi stared at me for a minute until I realized what I had just said. No rebuttal was necessary. The dawning realization of my stupidity was enough. And I'm going to med school? Yikes.

Cutting the Tube

Well my final word to Robby this morning was..."Let's cut cable this Friday." Sounds crazy. Yes. I guess I'm making a project out of my family. Thing is I'm to cheap to pay 50 bucks for a full month in Charlottesville and Richmond. So here comes the burn my friends and the countdown. I'm figuring 17 days without cable. Whoo Ha. And Poor Robby!

Huneysuckles!!

Abby has learned what I consider to be a part of a healthy childhood: the joy of honeysuckles. There are some people we know that have never done it: finding a perfectly yellowed suckle (that sounds wrong), pulling the little green part off, and pulling the honey out to eat. Or drink. I guess it's more of a liquid, right?




She really liked it, and didn't want to leave at the end. She also had fun picking flowers and giving them to mommy.



And Abby is going to turn out to be a great chef; every time there is baking going on she wants to get involved. We're making cinnamon rolls here. And they turned out pretty good!




That is Abby's little rolling pin that she uses to help me. Unfortunately, in the packing we've been doing, Daddy's rolling pin was put in a box somewhere. So we had to take turns using the little one:)

Abby is really getting into sharing pretty much everything with mom and dad. Whenever she's eating something, we hear "Mama (or Dada), want some [whatever] too? or if she's playing with something, she always wants to give us a turn. The other day this was painfully obvious. There was a foul funk in the air, and Jodi thought that it may have been her. So she flipped Abby around and did the parent thing, where you smell your kid's behind. I know you other parents know exactly what I'm talking about. After Jodi gave her a whiff and concluded she hadn't crapped herself, Abby giggled for a second, then turned her butt toward me and said, "Dada, want to smell, too?" We all (including Abby) laughed for a bit, but I don't think Abby knew exactly what we were laughing about. Ah, the joy of children.

We won't be homeless!

So it's done. We went to Richmond on Saturday, and after seeing half a dozen places right around St. Mary's Hospital, we found the place where we'll live:

They said the truck would only be an extra 50 bucks a month. So we went for it. It won't be that bad of a deal, we figure the forest creatures will take care of any trash that we have.
We didn't actually take a picture of the place we'll be living in. It'll be a two bedroom townhouse, and the people are bending over backwards to make it work - we wanted hardwood floors, and they said we could have a place renovated to make the kitchen bigger before moving in, and we said "of course!" Then they got back to us and said they couldn't renovate the particular unit we had chosen. So we picked a different one. They said they couldn't do that one either. Turns out only certain ones on one side of the road could be renovated for extra kitchen space, and only one was available, and it was carpeted. We hem hawed over it for a bit, then they called us back with good news. The girl we had been talking to had talked to the manager and said "This is a young family, she's a nurse, he's a med student, and they want to sign a year long contract and will pay rent on time every month." The manager looked at her and replied, "Rip up the carpet." That made us happy, but made me somewhat leery. What kind of people do they rent to? What are our neighbors going to be like? Oh well, it's about a half a mile from Jodi's work, so it will be great in that respect.

It's crazy how fast time is going by - we are planning on moving on the 14 of June, and that's mere weeks away. And we just realized that Abby's birthday is only a week away. Where did May go? Forget May, what in the world happened to April? At least Abby knows what's up. She's learning to show different numbers of fingers - it still taked her time to do it, but she gets really excited when she does. This is how old she is now -


See how excited she gets?
And she knows how old she'll be soon:


It's funny because if you ask her how old she is, she says, "Abby's three tomorrow." Well kiddo, not quite that soon, but it is coming up :)

Not much else to say, but here's a few random videos for your enjoyment. Sorry for the short clips - I recently discovered that our video camera can't do more than 10 seconds of video at a time on the card :( So we'll have to be on the lookout for a good deal.

A few short clips from strawberry picking:




Here's Abby being crazy:

Hooray for Jodi!!!!

Congratulations to our new grad!!!!
We are so proud of you!!

This past week has been quite a blur. The weekend consisted of going to graduation ceremonies and CELEBRATING!! We were fortunate to have family come and visit for Jodi's graduation, which stepped things up a notch as far as craziness goes here. Squeezing a dozen people into our tiny place certainly made for good times :) At the pinning ceremony in the morning, they had it indoors because of rain. They said the seating would be "first come, first served." So we showed up at 8:45 for a 10:30 ceremony. Only to find out that they weren't letting anyone in until 9:30. So while there were only about 20 people there before us, people continued to arrive and push their way to the front (with Abby and the twins there, standing in one spot for even 10 minutes was a stupid thing to attempt, let alone 45 minutes). What a dumb thing to do, say something like that and then not open the doors until over a hundred people are there. They were just asking for a brawl.

The pinning ceremony went lovely, and the evening ceremony was awesome, too, with Governor Tim Kaine being the keynote speaker. I was waiting for them all to toss up their little caps, but I guess that's a little high-schoolish. Jodi was so excited through all of it, though, and rightly so. I am so proud of Jodi and all of the hard work she put into her studies and everything she has done over the past few years. All of the hard work, long nights, endless care plans, and countless Saturdays gone to clinicals, have finally paid off. You deserve every bit of this. She is so excited and happy that it is all done, and so are Abby and I. In the words of one of the grads, "Mommy's back!"

The only complaint I have from the whole weekend is that I was sick. Some stupid bug that left me congested, coughing, and tired. And poor Abby has been sick too, coughing half of the night and actually asking for medicine. I hope that isn't a bad sign of things to come...

One of the nights family was here, there was a really bad thunderstorm. Abby has been scared of thunder ever since a camping trip when she was going to sleep alone in the tent and a huge crack of thunder scared the crap out of her. So she did not want to go to bed by herself, and ended up staying up later than I think she ever has before - at least 10pm :o She preferred sitting on the couch next to her Opa and Oma.

She was very quiet most of the night, and you can tell that she just looks exhausted. Luckily, the power only went out once for a few seconds. Normally here at our complex, if strong winds come through the power flickers. And if there's rain, the cables must run through some stream bed somewhere because any amount of rain gives us cause to worry. We were lucky, though.

On Saturday, we went strawberry picking. That is something that is a must for anyone who has ever lived in the Charlottesville area, I think. Abby absolutely loves it. Unfortunately, our camera was dead when we got there (good job remembering to plug it in, Rob). Fortunately, however, Mom Kirk and Dan came along, and Uncle Dan had his camera and took plenty of videos. And I have a few of them. This one is pretty good - Abby is such a nutball sometimes :) The other girl is her friend Marin, who was there along with her mom Emily.



And here is a great video of an encounter with a caterpillar.



Dan has posted many more videos that I do not have (or do not want to upload, since he already has). To see them, go to his page and see journals 2a and 2b. (thanks, Dan!)

We went to Richmond yesterday and again did our best to find somewhere to live. This trip was a lot more successful; we have it pinned down to a few different places. All of them are within walking distance of St. Mary's (where Jodi will work). Some are smaller, some bigger, some without D/W, one is somewhat questionable. But all are possible. We will hopefully have it nailed down by the end of next week. Jodi has been totally awesome with all of this, and it will hopefully be all over soon. Abby was totally awesome for the trip - didn't hardly complain at all, despite being sick. So she got a reward.


She was so excited to pose for the picture so that she could see it afterwards. And of course, Daddy had to try on her new stuff, too.

Abby took that picture - she's a photographer in the making. There would be a picture of Mommy wearing the jewelry as well, but it somehow got deleted off of the camera...

So again, congrats to Jodi for her amazing accomplishment, and a special thanks to parents, family, and friends who all were there to support her. We now have some awesome opportunities ahead of us. If we can now just get out of Charlottesville, things will start moving forward for us.

Oh and Laura, thank you so much for your awesome gift - Jodi wasn't expecting it at all and it was a special surprise. And tasty, too!



Abby especially loved the grapes!

So these past few days have been a bit of a whirlwind for us. We were able to go to Richmond over the weekend to look at some houses, but it wasn't quite as successful as we had originally hoped. We had checked out some houses online, some that looked pretty nice, especially one in particular. Looking at google map, we figured that it looked like it was in a subdivision. Score! So we drove down there, excited to see what would soon be our new home. To our disappointment, we realized that online maps can be somewhat deceiving. It was not a subdivision. And it was a lot further from the city than we had thought. And it was cheap because it was a nice, new house built in the middle of a lot of rundown homes. After looking around a bit, we decided that we were on the wrong side of the city - and should probably stay more to the west of Richmond. Just a hunch. We did have a chance to go the the outdoor Shortpump mall, which was fun - and we rode the little train they had there, the one that Abby loves to chase. She was very good while waiting in line (even thought the boys around her were diving in and out of bushes and going nuts)

And riding the train was a lot of fun.


But unfortunately, we realize that we'll need a bit more help with knowing for sure areas to avoid in Richmond. We're going to try and stay focused on getting a place around Jodi's work. We know that West End and Short Pump are really nice, but they are a bit far out and gas prices are completely outrageous.

On Monday night, we decided to make pizzas for dinner. I was rolling out the dough and Abby asked for a bit, so I gave it to her. She then went and got her little rolling pin and started rolling it out into a circle. She saw what I was putting on it and kept asking for stuff. "May-may, please, dada (tomato). Lettuce please, dada" (she thought the unchopped basil leaves were lettuce). It was really cute because she made her own little pizza without anyone prompting her.




And the pizzas turned out really good.
We hit a pretty important milestone on Wednesday morning. Jodi was giving me a haircut, and I started off pretending like it was hurting. After a minute or so, Abby pointed at me and said, "Dada, Mama cut your hair. Ha ha!" It was so funny! Abby actually understands teasing! So that was the first time she did something like that. We were so proud.
So we're getting all geared up for graduation tomorrow. Jodi's family has all flown out for it, and we went and got pictures done the other day, as it's the first time in a while that all of the family has been together at once. Unfortunately, Abby is a bit sick so she was somewhat uncooperative, no to mention that Zoe wasn't feeling too well either. But, with three small children and 10 adults (with adults being Kirks and Rowletts), what are the chances that everyone will be smiling all at once? Not too many people would take those odds. And I woke up this morning feeling a bit crappy - getting Abby's cold, I imagine. I swear, ever since my heart crap I have had the immune system of...well, I don't know what, but it sucks. Like a vacuum cleaner. Yeah, the immune system of a vacuum cleaner. I just suck it all in and it stinks.