Abbie's First Birthday

We celebrated Abbie's first birthday with Chad's parents and relatives. Here we are with her birthday cake. As expected, she was completely clueless that it was her birthday. We tried to tell her that it was "her day" and that she could do whatever she wanted, but she failed to understand how that differed from any other day.

This was her first real taste of something sweet and she was happy with the first bite, but then became a bit more skeptical. It seems that she hasn't inherited Chad's sweet tooth and we hope that it stays that way.

There are many more great pictures of Abbie on her birthday, but none of them were taken by us (we primarily used the camcorder). Hopefully relatives will email us the photos that they took. Hint, hint. :) Below is a picture of the three of us from the night before when Chad and I went out alone to celebrate our anniversary. She was the best looking part of the picture, so I cropped us out. I'm sure no one will mind. :)

Too long between posts

Just when you thought you'd never hear from us again - we're back! Now that the move to our new hometown is complete, we can catch you up on the many ways in which we have been enjoying the new surroundings. First of all we now have a zoo, which Abbie has already been to twice. She is OK with it, but is a bit bored because she wants to jump right into the pen with the lions and can't understand why we won't let her. Fortunately, it also has a small petting zoo portion and she was actually able to touch the friendly goat shown below.


This neighborhood has lots of kids and on the 4th of July they all decorated their bikes and rode in a sort of mini parade. Below is Abbie watching the action. As you can see behind her, there weren't many spectators. That's because only parents would care about this sort of thing, but the parents were all busy helping their kids with their bikes - hence, no spectators. Regardless, Abbie was pretty interested. She likes anything on a bike and she likes other kids, so this was the perfect combo.

This town is also filed with lots of good playgrounds and Abbie has already been to at least a couple of them. Here she was able to convince Daddy to join her on the swing.

As usual, Boris is one of Abbie's favorites. She used to just grab his fur and pull, but now she has decided that he makes a nice pillow, so she tries to lay on him whenever possible. Here she is in the kitchen showing her affection. As usual, he is kind enough to put up with it.
Although we don't have any pictures of her in the pool, it has become one of her favorite activities since we joined one of the local neighborhood pools last week. They have a great kiddie pool and it has really contributed to her development. On Sunday she was at the pool and was able to observe all the other kids that were walking around. She decided to succumb to the peer pressure and join the crowd. She put her mind to it and spent the rest of the time walking around the pool unassisted. This has continued at home and what used to be a few steps at a time has become regular and consistent walking - just in time for her first birthday!