She's 9!!!

Abbie has been looking forward to her birthday for a long time and now it is finally here! Yesterday, she asked me if she was born at 7:24am eastern time, and I confirmed that she was. Then she asked if I happened to notice the second hand at all. Umm, no, frankly, I wasn't too concerned about the second hand. :) Then she asked if the clock was digital or analog. I told her that it was analog, but I'm not sure whether this made things better or worse in her brain . . . At any rate, with all of these details, she was pretty determined that she need to wake up by 6:24am central time today. I wouldn't let her set an alarm, which disappointed her so she decided to go to the other extreme. If she couldn't be sure that she would be awake at the exact moment of her birth, then she decided to be sure that she was asleep at that moment. As a result, we didn't see her until almost 8am this morning.

To celebrate this birthday, we have ordered a cake and Chad has agreed to make Abbie a birthday dinner. As she usually does, she has requested steak (filet, of course) with green beans and sweet potato fries. She is also planning to have a sleepover this coming weekend with one of her friends, and I may take the girls for pedicures. We'll see. Interestingly, I announced to Abbie today that she is officially half way to adulthood and her eyes got really big, as if this had never dawned on her. To which she declared that she wanted to go back to being eight. Yes, join the club - we are all trying to turn back the clock!

Other than her birthday, Abbie has been busy with her summer camps. Her one-week sleep away camp was a hug success. She had a blast, loved her roommate, met some nice girls, and got to do some cool activities.

I haven't asked her about this photo yet, but it looks like some sort of robot war. Over the past couple of weeks she has been attending some science camps and has been learning about robots, rockets, chemistry, and the planets. She has also been reading lots of books that are both educational and apparently very entertaining - books from the Murderous Maths series (like Desperate Measures) and the Horribly Famous series (like Cleopatra and Her Angry Asp). Her other favorite activity has been to visit the American Girl website where they have all sorts of quizzes and advice that she seems to like. Finally, I think that she is starting to look forward to going back to school (not that she would ever admit it!). We received the list of supplies that we need to buy and she can't wait to go out and get everything.