Summer Catch Up

In an attempt to catch up on the past few months, here are some snapshots from our fun summer. 

Having fun in the pool with Joshua

Pretending they are pirates on a ship. Argh!!!

 A fun trip to the zoo with Joshua and Nana.

Slash Park Fun!!!

August - Full of Firsts

Abigail has had a pretty big month!  This post is full of the "firsts"she's had.  She started preschool at Park Place Christian Academy a few weeks ago and could not love it more!  We are blessed with an amazing teacher and I can already tell she is learning SO much.  She comes home each day so excited about everything they did at school and usually gives me a FULL report on her behavior as well as the behavior of every other student in the class.  Her class theme is monkeys so the goal each day is to keep all of your bananas on the board.  I hope she will be as good at remembering her lessons as she is at remembering who lost bananas and how many they lost throughout the day!  

Ready for her first day! Mommy was out of town but made sure everything was laid out. Daddy did an impressive job with her crazy hair!

I had to do the customary"grade sign" picture on day two.

Her teacher is awesome and send the parents picture texts of fun things their kids are doing! This is Abigail working on her first worksheet at school.

Here is most of her sweet class at their first Chapel Wednesday.

First time being the class helper for the day! She was so proud to hold the flag for the pledge and is working really hard on all of the words. Class helper also gets to be the line leader all day - a coveted designation to 3 year olds for sure!

In another first, Abigail kicked off (pun intended) her first soccer season this month.  I don't think she had a clue what playing on a soccer team meant, but she was thrilled about her new soccer outfit and that Daddy was her coach.  Nothing else seemed to matter!  I am sure there will be more soccer posts to come once games start in September. Stay tuned!

Sporty Spice before her first practice.

Sporty Spice after her (super hot) first practice.

And lastly, in our month of firsts, Abigail came home from school today beaming because she received her first award at school!  Her teacher gave her the Chapel Award for her great behavior in chapel today.  Abigail has talked about Chapel Awards a lot since school started and has even forced me to pretend we were at chapel as she instructed me in how to behave so that I might earn a Chapel Award myself (sit still, look straight ahead at the platform, don't talk during chapel, etc).  So, it is no surprise to me that she was beside herself with excitement as she hopped in the car holding her award and the sucker attached to it. Chad and I are so proud of her enthusiasm for school and pray it continues for many years to come! 

Here's to a great start to the school year!


P.S. I promise Little Man Luke was not neglected this month as it appears in this post.  He is still the sweetest, cutest, happiest little guy around and will be sure to be included in the next post.

P.P.S. I don't have any pictures of this, but Abigail also got to attend her first Crusader Pep Rally at school.  That's right, my three year old went to the school-wide pep rally and had a ball!  She did mention she plugged her ears because of the cheering but could not stop talking about the "football boys and cheer girls."

Lake Trip 2012

Once again this year, we enjoyed a few days at the Cuenin's lake house with Chad's family.  They are so generous to share their lake house with us!  Fun was had by all as you can see in the pictures below. 

New blog post below

Flower Girl Debut

Abigail was honored to be a part of cousin Trevor and Jessica's wedding in June.  We had talked about it for a long time, but Mommy and Daddy were still a little worried about how she would behave.  Abigail was thrilled when the time came for her to "practice" on Friday night and to "throw the flowers" on Saturday.  She was pretty hesitant come game time on Saturday, but am happy to report she made it down the aisle having thrown maybe 2 petals along the way.  I am so excited to see the professional pictures Jessica's photographer took, but here are a few of my amateur ones from the celebration:

Friday night rehearsal. Being sweet with co-flower girl Savannah.

Pictures with the bride and groom. Abigail thought Jessica looked like Barbie!

Pictures with Gumby were a hoot and got these flower girls giggling.  

Goofing off at the reception with Aunt B and Joshua.

The moment she had been waiting for ALL weekend!

Abigail and Savannah helped pass out the wedding favor cow bells to all the guests.

 Thank you Trevor and Jessica.  We had a ball!

Dancing Queen

Abigail participated in her first ever dance recital in May.  Her dance year went really well and she loved heading to dance class every Tuesday afternoon.  Leading up to the recital, she seemed unsure of the whole dancing in front of a big crowd thing.  Fortunately, her sweet cousin Olivia surprised her by coming for the weekend and making it all more fun.  

All smiles before heading out for the recital.

Backstage, her nerves are starting to show while her buddies enjoy goofing off for the camera. 

When it came time for the show, she did at least go on stage with her class.  I'm not sure I would classify what she did on stage as "dancing."  Her silly three year old side came out for sure.  The video below is actually from the dress rehearsal earlier in the day, but trust me, the recital itself was not much better.  (We used a friend's video camera for the actual show and haven't figured out how to retrieve it off their camera, ha!)

Here's hoping next year's recital includes a little more dancing!

The Last Day of School

Okay, so the last day of school was a whole month ago, but that is neither here nor there. (My last blog included Luke's first haircut, and it is already time for a second!  Clue #1 that it has been too long since you blogged.)  Instead of the traditional "Last Day of School" party in the classroom, Abigail's teachers opted for a day out at the park.  It was a GREAT idea and all of the kiddos seemed to love it.  Abigail loved playing with her school buds all morning and getting to picnic with them too.  Here are some pictures of our little monkey!

Abigail and her BFF Sarah Bray! She will miss SB so much next year!

Ms. Tammy and Ms. Patti are the BEST teachers and Abigail loves them so much.  She could not wait for school each week and they made every day enjoyable for her.

Abigail heads to "big girl school" at PPCA next year and is counting down the days already! On our way home from the playground that day I told Abigail it would be time for nap when we got home.  She said, "And after nap I'm going to big girl school!"  She didn't quite understand we had to wait the whole summer before that day came.  Now there are only about 60 more naps until she gets to go to big girl school!