Tobey Cole

Sometimes even cats need prayers. (And, yes, my cats have middle names.) Tobey went into the vet today and they found a large lesion/open sore in his mouth. It is so bad that it is exposing a large portion of his jaw bone. We don't know anymore at this point. He goes in Monday for further testing.



This is the same cat that had diskospondylitis and almost had to have his tail amputated. He also retained 5 of his baby teeth, which caused him to have too many teeth and one punctured the roof of his mouth. He had to have his teeth pulled and surgery to repair it. And now this. All rare. All things our vet rarely sees. And he is not even 4 years old!

All I know is. . .I would have two extremely heartbroken girls if something happened to him. He has many annoying habits, but he is the best cat you could ever have for young children. Olivia and Abigail adore him (as do Ryan and I, of course.) Praying it is something easily treatable and that he is not in too much pain.

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Fall Festival

It was gorgeous outside so we headed to a nearby town's fall festival. It was a bit nostalgic for me because I grew up going to school there and went to the fall festival every year. Olivia loved it as much as I used to.

She was so excited to ride the rooster on the carousel!







Abigail was an absolute angel the entire time. She always is!



Olivia loved the tilt a whirl and was thrilled to also go on her favorite ride ever. . .the Octopus (although it was actually the spider today.)


And here we are at the top of Olivia's first Ferris wheel ride.


What a great, great time! Add to that a sleepover last night at grandpa and grandma Glunt's house and Olivia is having "the best weekend ever!"

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10 Months

Where did the time go? I can't believe she is 10 months old! Crazy. She is such a joy! Abigail probably weighs about 19.5 lbs. She pulls up to a stand and can open cabinet doors now. She still loves food, electronics and baths. She still army crawls everywhere. We always call her our little Abigator and as Ryan pointed out. . .of course she crawls on her belly like an alligator too. Haha! She dances, claps, waves, has four teeth and captures the hearts of everyone she meets.




*Update: Well, today, Abigail decided to start crawling on her knees. :-)
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Big News LOL

Olivia has given up her lifelong dream to be a butterfly.

"Mom, I wasn't born a caterpillar so I don't think I can be a butterfly. I want to be a teacher! A kindergarten teacher!"

As you can tell, she loves school!
And her teacher.


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School Picture

Official kindergarten picture.  Awwww.  She looks so grown up! 

And here is Olivia’s 3 yr old picture and 6 yr old picture. 

New Park

We finally got a new playground in our town!! The playground equipment opened this past week, so I'm sure we will be here a lot. Olivia is so excited. I'm hoping they add some baby swings for Abigail.
















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Abigail Pictures

My camera is overflowing with Abigail pictures. LOL! She is at that perfect picture taking age where you just lift a camera and she smiles. I took some of the best pics of Olivia at that age. :-) Olivia is not always that fond of pictures anymore unless she is the one taking them.

Here is Abigail when she got stuck under a chair. She crawled under there and couldn't figure out how to get back out. It was so funny!



We went to the park this afternoon. Pure joy!







Enjoying a refreshing drink!







Just being cute! And, yes, she really is this happy most of the time.




Now I've got to get some good pictures of Olivia. She counts the pictures on my phone to make sure there are equal numbers of both girls. They are counting a lot at school. I don't know whether to be frustrated or proud. Haha!

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State Fair

We headed to the state fair today. I remember when we went last year and I thought,"Next year we will be taking Abigail." Seems like just yesterday. And by going to the fair, I mean we went, rode a few rides, saw some adorable 3 day old piglets, ate a funnel cake and went home. LOL! That is how we roll.




I felt bad for Olivia because two of the rides that she loved at Worlds Of Fun, she couldn't go on here because you had to be 48". You only had to be 42" there. But, at least we didn't spend as much money on rides because there wasn't as much she could go on. But, we still had fun.



And it was worth the trip to get this adorable picture.



Both girls were asleep before we hardly left the fairgrounds and I'm falling asleep as I write this post. :-)

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My Beautiful Girls

Here is Olivia off to kindergarten. She loves it!


As soon as she leaves, Abigail heads straight to her room to play with her toys. Yikes! Don't tell big sister!


Abigail loves picking her up at the bus stop, though.



And it's always nice to be home!



And help mama cook dinner! Olivia helped from start to finish and then even ate some herself!!



Love my girls!!


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Abigail Dancing

Abigail's Growing Up

I don't know if I'm ready. Today for lunch she ate Spaghetti Os along with her sister. And loved them.



She pulled up to a stand while trying to get into the bath tub with Olivia. Abigail LOVES baths!



She just seems to be growing up before my eyes! She already has 4 teeth! And her hair is even growing! LOL!




She is one of the happiest, sweetest babies ever!




Our cat, Tobey, even thinks so. He hides behind the curtain until Abigail is asleep and I leave the room. Then, he gets in her crib with her. I think Abigail enjoys his company as much as he enjoys hers. Tobey loves everyone, but he has really latched onto her. She is pretty loveable! :-)


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Monday, September 9, 2013

I am so so proud of Olivia. She has matured so much in the last few weeks. It used to feel like pulling teeth to get her to sit down and work on anything that resembled learning. Now she sits at the table every night and works incredibly hard! I just learned not to do it until after Abigail is in bed. She is the most receptive after 7:30. Olivia is writing all of her letters and is reading all of her sight words! She comes to the table every night excited about what we are going to do.

And this impressed me! Yes, she knows her shapes and is pretty good with patterns, but she had to read what color to color each shape. And she did it perfectly.




And speaking of pulling teeth, her first loose tooth is barely hanging on! She doesn't want us to pull it and instead wants it to come out on its own. According to her, it may want to stay with its baby teeth friends a little longer. She is very excited about a visit from the tooth fairy, however. She's losing teeth, Abigail's getting teeth. We talk about teeth in our house a lot. LOL!




This doesn't have anything to do with teeth, but check out the train that Olivia drew today!



It's better than my trains! My goodness! And she needed OT for 5 years!


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Memory Lane

Olivia has been asking a lot of questions about when I was in kindergarten. Who was my teacher? My gym teacher and music teacher? So, while at my parents house today, we pulled out the old photo albums. (She really wasn't quite as interested as I thought she would be.) But it was a fun trip down memory lane.

Here I am getting on the bus on my first day of kindergarten.



And waiting for the bus with my best friend, Tamar. Tamar and her twin sister Tiffany were more than best friends to me. They lived two houses down until I was 13. They were like sisters to me!


And here we are in our swimming suits. I was rocking the Strawberry Shortcake. LOL!




We always wanted to be mommies.



Halloween was such a fun time. All of the neighbor kids trick or treated together every year.



One year we dressed as punk rockers, but in retrospect we looked more like hookers. LOL! To this day I can't wear eye liner on my bottom eyelid because I think it makes me look like a punk rocker.


Oh those were some fun times!! I'll cherish them always. It still makes me sad that Olivia doesn't have best friends down the street from her. I couldn't imagine my childhood without them!!

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Olivia and Velma

This just sums up my daughter perfectly.



She loves Scooby Doo, but her favorite character is Velma. . .the one most people don't like. Most girls want to be like Daphne, but Olivia thinks Velma is the best. She wants to be Velma for Halloween.



Olivia doesn't care what people think of her, she doesn't care what is in style or the current trends. She is just herself. I hope that never changes. I find myself getting frustrated about her wardrobe choices or the fact that she never let's me fix her hair (and would never brush it if I didn't remind her. LOL!) But those are the same things that I love so much about her. I wish I hadn't spent so much of my life worried about what other people think of me. She truly marches to the beat of a different drum and that makes her so incredibly unique and special. Love my sweet girl!

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Nine Month Checkup

Abigail is doing fantastic! There are just none of the concerns that I had with Olivia.



I'm still not used to the percentiles being over the 3rd. LOL! I learned Abigail is not anemic and has a big head. :-). She has started to pull up to her knees and drink from a straw. She also discovered that we have a snack cabinet.




And she spent a good 20 minutes determined to get into the brownie bites.


Now if people would just start calling her a girl! We were at the grocery store and a lady kept saying," He this and he that. . ." Then she said," He is a boy isn't he?" I almost said," Yes and we always keep him in a dress." Sheesh. Granted, she doesn't have much hair and looks like her daddy, but she is still too pretty to be a boy! LOL! But, the biggest giveaway is that she is in a dress!




Love my little Abigator.


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