I have had many questions asked about Abby's bow holder. I decided I would just put a link to a few sites that I had found with super cute ones.

I love this first site, but I didn't want the bow holder to be just Abby's name because I already have her name above her crib. I wanted to post it, though, because they are adorable!

http://www.hairbowholders.com/

I was specifically looking for a little birdie one to go along with the decor in her room, so this is the site where I found Abby's. These people personalized it for me. (Kim, this is the site where the ladybug one is that I mentioned to you, too!)

http://www.iwantedtowonder.com/store/WsAncillary.asp?ID=34

*BTW, many of you, I'm sure, could paint your own because ya'll are talented like that. I, however, needed to just purchase one. So if nothing else, these can be ideas for you!

In a totally unrelated note, this is what Abby looked like this morning before school. I love this little outfit :-)


AND, this is the first time she didn't shed a tear when dropped her off! HOORAY! These little helper girls that are in her classroom (they are probably 6th or 7th graders) make such a big deal about the kids when they come in. For instance, "Abby's here!" "Hi, Abby!" Super sweet talking to her, and boy does she soak it up. She reached right out for them today, and I was on my way. It was pure bliss to not leave hearing her cry (even though it's always short-lived), it still tears at my heart strings every single time!

First up, a GIRL baby shower! My friend Kim (who I went with to Destin), is expecting a sweet little girl, Callie, in early October. We just had her baby shower at my house this past weekend. There are SIX of us that hosted the shower, and I must say I have some way talented friends. The pictures will show for themselves!

The table runner was made especially for this shower...pink and brown! The centerpiece is a box wrapped with ribbon put around, then a vase put down the middle with fresh flowers. Lovely, really lovely!
Hand made...from scratch--2 beautiful cakes!
On the mantel, frames painted and decorated to match Kim's nursery with sonogram pictures of Callie inside!
Scrapbook sign-in page. (I'm so proud, that is my little contribution!! I made her 4 pages for Callie's book)
More Callie sonogram pictures
I have NO idea why I am standing SO unnaturally looking in this hostess picture. Could I look like any more of a goober? (Don't answer that question!) I might as well have been standing by myself...what's with all the space between Theresa and I!?!? What the heck happened?!?!

Second, Abby's new bow holder! I'm ecstatic about this new purchase for Abby's room. Besides the fact that she had SO many bows that I couldn't find certain ones when I needed them, this holder is super adorable, and I'm just in LOVE with it!

Third, Aunt Lisa bought Abby a new little swimsuit. Although she has entirely too many as is, this swimsuit really is completely adorable! She wore it to the pool the other night...when we came home, I got a picture of the back, but I couldn't get a great one of the front. Thank you, Lisa, we LOVE it!

Lastly, I love this newest picture of Josh and I, and I LOVE that my new Super Target is open right down the road from me.

Josh, Abby, and I went to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus on Saturday at 11:30am. Abby is still a morning napper, so we were *hoping* she might take a short nap on the drive there. Do those things ever happen? Rarely. She was wide-awake the whole time (I think she was quite anxious to get inside!). She was SO fun to watch!

Totally taking it ALL in...

Mommy and Daddy having fun!

It exhausted her about 30min. into the show...Crazy high wire act. I get all nervous for them! How do they do that?
After the intermission, she had lunch, and started clapping and squealing!
Next up on our busy Saturday was going to our Sunday school's swim party. I imagined, after such a busy morning, Abby was going to crash in the car. Wrong again. She stayed awake for the whole hour we had in the car. So naturally, I imagined she was going to sleep in the Pack-n-play when we got there. Nope! Lucky for us, she was in a fabulous mood, and played and played!

She was in love with this older boy, Reese. He's 7 or 8, and loved entertaining Abby. He would jump off the diving board, and everytime Abby would put her arms up for him...as if he just made a touchdown and she was cheering for the team! Daddy and Abby...The next morning, Abby was wiped out! This is how we found her...Sunday we just played around the house. I had a few tupperware heads on my hands...

Aren't my kids too cute? :-)

Josh and I just found out on Tuesday that our family doctor passed away. It's the strangest thing to receive that information on your answering machine...

Josh actually had an appointment for today (Friday), to get a yucky ingrown toenail taken care of (I'm sure he'll love me posting that to all of the blog world!). He called last Friday to set up this appointment with Dr. Warnell, to which he got in at 11am for today, 7/18. On Tuesday, I check messages, and this is what I hear:

"This call is for Josh Beasley. My name is Vanessa with Stephen Grayson's office, and we're needing to reschedule Josh's appointment. We just need to move it up 15min. so the nurse practitioner can see him (pause) because (pause, pause, pause) Dr. Warnell (pause) passed away." ***Then she says several other things, but I'm in shock..seriously. The man is in his mid-thirties!

I think I listened to that message at least 3 times. The way she said "passed away" was so weird because I think she was trying to say it so fast to get it over with kinda thing. My mind was reeling as to what could have happened to this man. We immediately thought something tragic (car accident or something) because Josh had JUST made the appointment Friday with Dr. Warnell and this was just Tuesday (4 days later). Josh went to the appointment today and they had information as to what took place...this is how it reads (summarized by me):

Dr. Warnell unexpectedly passed away on Sunday, July 13, 2008. He was playing golf with a college friend in Dallas when he collapsed due to a ruptured brain aneurysm. He went to Baylor Medical Center in Dallas, but never regained consciousness. Dr. Warnell had no warning signs and was in good health. He is survived by his wife, Kathy and five year-old son, Cobey.

Isn't that the most sad thing in the world? I just feel so horrible for this family, and it just goes to show you how sweet, short, and precious this life can be. It's not like I saw Dr. Warnell so often, but he was the kindest doctor. We were so glad to have found him.

He will definitely be missed by so many!

Those are the exact numbers I found in the "redial" section of our phone. I HAD to look back to see what exactly was dialed after 2 policeman visited our house today.

My heart starts racing when the doorbell rings and someone is pounding on the front door. We're dog sitting, so I have two dogs here that are going hysterical. I'm actually on the phone at the moment, which is helpful because as hard as this person was knocking I was sure someone was about to come in. I look out the guest window and see not one, but TWO police cars outside my house. My friend Karen says, "Do you want me to stay on the phone with you", and I say "YES!" But to open the door with Abby in my hands, I needed to set down the phone for a minute, and I step outside to the front porch because the policeman aren't there....they've gone around my house now to see if everything is OK. Finally, Abby and I are face to face with 2 officers, and I'm sure my face is reading "Why the heck are you at my house, walking all around?" and they say, "Is everything OK here? We got a call, and we've tried to call but the line is busy." Which is so strange because we have call waiting, so the line really shouldn't be busy. But Karen told me later it was busy when she first called, too. So I'm thinking they were both calling in at the exact same time. Yes, I admit Abby had been playing with the phone and usually she pushes a WHOLE LOT of numbers and if she actually pushes the talk button, it rings and then says "We're sorry, the call you are trying to place is not a valid working number" or something like that. I apologized profusely to the officers, and after they waved and played with Abby a short bit, they were on their way.

I never understood when people told stories of their kids calling 911. I was always thinking, "I mean, do ya not watch your kid or what? How is that really possible?" But now, I'm fully aware that these things happen to the best of us :-) I felt slightly embarrassed having 2 cop cars outside my house while neighbors drove by (I'm sure we'll be the talk of the street for awhile, ha!).

I have had a talk with Abby about dialing 911 from here on out...I'm sure our chat was very helpful! I would also like to thank those fabulous officers--who weren't rude to me in any way, fashion or form for completely wasting their time--for responding SO FAST. That is definitely very reassuring, even though I (or anyone in this house) will hopefully never dial 911 again!

A look at the culprit


All props (chair and glasses) courtesy of the Mrs. Beasley doll :-)

All the above things are totally unrelated to one another

First up...if you can even believe this--Abby just had her VERY first big girl bath in the big bath tub last night! I know she's 14 months old, but do you know how easy it is to just be able to stand next to her when she's in her tub on the bathroom counter? She's been perfectly fine it, but we've just recently had some issues of her wanting to try to climb out....so, we moved up in the world. She looks so small in the BIG tub :-) We have these fun letters that will stick to the wall, so we gave her 2 to play with last night. The A and B. Obviously, the first in the alphabet, BUT the first 2 letters in her name, too! They will have double meaning to her!

She liked to chew on them.... Second...I worked out this morning. A quick back story: This is quite sad, really. Josh and I have been members of 24 hour Fitness for (I think) this is our third year. The very first year we got the membership, we were good about going. Then once the school year started up, downhill I went. Then I got pregnant, had Abby, and I never stepped back in that gym since sometime in 2006 until this very day. My friend Theresa, and her husband Chris, have joined this particular gym, too, and she told me she had been going to the exercise classes. I'm such a weenie. I never wanted to do them by myself, but now I had incentive! I LOVED kick-boxing classes in high school, but that is the last time I ever did them. So that's what it was this morning. 8:30am--turbo kick-boxing. I'm tired. I'm sore already. BUT I'm so excited I finally did it, and I'm looking forward to Round 2! (No pictures of this event...just imagine what a totally out of breath, red cheeked person looks like and that was me!)

Third, Abby has been working on her dance moves...along with some funny facial expressions.

What's up?
I just thought these looked cute...

This video is all kinds of random things...from Abby saying hi and waving, to a bit of dancing, to putting this thing on her foot. She ALWAYS puts this little ring on her foot, and then says "ha!" It cracks me up.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

The title said with a French accent, of course. In case you're totally not with me, and the title does not make sense..I was going for Artist :-)

Anyway, this is what I'm talking about...
Isn't it beautiful? That is EXACTLY how I imagine space, and Abby drew this lovely piece of work for us at school today! I love it! When I took it out of her bookbag, she pointed to it immediately, like "Hey, I did that for you." It will have a place on our refrigerator.

Somehow in all the excitement of when Abby first started MDO, I forgot to go back and post some pictures from our Dallas trip (when Abby had her one year old pictures). I'm just going to share a few, since we're so past time now.

I met one of my blogger friends, Courtney, and her daughter Savannah! They were so sweet to let us pop by and play for a bit. I'm so thankful they didn't think we were crazy for wanting to meet :-) Abby also got to meet Courtney's friend, Allison, and her son Noah. They were all so cute together. We'll definitely have to do it again sometime!!

It looks like Savannah is playing one-handed peek-a-boo :-) But really, I think she's just itching her eye...but it was cute, so I had to post it!

Just a random sweet face...
Lastly, we went by our old family friends house. When we lived in Lewisville, Kathy and Jim lived just 5min. away from us. I grew up with this family. I was born in McAllen, and they lived there then. So they met me when I was born, and in McAllen is where our families met. Then both families ended up in Lewisville. When I was younger, I LOVED being around their daughter, Suzie, too. Lucky for us, Suzie was able to come over a bit this night, and she and her daughter, Megan, met Abby. It was so awesome! Megan is 2 (or 3, I can't remember), and she kept calling Abby "Baby Abby." She wanted to pick her up and hold her like one of her dolls. It was too, too cute!

In this picture--me, my mom, Kathy, and Abby

I really do love the 4th of July. It's such a fun time of year. Friends, good grillin', fireworks...it's just lovely. I hope to get into a routine when Abby is a bit older of going out to bigger fireworks displays. Growing up, that is definitely what I remember about the 4th of July. There is an area we can go around here, but it's just not the right time in our lives to go yet. Last year, Abby was 2 months old, and this year she was just getting over being sick that we still wanted her to bed at normal time.

Abby last year (almost 8 weeks old)
and the whole family in 2007...
Now, don't get me wrong. We still had plenty of fun this year :-) We went over to our friends, the Ege's, and played with all the other kiddos there. The Ege's made everyone dinner (thanks, guys!), and the kids got to play on a fun new play set in their backyard. Abby had a fabulous time, and she even slept in until around 8am the next morning. (Yes, that's sleeping in for us!)

I brought my camera to the Ege's with every intention of taking pictures....but I didn't take one. We were all in red, white, and blue though! These pictures are from today (Sunday). We still had a 4th of July type outfit. Although it's pink, it has stars with firework swirls :-)

Mommy & Abby
Wanting to "pat" me...
Getting so excited for a picture...(obviously a bit blurry because she's moving like a maniac!)
Even though I'm pretty much blocked out of this picture, Josh is talking to her (trying to make her look at the camera), and she lifts both arms and says "Hi!"
Remember how I used to ALWAYS take a picture of Abby in the rocking chair in her room? Well, this is what that looks like now...
I was able to capture one, even though she totally wouldn't look at me...
The back of the outfit--so sweet!
Dancing. Seriously. She pokes that booty out!
Uh oh, we've finally discovered all the drawers in her room...
On a side note, Abby is starting to feel SO much better. Last night was amazing. She was in such a great mood, laughing, being silly, and dancing! How I absolutely love this little girl to pieces. She definitely keeps us smiling and laughing :-)