God Made Us Hot Chocolate

It rained on Sunday, so after church Abby and I splashed in the puddles for awhile, and then came in to have some hot chocolate. While we were having our excuse for eating marshmallows, Abby started telling us about the nursery, and she told us "God gives us food!" We were kind of excited - it was the first time she told us what she had learned in the nursery (we usually hear about the toys she played with and maybe what they had for a snack) so we asked her some questions about what food God gives us. She told us apples, and then we started asking her about some of her favorite foods.

Mom: Does God give us raisins?
Abby: Yeah! God gives us raisins!
Dad: Does God give us cereal?
Abby: God gives us cereal!
Mom: Does God give us hot chocolate?
Abby: God made us hot chocolate!

I'm not sure if she meant "gave," or if she's picturing God in the kitchen with a teakettle.

In other news, it looks like Nora's going to be a reader. This was the third time in a row through the book, so she wasn't as excited as she was the first time (which was full of squeals and reaching for the book) but she's still definitely VERY interested.



Adam and I took Abby to the Indianapolis Zoo on Saturday after her birthday to celebrate. She was pretty excited about it at breakfast that morning.



She looked pretty cool in her new sunglasses, ready to head out! (Note the Colts socks in honor of our Indianapolis destination.)



We had a pretty good car ride - Abby was happy and talked about all the animals we were going to see. After about two hours, we were there!



Dad was excited that we could see the Colts' stadium from the zoo parking lot.



Once we got into the zoo, we got to see lots of fun animals. Abby had a great time being carried around and getting to decide which animals we were going to see next. She also really enjoyed watching all the other people at the zoo. She hardly ate any lunch because she was so busy watching the other families around us. The only disappointment was that the penguins were off exhibit while they were redoing the habitat. Abby took it pretty well, though.

Some highlights:















About ten minutes into the ride home, Abby was fast asleep. All in all, a great trip!



The next day was Nora's 4 month birthday, which we celebrated with the traditional Twinkie.

Happy Birthday to Abby!

It's been two years since we first met our little Abigail Grace. So today was all about celebrating that occasion, and also celebrating the "big girl" she's become. Adam stayed home today, so we had a nice day as a family. We started with a trip to the park this morning. We had gotten Abby a pair of sunglasses for her birthday, so she got to open one present early to wear when went out.





The trip didn't last too long, though, because there were a lot of other kids at the park, and Abby's never a big fan of having to share the park. But we had a nice walk (or at least Nora and I did - Adam got kind of tired from having to carry Abby the whole way) and we had a little snack at the park and played a little bit.

While Abby was taking her nap, I iced her cake. Given that Elmo is her favorite everything these days, I decided to make an Elmo cake.



A few days ago I asked Abby what she would choose for dinner if she could choose anything in the world. Without a second thought she told me "Peanut butter sandwich!" So we had peanut butter sandwiches, fruit salad, and breadsticks with cheese dip for her special birthday dinner. She was pretty excited, and for the first time in several weeks we didn't have any negotiations about how many bites of this or that she had to eat of her dinner. And of course, we finished up with some Elmo cake!



She definitely enjoyed the cake. I talked Adam out of putting the candles in Elmo's eyes - Elmo definitely doesn't have flame vision - so he settled for making Elmo look like a fire-breathing dragon/monster.











After dinner we moved on to presents. Nora had fun watching Abby open her birthday presents.





Then we went outside to play with her new ball a little bit before bed. She had a lot of fun bouncing it and kicking it and showing it to the flowers. I think she's really enjoying being two!

Egg Hunt

We'll put up a little more detail about Easter weekend later, but I have a few minutes while Sesame Street is on and I wanted to share a video my dad took of Abby hunting for Easter eggs. Not too surprisingly, her favorite part is the chocolate bunny inside the egg!