Cute Pictures

Here are some cute pictures of Abigail.

Here she is in her Christmas dress, ready for church (I don't know how we got her to stand still this time):



Here we are looking for the water filter under the frig:

Here she is taking a nap when she wasn't suppose to (can you guess which parent was watching her? Oooppss.):

Sunday Pictures

Last week we decided to take some pictures of Abigail in front of the Christmas tree before church. How hard could it be? I mean, all we wanted was ONE nice photo that we could blog and show how adorable our child is. Hmmmmm. Well here are the pictures that we took that Sunday morning:

Look at the camera Abby!


A two year old with attitude?



Come stand over by the Christmas tree!

Fine, we'll take your picture on the couch.

Well, as you can see we took several pictures but none that we would/could send in our Christmas cards. Oh yeah, what could have been a two minute project turned into a 20 minute ordeal and we were nearly late to church. Crazy kid, gotta love them.

Thanksgiving Part III

I'm not going to be able to blog all 285 pictures that were taken at Thanksgiving so this will probably be the last part. Here's Abby in her tu-tu:


This was the kitchen that Aunt Amanda and Uncle Jeff bought for Abigail that was set up for all of the kids to enjoy while there:

We told her to 'smile' for the camera (notice the chocolate on her face):

Cousin Cameron and Abby:

Thanksgiving Part II

While we were in PA Sarah had the great idea that she wanted to take Abigail to the Macy Day Parade in NY. The girls woke up at 4:15am and headed for the Big Apple. They ended up at Time Square a few rows of people from the street. Abby loved seeing the balloons, especially the ones that she recognized like the Sesame Street characters.

The poor girl fell asleep at the end of the parade. Waking up early and the whole excitement of seeing new things tuckered her out.

Thanksgiving Part I

We're back!! The McLaughlin Thanksgiving festival at Aunt Poppity-Anne and Uncle Jeff's house in PA was a HUGE success. The cousins enjoyed playing together, it was great to see Joshua and Shelby and to meet their kiddos, and of course it was nice to see everyone else and spend some time with them. We're not going to talk about the 16 hour car ride that we had to endure with a two year old. (She learned that if she said that she needed to go pee that mom would fly down the interstate to the next rest stop or fast food joint and she would be able to get out of the van). We would like to share some of the pictures that were taken over the course of the week (between the families 285 pictures were taken).

Our family picture:

Coloring with Bumpa:

Having some juice:

The little cousins stayed over night together at Amanda and Jeff's. They were treated to pancakes and sausage for breakfast:

We're very thankful that Amanda and Jeff were willing to host the gathering, we had a great time!

I'll post more pictures this week.

Playing in the Leaves

Last week we decided to rake up some of the leaves that were accumalating on our lawn. We only have about a dozen trees but they must hold at least a million leaves each. It was a beautiful day, mid 70's, so we enjoyed being outside even if we were doing labor. Abigail caught on quick that I was raking the leaves into big piles and that these piles made for good places to play in.

Here's a picture of her looking for her missing crocs:


Enjoying herself:


Laying down on the job (we used a tarp to transport the leaves to the burn pile and she would catch a ride back and forth):

Here she is all dirty and with leaves stuck in her hair:

We're blessed to have found this house. Even with its flaws the big yard for her and the dogs to play in make the difference.

Family Portraits

We had our family portrait drawn up to help Abby to start to learn about spelling. Here it is: