Abby and friends Easter

Now a couple weeks late, but wanted to put up the fun and cute pictures of Abby celebrating with her little buddies. We have had so much fun with these playgroup friends and the kids just love each other.  Abby is so happy whenever I tell her we are going to see Sebastian, William, Brooke, or Luca.

Abby and Brooke were so excited to see each other, they were running all over the place.

Egg hunt time!!

The kids loved playing in the water. But really, what kid doesn't? Left us all a little jealous of Brooke's awesome backyard. :)

Luca and Abby just cracked each other up.

Brooke's grandma was nice enough to play with Abby since mom conveniently left her swimsuit at home

Easter 2014

We took Abby a few weeks ago to pick out an Easter basket and that basket sure got used! Abby had so much fun with Easter this year - as compared to last year where we pretended she was hunting for eggs as we held her and put the eggs in her basket ourselves. She already loves baskets and very quickly caught on to the fun of hunting for Easter eggs.  And she had plenty of chances to practice, with three different egg hunts.  We might have gone a little overkill on the pictures (or at least the amount I am posting, sorry!) but this is our first kid's first time really getting into this so humor us.

Egg hunts!

Church - This was Abby's first egg hunt and also the only one that had candy-filled eggs. I was a little worried about that, but as usual, I worried more than I needed to. She had a blast opening all her eggs, unwrapping all the chocolate, and then handing them to me and Eric. Never once did it even seem to cross her mind that perhaps theses were things you eat.  :)

Community - This was a bigger egg hunt with a toddler group we are a part of.  Abby knew exactly what to do and went running straight for the eggs.  These were filled mostly with stickers which was a hit for this girl who loves loves stickers!

  

Playgroup - We had an Easter party with our playgroup friends with an egg hunt as part of it.  Thank goodness there were way more eggs than we needed so the fact that Abby creamed the others in her egg hunting skills wasn't a problem at all.  It also helped that she had the biggest basket - she apparently knew what she was doing when she picked out her basket! I'll be posting more pics of the party because those kids are just so cute. 

                           

Easter morning

I attempted to explain to Abby throughout the week leading up it the real meaning of Easter and why the day is important, but it went right over her head.  She knows about Jesus (at least, she can say his name and recognize pictures), but anything else I tried to explain didn't seem to work.  Oh well, we'll work on that!

We made up a simple basket for Abby, with bubbles, sidewalk chalk, a book, a crayon/paper case for church (made from an old DVD case), and some eggs filled with hairbows. We decided to forego the planned family Easter egg hunt, because we figured that would be a bit overkill.

In her Easter dress (also the wedding dress for Eric's sister's wedding).  Isn't she just so pretty!!

 

Coming October 2014

Eric and I had too much fun making these.

Buses!

We have discovered another way to guarantee a very happy toddler - put her on a bus.  Eric rides a bus to work every day and without fail every morning before he leaves she says, "Dad, bus" a few times and then brings it up again when he gets home.  And several times during the day reminds me that Dad rides a bus, often inserting an 'Abby bus' in there with a very hopeful face. 

So we finally let the girl ride some buses.  

We got to ride one at the zoo as part of a monthly zoo group we are a part of.  Abby was in awe the entire ride, hardly looking at the animals. Now whenever we got to the zoo, she asks, "bus?" 

I've been meaning to take her up to visit Eric on the bus (it's a free shuttle actually) that he rides, but it's about a half hour ride each way and so it just never sounded too fun.  I finally took her this week though!  I told her all morning that we were going to ride Dad's bus and after nap she was sure ready to go.  I told her she could get a bag ready so she packed her backpack and a small bag with her essentials: lots of necklaces, a bag of chalk, a crayon, a pencil, as well as a bag of carrots that she decided needed to go in her bag instead of mom's.

The walk to the bus consisted of Abby pretty much nonstop saying, "bus, bus, bus, Abby, bus, bus!" It was pretty adorable.  The ride was much the same.

I hope she is always this easy to please!

Palomar hiking & observatory

Eric had a day off so we went on a day trip up Palomar mountain to check out the observatory up there and do some hiking. Eric has been wanting to go visit the observatory since we moved here so we got to check that off his list. 

It was absolutely beautiful and fun except for the drive - I got super carsick. So when we got ourselves slightly lost and wandered around on those windy roads for even longer, I was not too happy.

But we made it!  Abby was such a great little hiker and we had a great time.

Abby wanted to wear Dad's hat too

 We never did finish our hike because Abby spotted a bench and really wanted to sit on it and then we started taking way too many pictures and had to hurry back before the observatory closed.

We made it back and Eric was in heaven.

Then Abby found another bench.  This girl loves benches and really anything that resembles a seat.

 And was sad when we had to leave (the bench)

 Abby had a blast collecting treasures in her bunny bucket while Dad took lots of pictures of flowers.

Pretty, isn't it?

Texas trip - Brittany's wedding

We made a quick trip this last weekend to Texas for Eric's youngest sister Brittany's wedding.  We were able to help get things ready for the wedding, and found a little bit of time to have fun with the family.

Abby and her cousins spent much of the time at the temple entranced by the water fountain.  The fact that it was raining did not deter them!

Hugging her newest Uncle - Uncle Glenn

Spent some quality time honing her piano playing skills

Outside the temple - don't look too closely, that rain made a mess of my hair

At the reception, which was vintage themed, there was a photo booth equipped with lots of fun dress-up things.  Abby loved this. 

Abby trying to catch the bouquet

Abby mostly had fun with her cousins.  It was very apparent though that Abby doesn't like to share...

So fun to see everyone!  Who knows when we will all be able to be together again?