Abigail is 9 years old!

In just a blink of an eye our first born is 9 years old! Okay, so it hasn't been a blink of an eye...it has been 9 wonderful years with our girl! She is quite the sweetie! "Abbie" is how she is spelling her name these days. She decided that at the end of 3rd grade. She has become interested in Legos in the past 6 months. A Lego Friends set was her request for a Birthday present this year. She just loves playing toys with animals so we found a jungle set with 4 or 5 animals in it and she was thrilled! She really enjoys playing with Littlest Pet Shop toys...so many animals!

She's quite a babysitter in training, offering to help with Hannah more and more and ANY baby at church. She's really good with the 2 year olds and enjoys playing with them. She's a good peace-maker with Caleb & Hannah, when either of them are upset, she's often jumping in to help solve the problem. I really appreciate that about her!

For her birthday this year, we skipped having an official "friend party" and invited a few friends over for some play time and cupcakes instead. It was delightful!! The girls played a game inside, some hide-n-seek outside and had their cupcakes and snacks. After that, we had dinner and then Uncle Jon, Aunt Erin and the boys came over as well as Don & Sandy from next door to celebrate with some birthday cake! The cousins all play so well together, it's so enjoyable watching them play!

Today...her actual birthday was a fun, family day! Abby decided she wanted to go to Safari Sams for lunch and playtime! The kids all had a lot of fun, the boys especially!! Hannah has another UTI--bummer!--and is also fighting a cough, so she spent more time sitting on Mom & Dad's laps then climbing through the giant play structure, but she's such a trooper that she still had fun! We received a phone call from Dr. Wu's office on the drive to say that her UTI is treatable with regular antibiotics. Whew!! I burst into tears of relief and thankfulness and didn't realize I was holding onto so much worry about it being like the others. I've thanked the Lord many times today and also prayed, asking that the antibiotics will get into her system and clear it up!

Our plan tomorrow is to head over the mountain to Grandma's house for a visit. Joel is heading to Mexico (in about an hour) to investigate an organization there for future mission trips for Cornerstone. He'll be home on Monday so for the next four days we thought it would be fun to visit the Grandparents instead of staying home along. ;)