Abby was talking yesterday and said something that made us chuckle pretty good. She was telling us how her cousin Brennan was going to send her a blog. That’s right, send a blog. She said he just sends blogs all the time.
I wonder how my brother and his bride feel about all of this 🙂
This morning Abby came into my office and said, “Dad, I wish you hadn’t had that last beer. I really love beer.” Which is a little tough to swollow given that she has never had beer. But she has had Root Beer. Which is not the same. She just doesn’t know it. The place where I should have piped in, “Sweetheart, beer and root beer are not the same thing.” was instead replied to by me giving her a hug and telling her that she can’t have beer. Which is close, but didn’t differentiate enough. This is where I should probably start fearing for her that she’ll become and alcoholic by the time she’s 5, but I’m not going to because cute children never do anything wrong.
Yesterday Abby announced to us on the way home from church that she wanted to marry our neighbor Wayne, whom I believe is older than all of her grandpas. Jessica told her she couldn’t do that because Sue, his wife, had already snatched him up. After a little time of thinking she announced that she would have to go to ‘Yew Nork’ and find a man to marry.
Abigail, if you read this when you get older: you don’t have my permission to do that, but I couldn’t say it with a straight face when you suggested it 🙂
Well, the fish, formerly known as Goldy, currently now having reached oneness with the septic system, died. I found her doing the back stroke this morning and quickly moved her to our flusher. Except that goldy didn’t flush. I didn’t know she didn’t flush, but I found out later. How exactly did I find out?
Abby came down stairs saying in a strained tone, “Daddy, someone put Goldy in the toilet. Was it you?!”
So I had to own up to it and tell her Goldy had died. Stupid toilet.
[for the record Abby was OK with the fish dying]
I just said something to Abby that is probably wrong, but I’m going to blog it because I was so amused. We had finished brushing her teeth and she whipped her head forward to spit out the toothpaste. A small bit of her hair flopped into the sink (no toothpaste made contact). And with movie star-like brilliance I said, “Abby, watch out. With great hair comes great responsibility…”
It was touching, I could have won an academy award or something.
This would be our new puppy, HotPockets, or more likely ‘Pockets.’ After having Kicker, my mother-in-laws dog, for so long in the house it became apparent that it was doggy time. Hot Pockets is a mix of multiple mystery breeds. The cute puppiness will wear off and we’ll have a full grown mutt some day, but for now she’s pretty darn cute. More pictures of the puppy and various family members will come shortly… once Abby can handle touching the dog (for some reason living dogs are hard for her compared to stuffed animals). Evie loves the puppy, and the puppy loves Evie. But the puppy loves to jump up on Evie, and that just has to be monitored too heavily for the two to be left alone yet.
I love the King James translation of the Bible for its strong language and there is something oddly poetic about it. However, this morning I was reading Abby’s Bible she received when she was born in Grapevine and we were taking a look at Colossians 3 where the translators in 1611 wrote ‘put on … bowels of mercies.’ Abby’s 3 year old mind couldn’t comprehend what was being said. 🙂 Unfortunately I find myself reading like when I was a Spanish student: I translate to modern English from the 1611 English so that I can comprehend what is being said.
For those of you less savvy Paul was writing have a heart of mercy in modern vernacular.
Tonight I took Abby to her first (professional) Baseball game. This is a big thing for me for several reasons. First, let me also point out that Grandpas Peterman and Forland were there (it was also Clair’s first pro game). Grandpa Peer will more than likely get roped into going to a professional baseball game with Abby whether he likes it or not 🙂 Second, it was with the San Fransisco Giants, which was my first professional baseball game that my dad took my brother and I to [they lost to the Cubs]. Third, my grandpa Martin never got to take my brother and I to a pro ball game because he died of a surprise aneurism before he got the chance [we were scheduled to go to one with him later on in the year he passed away]. My grandpa Martin was a Giants fan. So tonight was the culmination of 2/3rds of something I want to give to Abby: baseball games with grandpas [Grandpa Peer is the other third]. She’s a girl, so she probably won’t care like I do about baseball, but she’s also excited about things that are new, which this certainly was.
The Rockies really did a number on the Giants in the second inning. They scored 4. Later the Giants scored a total of 3
runs, but the Rockies kept ahead ending with 5. My granpa Martin would more than likely have been muttering at the idiot players dragging his team’s name in the mud 🙂 I think that the only thing he’d have joined in on was the booing for Barry Bonds. I haven’t heard a crowd make such a stink in person. When Bonds came up to the plate the crowd made it known that they didn’t appreciate his steroid fueled record.
Abby had fun and I bought her a purple foam finger that she enjoyed waving in the air yelling, “Go Rockies, Go!” The Rockies went, and I was glad that we had come 🙂
So to celebrate the Independence of the United States we did racks of ribs. Jessica and I don’t have a lot of experience in feeding large groups ribs so we bought 4 racks. That would be roughly the gross national income of a small country in ribs, but I guess I’m a generous host. Jessica had read that you should count on half a rack for each person eating. We had 8 people (7+2 youth + 1 Abby) so I got four. I think combined everyone ate about 1.3 racks of ribs. So we have left overs.
LOTS of leftovers. At least the local grocery store was open when my propane tank went dry on me 🙂 The ribs were good, but took about 5 hours to cook so it was a labor of love. And my love, Jessica, did most of that while I went to help my buddy Craig chop up wood from his tree that had blown into the neighbor’s yard during our funky storms of the last three days.
Speaking of storms we went out to watch fireworks in the car. In the rain. In a Toy ‘R’ Us parking lot. And the fireworks did not come… because rain and fire do not play well together, sort of like Pam Anderson and the 1700’s shakers [the shakers believed in celibacy]. One thing that was fun though is that we had Kailey & Trystan with Abby, Jess and I so we played the camping game. That’s the one where you say, “I’m going camping and I’m going to bring [insert item name] to start it and then each person has to add one item to the end of the list after reciting it from memory. One of the tricks to the game is that you can add complicated adjectives to the items so it can be the ‘ooey-gooey green sleeping bag’ instead of the ‘sleeping bag.’ Abby did surprisingly well. I, on the other hand, did poorly due to being quite tired.
I think fun was had by all and in the end I still have about 3 pounds of ribs to eat. Tonight? Abby’s first baseball game, if it doesn’t get rained out.
Abby cracked us up Saturday on the way home on the airplane. We got onto the plane and she pretty much immediately grabbed the safety card out of the seat back before her. She opened it up and told me she wanted a ‘nose bag.’
That’s right, some people call them oxygen masks, but we call them nose bags now 🙂