Cousins Visit

A few photos of the summer time lunch at Grammie Jeannie's

Abby in the Sougnez wine bucket. She's really into clapping her hands lately when she's happy.

Cousin Ivy with her dad

Kiddie pool scene... Ivy, Abby and Lincoln all trying to play nice. Lincoln can be a little devil and we had to put him in the 'naughty chair' for 2 min ;).

Wrights pond on Friday afternoon

Old Photo Albums

We went home to chelmsford this weekend to have lunch with the Archibalds who were passing through on their way to Maine. My mom says she is still trying to clean out her darkroom but I'll believe that when I see it. I started digging through the boxes a bit and found a few old photos.

Theresa and I skiing: sometime in the mid 1980's
And she still takes me skiing (well we are both into snowboarding now) - circa 2008

JP and I at Hampton Beach


Yep - that's me with a really bad haircut and playing air guitar on a plastic shovel. I remember this night, Theresa was playing the song 'eye of the tiger' and making us dance around like crazy kids!

Rocker Chick

This photo is plagiarized from my mom's blog. I just think it is a terribly cute shot of Abby looking very cool in her sunglasses.

In other news, I took the learn to lead climb class at the rock gym today. Awesome time! I learned so much about how to belay correctly, and fall without getting hurt. I'm totally psyched to start climbing all those routes in the gym labeled 'lead only' & also to try some sport climbing outside.

Schooner Party

Abby and I drove up to Gloucester today to celebrate our friend Chris Morses's birthday.
It was quite the party, we all met first at the state park where there was a picnic set up for the kids with 3 hired babysitters. After making sure all the kids (9 of them!) were happy and taken care of, we drove down to board The Schooner Lannon. Sailing was totally fun, and it was a beautiful day. Everyone told Morse that come time for Eva's birthday this fall he better have something special planned because this was awesome.

The Sailboat:

Posing by the front sail, I helped pull this one :)

Skipper at the wheel

Some NUHOC ladies: Shannon, Joy and Jess

Spins

Abby is into spinning now (and a little arm flapping). I think it's pretty funny, check out her moves.

Wrights Pond

Maureen, Abby's fabulous daycare provider, asked for the day off yesterday so I stayed home. We took a trip to Wrights Pond which is the Medford town beach. Abby seemed to like it and ran right in and sat down in the water.

Hammond Pond

Saturday was a beautiful sunny day so we decided to try out climbing at Hammond Pond. It was a new experience in family climbing :-), we had 3 kids and 4 adults. Amazingly it worked out great, the kids had fun playing outside and the adults got to try out climbing again on some real rock. After climbing in the gym all spring I was so excited to get outside again.

Here's some shots of the action, taken with Tighe's new point and shoot camera.

Here's me on the diagonal traverse

Tighe on the same climb.

Abby and her friend Jack having some snacks and duce (how Abby says 'juice').

Kristian belaying with Jack on rope back up.

Kristian on the first climb of the morning.
Here you can get an idea of the family climbing scene. Jack, Emma and Abby seemed happy to watch their parents most of the morning.

Esther making her way up the traverse.

Abby hanging out watching with Tighe.

One last photo from the weekend. Given I'm a closet hippie ;), I thought it would be fun to walk around the Harvard Square Riverfest in the evening. They block off memorial drive and have live music, art/dance demonstrations and vendors. My favorites were the guy making wine goblets out of glass as well as the wide assortment of jewelry to buy. I successfully avoided spending any money except for a 2$ ice cream for Abby, but it was a close call ;).

Boo Boo

Poor Abby fell down at the playground today. I was letting her climb on and off the curb and she fell right on her head. She has a cut on her nose and a big bump on her forehead. :(

Ugh, do you always feel so bad when your baby gets hurt?

One More

Abby is talking so much lately. This morning she said a two word phrase several times.
When we were going down the stairs she would say 'one more' and then at the next step 'one more' again. Pretty cool! I'm so impatient I know but I really can't wait until she can tell me her stories :).

You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream

Abby is into getting her own cone now.

Before.....

After.....

Cousins

I really like our Sougnez cousin dynamic right now. Lance is the big kid, about to turn 3. Lincoln (the middle child) is almost 2, and Abby (the baby) is holding her own despite being the youngest & a girl! She is really into the baby pool & water table and doesn't seem afraid of water at all.

Looks like Lincoln is sizing Abby up here thinking... "I can take her, no problem"

This was the only photo that we got where none of the kids look unhappy ;).





Kissy Lincoln


"Um, I'm not really into this Lance Soup thing this year Grammie"



Abby just loves cuddling like this, I hope she never gives this up :)

Lance & his favorite Auntie (I got lots of competition here, he has 2 other aunts!)


Lincoln is a biter! He bit Abby in the finger but it was her own fault because she willingly stuck her finger in his mouth. He was all sad and sorry when Abby started crying with tears and everything.

Like Mother Like Daughter?

My mom did a little photo shoot of Abby and I today while we were home visiting my sister & the boys from Bristol. It is very VERY hot here in Boston today so Abby's got her bathing suit on. Gotta love the summer. So nice to be hot & sticky and splash around in the baby pool for the morning.

I think Abby's starting to look a little like me, everyone always comments about how she resembles Tighe. One thing I have noticed recently is that her hair is wavy like mine. Poor kid, doomed to long mornings of blowdryers and straightening irons when its humid.

Mmmm ribs

We took Abby to Redbones for dinner last night. The pictures below are courtesy of our friend Joy who also joined us for dinner. Abby seems to enjoy ribs a lot. We tried to just give her pieces of the rib, but she had to have the whole thing.
We've been pretty lucky in that Abby is well behaved when we take her out to eat. We have found that the trick is to go to places that serve the food relatively quickly.

I could really use a Wet-Nap!

Not So Urban Hike

On Sunday we went for a hike in Carlisle State Forest. There was this horseback riding event there which made for an interesting walk (kept having to move out of the way of groups of people riding). Abby seemed pretty entertained by them though so I can't complain. Nobody could wait until after the hike for ice cream so we were pre-fueled for this hike with plenty of sugar. ;)

I realized this weekend that Abby's hair is getting long enough to play with. This ponytail reminds me of Cindy Loo Who from The Grinch. :) Does anyone know where a good place to take a baby girl for her first haircut?



A few more from Pepe's flower garden