How in the heck did I become a mother of a 5 foot, 3 inch
tall eleven year old??? How did
this little girl…
Become this young lady?
This was Abigail’s off year for birthday parties. Typically we would plan a fun family
outing instead of a party, but we had a groupon for roller skating that needed
to be used so we told Abigail she could invited two friends and I would take
them skating in celebration of her big day. Friday night I headed to the Auburn Stake Connection with her
two friends, the birthday girl, and Carly. The other skating patrons were a bit dicey – maybe that’s
typical of skating rinks, but let’s just say I would never drop off any of my
kids for an open skate night. The
girls didn’t seem to mind the questionable environment and I kept close dibs on
them from a table next to the rink.
After 3 hours, at 10pm, I finally was able to pry them away by
bribing them with dessert at McDonalds on the way home.
At the end of Saturday, her actual birthday, Abigail had
deemed the day as her “lucky day”… a few highlights:
Saturday morning Abigail and I headed into Issaquah for an
appointment with a potential piano school, which went very well (more on that
later).
Afterward we ran some errands. At Fred Meyer she asked if I would get her a box of candy
canes on clearance. 50 small candy
canes for $0.50 – Sure thing birthday girl! I’m still stoked how she included that as a highlight of the
day.
She and I enjoyed a quiet lunch at a cute little country-style,
homecookin’ restaurant that I heard made delicious potato soup – Abigail doesn’t
like potatoes {gasp!} so she ate a ham sandwich (off the adult menu) that she
thought was delicious.
Afterward we used her free cold stone coupon – Love it!
As soon as we got home I got to work in the kitchen and didn’t
leave for the next 6 hours. She
wanted to take her basketball team something special for her birthday so we
made gigantic chocolate chip cookies with brownies inside. They are so yummy that they are worth
all the effort.
We use our double ovens all the time – on Saturday I was
wishing we had a triple oven. Brownies,
5 pans of cookies, 3 round cakes, cupcakes, banana bread, and dinner. Justin had to run down to the store
cause I’d run out of eggs. He came
home with a package of Mambas for the birthday girl – score! Double score was that I had picked up a
package to surprise her with as well.
Abigail packaged up cookies for each of her team members and
coaches and played in her best basketball game of the season yet. She scored 10 of the 26 points for her
team. I wish I could have been
there to share that with her, but I was back home getting her birthday cake and
dinner ready with Jason and Carly (while Katie napped).
Abigail had a very clear idea what kind of cake she
wanted. 2 chocolate cake layers,
one vanilla cake layer and vanilla icing on top. Then comes the best part – CANDY! And lots of it!
Carly and Jason helped me put on all the candy (and make sure everything
tasted good).
The cake was the first thing she saw when she came home from
her game and she said it was better than she’d imagined. After her shower I asked her to get in
a picture with the cake and she jumped up on the counter.
The kids helped me set the table with our “fancy” dishes and
goblets for Abigail’s favorite meal – chicken biscuits.
Grandma Kesler called from Hong Kong as we were finishing up
dinner. Abigail ran into the
office to find a quiet place to talk to her, but even from the kitchen I could
hear her chatting non-stop about her day.
She was so happy. As a
mother I worry at times whether we do enough for our kids, if the experiences and
memories we try to give them will be cherished more than anything we could have
purchased, it feels awesome to know that she felt special and that she knew
that we love and appreciate her.
(By the way, I’m not saying I’m at all opposed to giving gifts – we
usually just try to do something fun instead)
The day concluded with having the Fletcher family over for
cake and ice-cream and to open a few gifts from the extended family. The cherry on top of Abigail’s “lucky
day”.
WARNING: Major
bragging ahead, but just being real :)
Abigail is ultra talented. Honestly, it’s a bit overwhelming. We want to give our children the opportunity to excel in
their abilities and interests, but this girl has no end. Everything we try she rocks.
She continues to flourish in the gifted program at school and
earned herself a place as one of the four students to represent our school at
the district math contest this spring.
She is editor of the school paper and is the librarian’s on-call helper
for helping out when the library is exceptionally busy.
Abigail’s current piano teacher told us well over a year ago
that Abigail would eventually need to continue lessons in a more challenging environment. On Saturday morning she met with the
program director at the Chopin Academy of Music (who had already met with
Abigail’s current teacher privately) and he decided he would create an opening
in his schedule to personally work with Abigail if we’d like. Exciting, yes.. kind of. We loved the convenience (and cost) of our
current teacher and felt Abigail was doing well, but apparently they both feel
she’s has greater potential. We
have some hard decisions to make.
Abigail started playing the flute in the fall and is doing
really well. Next year she thinks
she might switch to the clarinet though because apparently you can’t play the
flute as quickly. Abigail likes to
play fun, upbeat music. As much as
she loves music, without an iPod Abigail’s exposure to music is limited to what
I may have in the car or what she hears at school or friends houses. I’m not ready for that whole pop
culture so I’m happy to hold off on that aspect of tween-hood as long as
possible.
And sports… goodness.
She’s awesome at soccer, loving the current basketball league she’s
playing in, she’s passed all the levels of swim lessons, and was encouraged to
join the swim team. We almost
don’t want to introduce any other sport.
She’s an athlete for sure.
Each year I wonder if this will be the year Abigail starts
being concerned about wearing the right clothes, having cute hair, make-up, jewelry,
or accessories, listening to the cool music, or worrying about her body
image. I hear so many stories from
friends about their daughters trying to “fit in” and I’m grateful we’re not
there. I hope she’s always that
confident in herself that she doesn’t care about that stuff. I doubt we’ll always have it this easy,
but I’ll enjoy it as long as we do.
Responsible has always been something we hear from teachers,
coaches, and friends when they describe Abigail. I have NEVER had to hound her about homework. Honestly, I have never had to even sit
down with the girl and help her with homework. I
have always been able to count on her to get everything done on her own.
She keeps track of her own schedule. Which mornings she has early morning
band, which days she needs to take her basketball gear for practice after
school, she doesn’t forget anything – no homework or lunch left on the counter,
no missing assignments, etc…
She is a good friend.
You can put Abigail with anyone and she will work well with them and get
along. She makes friends easily
and is very comfortable in social situations.
We haven’t gotten a babysitter since August and Justin and I
haven’t gone out this often since we had kids. Abigail takes the role of being in charge very seriously. She always has Jason and Katie in bed
on time (or a bit early). I worry
we might overuse this luxury, but we figure we better take advantage of it
before we release her to the neighborhood who will actually compensate her for
her services.
As we know, no one can be perfect. Abigail has gotten a little saucy with us. No longer can we count on a willing
attitude every time we ask her to do something. She doesn’t keep the cleanest room, nor does she hang up her
towel after she showers. Speaking
of which, she doesn’t like to shower and would go days without if we let
her. She also doesn’t like to get
her hair done very often. Being such a smarty pants also lends itself to some debating
with her parents – something we aren’t too fond of. But she’s learned from the best :S
Happy Birthday Miss Abigail – you are AMAZING!
