In Memory Of...

"Abbey"gail

March 1998-April 28, 2009

My sweet baby girl of 11 years was put to sleep this morning. Her kidney failure had overtaken her weak little body and it was time...

She gave us lots of unconditional love

She was playful and sweet

and made us laugh

We'll Miss You

Easter Weekend Activities Part 2

So every Easter weekend also requires a lot of watching golf. The Masters is played every Easter weekend in Augusta, Georgia. Andrew was able to attend the tournament last year, but this year he attended by sitting in front of the TV (plans are already in the works for Andrew and Taylor to attend next years tournament-yea!). There was a little incentive this year because there was a work pool to see who could score the most points over the 4 day tournament. Andrew won so he's been pretty excited!! Here are some pictures from the 2008 trip.

Besides watching golf we had some egg hunting in the backyard to do. Since the morning showered us with rain, we decided to postpone the egg hunt for after Taylor's nap. Good thing we did because it turned out to be a beautiful day! Taylor was all about finding all the eggs the Easter bunny had left him... once he figured out some of the eggs had chocolate in them we had to take a snack break- this kid is a chocoholic!

After Taylor was finished egg hunting we decided to bust out some fake eggs stuffed with confetti. He loved stepping on them and making them go "crunch". I loved them because I got to crack them on Andrew's head! I took one for the team as well:-)

NOTE: I broke my fabulous camera last weekend (dropped it with the lens out-never a good idea) and borrowed one for this weekend. I think the settings were set too high when I took the Easter pictures because when I tried to upload them to the blog is took forever and they look a little fuzzy... can't wait to buy my replacement camera:-)

Easter Weekend Activities Part 1

On Thursday Taylor had an opportunity to go on an early Easter egg hunt with his best pal, Marie. Many eggs were found and many goodies were sampled from inside the eggs...yummy! Check out the festive Halloween t-shirt Taylor is wearing...we're learning to pick out and dress ourselves in the morning!

On Friday night I decided to hard boil some eggs in preparation for dyeing them in the morning with Taylor. I was really excited about this because he's old enough now to really get involved in holiday celebrations. Not entirely knowing what I was doing, I had to actually look on-line to figure out how to boil the eggs, boiling eggs for dummies I guess. Watching eggs boil is a very slow process when you're trying so hard to not under or over cook them. Anyways, they came out fine and only 1 broke in the process. By Saturday morning Taylor was ready to "color my eggs"! I bought the simplest kit in case Taylor lost interest early and because I needed a serious refresher class on how this all works too! Needless to say Taylor did not loose interest (quite the opposite) and I was able to color eggs for the first time with my son.

I should have made more eggs in retrospect but I wasn't sure if he was going to like dipping them or not. His favorite part was the dipping part and several eggs got redipped in different colors just so that he could keep dipping them. It was a lot of fun to watch him get so into it.

Unfortunately, a toddler meltdown ensued after the eggs ran out and the dipping was done (note to self: buy lots of eggs). Of course you wont see any pictures of that-very sad when you know that it could have been avoided if there more eggs! The things we learn as first time parents:-)

After the meltdown, we were finally able to finish our Easter eggs. Complete with silly face stickers. Here's to all the parents hiding them around the house tonight since it's suppose to pour down with rain tomorrow morning and here's to doing it all again next year!

Happy Easter

One of Nine Lives?

Abbey, our 11 year old cat is sick. Over the past several months, Abbey has been rapidly loosing weight and continually wanting to drink more and more water. After a trip to Dr. Terrells vet office, a kitty-cat diagnosis has been made. Abbey has kidney failure and probably will only be with us a year longer, if that. Abbey is my first and only "little girl" and a sweet one at that. Supposedly, kidney failure is a common thing amongst older cats. The only thing that we can do for her at this stage is feed her special food and hook her up to an IV (at home) every other day for a "fluid boost". The later of the two is tough to watch but luckily Andrew is able to fill the role of doctor and Abbey seems to take to it okay. I've never lost a pet, so this is new territory for me... at least I know she's lived a very full and happy kitty life! I'm just hoping that her brother Reily won't come down with the same affliction, that way we can have many more "Kee-Kee" years with Taylor:-)