A Conversation with Abby

While eating lunch today at Culver's we had to continually remind Abby that we were in a restaurant and that not everyone wanted to hear her every word. If you know Abby well you will know that she generally talks in only one volume: loud. She also tends to talk or make noise continuously. After several reminders to use her "inside voice" the conversation went as follows:

Lisa: What have Mommy and Daddy asked you to do lots of times today?
Abby (very proud of herself for knowing the answer and practically yelling it): Be quiet!

Glad to know the message was getting through.

Gymnastics

Annika switched from dance to gymnastics this year, with considerable success. While she enjoyed dance class last year, she's much more enthusiastic about going to gymnastics. Her strength has improved, too, even to the point that the PE teacher at school commented on it. Recently it was parent watch day, so Lisa got to go in and observe up close, and she took lots of videos and pictures. Here's Annika's one-legged bridge:

And here's a handstand:



Also, unrelatedly, here's Jake riding the horse in our basement. It's a very old horse, dating back to when Lisa's dad was growing up. All of our kids have ridden it with much gusto. It's a good thing they can hang on tight or else they'd go flying off of it.

Minivan Conversation

Last night the kids had supper with Mark and Liz, and after we picked them up we were discussing what they had for dinner. An argument ensued about whether they had potatoes, as Abby claimed, which didn't make much sense since they had spaghetti. It turns out she meant to say that she ate some tomatoes, so we practiced some pronunciation.

Lisa: "Say 'tomato'..."
Abby: "Tomato"
Mike: "Say 'tornado'..."
Abby: "Tornado"
Mike: "Say 'torpedo'..."
Abby: "Torpedo"
Mike: "Say 'portedo'..."
Abby: "Torpedo"
Lisa: "Say 'tortito'..."
Abby: something like that
Mike: "Say 'tortilla'..."
Abby: "Tortilla"
Mike: "Say 'quesadilla'..."
Abby: "Quesadilla"
There's some general noise from everyone, including Jake, when we get...
Annika: "Say 'smell my butt'..."
Mike: "Annika!" and it all degenerated from there, eventually leading to a discussion about what cooties are.

Halloween

Halloween! After coming home that Friday to find a vehicular behemoth in the frontyard and a stove in the garage that we thought was getting installed that day, the candy haul began:

Jake was a bunny and got mistaken for a girl a few of times:

Abby was a pumpkin:

And Annika was Violet Incredible:

The night before we carved pumpkins. The girls were considerably different in their gusto for pumpkin guts. Annika touched them a little bit, but Abby got elbow deep:

The finished products were a cat and a happy face:

We stopped my Grandpa and Grandma Dekker's church to do some trunk-or-treating first, and then hit our neighborhood. The girls toughed it out for a while, but didn't dare go to the "scary house" that was down the street from ours. They each came away with quite a bit of goodies.

Below is the behemoth I mentioned. The main underground power line in our neighborhood is getting replaced, which is a good thing, but we were the lucky ones that got this 20,000 pound lawn ornament:

This thing drilled a horizontal hole for new power line that extended more than 600 feet underground. It left nice ruts in the lawn, too, but those will be fixed eventually. And the next day Dad and I installed the stove, so we're fully functioning in the kitchen again. Unceremoniously, I think broccoli casserole was the first thing cooked in the new oven - oh, but we may have had cinnamon rolls first, to the girls' delight.