Abigail is 6!

I was beginning to wonder if I could ever find time to blog about my sweet girl's birthday. It's been a busy last week and a half with two baby showers, Elijah cutting teeth and feeling poopy, festivities for Abigail on a couple of days, some family time, and VBS preparations for next week. I have to at least do a quick recap, because we had such fun celebrating Abi, and she is such a precious daughter and sister and blessing to our family.

We started her birthday morning-June 5-with a small gift: a Susan figurine, from the Chronicles of Narnia. Susan is her current favorite character, and she longs to be Susan, live in Narnia, be an archer like Susan, etc. You know, similar to the Laura/Mary Ingalls obsession of a few months' back. Anyway, she loved her Susan and Reepicheep from Isaac, and then we quickly got out the door to go blackberry picking at Petals from the Past in Jemison. These gardens are one of my favorite places anywhere, and Abigail is a nature lover like me, so enjoys going there and we planned to meet up with the Cottons and Gramma and Granddaddy. It was warm that morning, but we beat the worst of the heat, and had a great time gathering lots of huge, delicious berries. After that, we met up with some friends for a pizza lunch at Chuck E. Cheese. The girls played games and danced, and were silly and happy. And, we adults were thrilled to be in the air-conditioning, even if it's a crowded, loud, overstimulating environment. :-) She received some sweet gifts there and had doughnuts for dessert, which was big fun for her, and a break for me, since I had lots of cake to make later in the weekend.

We had time with just family Saturday evening, and ate dinner at Habaneros, like Isaac chose for his birthday dinner. As we were waiting on our food, Abi confessed she actually chose it because unlike her brother, she wanted the servers to sing "Happy Birthday" to her. After a few moments of waiting after our dinner, the band arrived with a shout, nearly startling us to death, and had us all giggling with their quick rendition of "Feliz Cumpleanos." She was very happy to be serenaded and we then shared a DQ ice cream cake for dessert. (Note to self: In the future, pick the cake up early so it can thaw to at least some, and enable the slicing of the cake to not break the mama's hand). There was an antique car show in the same shopping center, and we got a picture of an awesome old firetruck, but then looked at the rest of the cars from afar, since it was just too blasted hot to walk around on asphalt with bellies full of Mexican and ice cream cake.

I still remember many details from the day Abigail was born, and can't believe it has been 6 years since that day. She is such a passionate, joyful, creative little girl, as you can tell from the many "Kid Quotes" on my blog's sidebar. Her brain is always going, and she is very much a people person, with many strengths that will hopefully be molded by the Lord to glorify Him. She tends to be a child of extremes, and can be obstinate and overzealous at times, but also extremely giving and servant-hearted at others. Thankfully, she has a desire to love on people and please God, which is overriding some of her other not-so-great personality traits these days. It's awesome to see her maturing as a child, and also as a child of God. I usually use the word 'exuberant' to describe her. It means "joyously unrestrained and enthusiastic" and pretty much describes her 90% of the time. She is such a light in our lives. Abigail means her father's delight, and though she's always been sweet and wonderful, we are so thankful that she is learning to be even more of a delight to her Father, who gifted and shaped her to be who she is. Thank you Lord, for loaning us our precious Abi-girl!