Beautiful Girl

My wireless connection stopped working last week – I know you missed me and the daily update of the minutiae of my life.

The sad thing is that I was completely stymied by the failure of my connection. Was it my computer? Was it my wireless router? Was it Zach? Who knew?

As it turns out, I think that the wireless card in my laptop has stopped working….but I really don’t know. Every day I’d turn the laptop back on, hoping it had somehow magically healed itself, but no. Today it occurred to me to connect my laptop directly to the router – no wireless needed! Wow!! I was able to resolve that issue in less a week! Brilliant! The saddest part of all is that I was unable to check my two favorite blogs (besides this one, of course!!) on the kids’ computer because the content is not entirely appropriate for children. That’s right. I look at blogs I won’t let my kids look at. Call the police. One of them is gofugyourself.com and if you’re very, very nice, I’ll send you the link to the other one. Maybe. Anyway, a whole week without those ridiculous blogs finally motivated me to fire up the old neurons and think my way through this problem.

Anyhoo…..

Friday was Abby’s ninth birthday. Her dad took her out Thursday night and they went to Costco, Taco Time and to some house. She wasn’t clear if he was thinking about buying it, if Uncle Ricardo is selling it, or both (right here is where I try really hard to live up to the promise I made earlier).

On Friday, I came home from work at about 3 and we went to Salt Lake. She’s in need of more jeans and long-sleeve shirts so we went on a “Shopping Spree!!” I put it in quotes and used exclamation points because that’s how I sold it to her. She’s typically not a big shopper and she’s also very difficult to please…kind of a tough combination. Anyway, I let her pick out whatever she wanted to try on and then we went in the same dressing room. She kept saying this was the most awesome “Shopping Spree!!” ever. I thought about how many times I’ve shared a dressing room with my mom and the memories I have of “Shopping Sprees!!” with her – I love that I’m able to have daughters to carry on the tradition.

Then we went ice skating at the Gallivan Center – another home run with Abby. She wanted to go to a movie and the only option was “Alvin and the Chipmunks.” Wow. Painful. But she loved it, so it was a success. I wanted to stick a fork in my eye. Or maybe my ears.

Of course, I neglected to bring my camera. So these are some shots of Abby over the past several years. She’s my Beautiful Girl and I’m so glad she’s here. It’s incredibly difficult to narrow down a single thing I love most about Abby, but if I absolutely had to pick one thing, it would be how unique she is. I love how she’s different from every other girl I know and that the only thing that is predictable about her is that she’s completely unpredictable.

Her first full sentence was “Look, Dad! I’m smoking!!” -- spoken at full volume in the middle of Sacrament Meeting. She once flipped me off in the middle of a prayer. Intentional, but not in the way you think. She did it on purpose, but didn’t know what she was doing. At least, I tell myself she didn’t.

To me, Abby looks the most like her father. She has his eyes and his head...also his stubbornness and his perverse sense of humor. Her hair has lost a lot of the curl she had as a little girl, but it’s thick and enviable. Both Rachel and I would DIE for her hair.

She's by far the most creative of the bunch and the most earnest. Sometimes she says things are so horribly sappy...I think she may have a career in church-related media...but it's endearing because she actually means what she says. Her favorite character in any movie is always the evil one. She loves Daniel Radcliffe and the Jonas Brothers but shows very little interest in boys she actually knows. Which is a blessing, let's be honest!

So Happy Birthday, Abby-girl. I love you.