Abby Of The Hundred Days
Abby’s school celebrated the first 100 days of school with a party. Each student had to get a shirt and glue 100 items to it and wear it to school. It was a perfect opportunity to fire up the ghetto studio and get a few pics of Abby wearing her creation.
G-O-T
Abby had her first spelling test and, as you can see, she aced it. We hope this is a good omen.
Bizarre Tooth Caper
Abby finally got her loose top tooth to come out. That makes two lost. She was the second kid in her class to lose a tooth since school started. Some weird intrigue went on in her head as all this played out last night. She went to bed about 8 and, because we’ve been cracking down on her going to sleep as soon as possible, we didn’t hear from her for a long time. Finally about 10:30 she called out that she needed to go to the bathroom. Gina gets up and sees her to the bathroom and back to bed. Cut to this morning and she wakes up and declares her tooth free of the gum shackles that had imprisoned it for about 4 and a half years. There’s blood all over part of her sheet. After a long interrogation about just when she pulled the tooth, it turns out she had pulled the thing before she even got up to go to the bathroom. She didn’t tell Gina about it, she said, because she didn’t want us to be mad that she pulled her tooth instead of going to sleep. She also said she wanted to make sure the tooth fairy didn’t know about it until she could spend some time playing with the tooth. She said the tooth fairy came in her room in the night but she held the tooth tight in her fist and the tooth fairy couldn’t see between her fingers to where the tooth was. The tooth fairy left soon after.
Abby Monday
It’s Abby Monday. She’s about to lose a top tooth and starting to look a little snaggley, kinda like Jewel.
Gymkata!
Gymnastics is the new activity at our house. And Gymkata is the best martial arts movie ever made.
(Two SB600s for the rim lights. One AB800 in an umbrella for the front fill. SB26 for the splash of blue on the poorly done background.)
Abbydon Productions Inc. LLC Presents
Abby and I were looking for something to do inside out of the heat that didn’t involve watching TV, so we decided to get into the movie making bidness. We decided to give Pixar a run for their money by making a stop motion animation short as our first project. We needed a camera dolly, so I strapped my camera to the top of Abby’s Barbie VW Beetle. I positioned the camera for each shot and took care of the focusing. Abby moved the train between frames and pushed the camera’s shutter button. She also helped solve the problem of keeping the train positioned on the bridge approaches without rolling backward or forward. We’re thinking of doing a frame-for-frame homage to “Citizen Kane” for our next effort.
Snaggle Tooth
It took about three months, but Abby finally worked one of her baby teeth out of her head. She was very excited. She just about flipped when the Tooth Fairy brought five $1 bills and six quarters. “I didn’t know she would bring me all of these coins,” she said.
Tiny Dancer
Abby’s first dance recital was on Sunday. It’s amazing because she dissolved into tears during the makeshift practice recital back in December and vowed to not participate in the June recital. Well she did and she did great. The video is from Saturday’s dress rehearsal because no one was allowed to take photos or videos of the real thing.
Batter, Batter, Batter …. Swing!
Abby’s Aunts Jodie and Laney got her a tee ball set for her birthday. She proved to be surprisingly adept at hitting the ball. However, Jodie and Gramps proved less adept at fielding.
She’ll Never Be 4 Again
We just wrapped up three birthday celebrations over the last two weeks. The other day I said to her “I wish you were 1-year-old again” and she replied, “Daddy, I’m 5. I’ll never be 1 again.”
Daffy Day
We made our annual trip to Wye Mountain a couple of weeks ago to see the daffodils. Abby’s Mimi was on hand for this year’s trip.
Mucus Tsunami
Gina opened a window Sunday morning and the spring came in and attacked Abby’s nose. She killed our Kleenex™ supply.
Sled Hunt Pays Off
I went on a crazed hunt for a sled on Tuesday in anticipation of the epic snowmageddon headed our way. This is not an exaggeration, I called every sled purveyor in Central Arkansas, we’re talking Little Rock, Conway, Cabot, Bryant, Benton, East End, etc. No joy anywhere. I finally came across Hum’s Hardware in North Little Rock and they had one sled left and they agreed to hold it for 20 minutes. I made it there in exactly 20 minutes and now I’m able to present you with these fine clips of the only thing a snowstorm is good for.
Snowpocalypse
The weather people spent several days predicting a snowmageddon for central Arkansas and Abby went into overdrive in anticipation of the gloriousness she was sure was coming. At one point she said, “I can’t wait. We’re going to wear mittens and have snowball fights and drink hot chocolate.” The snow finally began coming down Sunday afternoon and it was better than Christmas.
Abby Thursday
I finally got around to getting some pictures of Abby in her dancing togs.
Strobist: SB600 on floor fired through shoot-thru umbrella. SB600 in shoot-thru pointed down from above.
(Note: I know the vignette is too strong making the edges of the photo blend into the blog background, but I don’t feel like fixing it.)
In Training
With Abby and me both out of school, we’ve got time to fill. We went out to Two Rivers Park where Abby got her bike on. She rode top speed about two and half miles while I walked along before one of the pedals fell off. She opined that “All that fastness must have worn that pedal out.”
A Branson Family Christmas
Santa made a special visit to Branson over the weekend so Mimi and Papa could get their Christmas on with Abby and the big winner from Christmas Haul #1 is the Razor scooter. We found this great unused parking lot in Branson, but she crashed after just a few minutes and wanted to rest for awhile. When we got back to Little Rock she made me take her to a “tennis course” because that was the smoothest place she could think of to ride on.
Dear Santa
Abby’s letter to Santa. She heard me say that my all-time favorite Christmas gift was my Evel Knievel action figure and stunt cycle and a week later put it on her Santa list. She didn’t seem terribly interested in mailing anything to the North Pole and petered out on the list making. Later she came back and added the ink stamps and the pizza grease stain.
Can’t Catch Me
Gina went out of town earlier this week for a four-day business trip. Right after she left Abby had one of her great ideas: “Let’s make gingerbread men as a surprise for Mom when she comes home.” I have no idea where she came up with this. We’ve never made gingerbread men at our house and we’ve never bought any that I can remember. But because I’m a great dad I told her it was a great idea. She said, “OK let’s go.” I told her we’d better wait until the day before Mom came home so the cookies would be fresh. Everyday thereafter when I’d pick her up from school she’d ask if we were going to make gingerbread men. She’d then sulk for an hour or so when I said “three more days, two more days,” etc. I found a recipe on the Internets and went and bought all the ingredients and when the day came Abby and I went to a local kitchen store and bought big, medium and small gingerbread man cookie cutters.
I hauled out my trusty twin SB-600s and two shoot-through umbrellas to capture what promised to be a magical father-daughter evening. Also I figured the gingerbread men would make good subjects to shoot with the beater macro lens I recently bought on eBay.
Heap Big Fun
Abby’s school held a massively politically incorrect Indian pow-wow in honor of Thanksgiving. They sang a song about smoking peace pipes and then they said a Christian prayer. Abby was real cute in her head dress and vest, though.
Camping Fools
For the second week in a row, and the third time in a month, we took Ol’ Leaky out for some camping action. It rained. Ol’ Leaky, as you might expect, leaked. It wasn’t too bad though. The rain was quite heavy but it didn’t last long. We stayed dry and warm and caught the leaks with a towel and a bucket.
We went to Lake Ouachita State Park on the eastern end of Lake Ouachita, Arkansas’ largest lake. I’d never been to the lake before, so we got to see a new-to-us area. The campground itself was excellent, complete with electric, water and sewer, though we didn’t use the sewer.
Backtalk