big week for Abby

Sometimes you can go weeks or even months without the reality of how fast a child is growing up hitting you... and then you have a week like this. Yesterday Abby learned to tie her shoes.

Sidebar: For all those educators and overzealous, overachieving parents (or grandparents, for that matter!) out there - YES, I realize that she's 6 years old and almost done with Kindergarten. I just don't see this as critical at this point in our lives. She has shoes. She can put on her shoes. They're elastic and don't need tying. It works well for all of us, including her school teachers, as we're not constantly stopping to tie shoes. Everyone knows that kids can't keep their shoes tied. It's about efficiency. I'm not really concerned that it's on the Kindergarten report card as a necessary fine motor skill - her fine motor is terrific. She can use scissors better than I can! However, when we received our 3rd notice of the year AND a wooden practice "shoe" with laces this week in Abby's backpack it occurred to me that maybe Mrs. Schindewolf thinks we don't OWN any shoes with laces and THAT is why Abby hasn't learned to tie. So, I gave in. We got out a shoe - a REAL one, and Abby learned to tie yesterday. She can now tie a shoe - of course, they're mine since she doesn't have any shoes with laces, but whatever. more photos here

Back to the issue at hand. I've been getting tired of watching Abby ride her training-wheeled bike around while the little neighbor girl down the street, a year and a half younger than Abby, goes tooling past on her 2-wheeler. So, after our triumph yesterday with the shoes, I decided that today was the day. She was a little hesitant, so she put on Jacob's skateboarding pads and we headed out. She got the hang of it pretty quickly - fortunately I didn't have to do TOO much running up and down the street keeping her balanced. I'm not in shape for that kind of physical activity. Before I knew it, she was pedaling herself down the street without any help at all. She didn't even have any real falls. By the end of the night we took a family bike ride around the block, and at times we had trouble keeping up with her!

Our little girl is growing up - between the reading, the teeth, the tying and the riding, she's a completely different kid from when she started Kindergarten only 9 short months ago. It's going WAY too fast...

for you Joy!

Well, it's been a while! No good reasons - loads of things I *could* be writing about, like the fact that Abby recently lost her SEVENTH tooth, and she's not even out of Kindergarten. Or that my sister is coming home over Memorial Day weekend. Or that I talked to my Grandma B last night for the first time in WAY too long. Or the ridiculously maddening season finale of Grey's... Soon. The urge to write will return and I will once again be boring you with the mundane details of my life.

For now, I'll show you some updated photos of the place where I've been spending a lot of my time lately. As most of you are probably aware, the store where I work, Pages In Time, moved recently from our old location to a BRAND NEW, stunningly beautiful, custom-designed, 10,200 sq.ft. store. It was no small task, but it is SO worth it - we're getting more positive feedback than I even imagined. And once the scrapbookers of the world realize that one of the very classiest, largest stores sits right here in Northern Indiana, we will begin to see pilgrimages on the scale of Mecca or the Mall of America.

I can't take any of the credit for this. It wasn't my idea to move. It wasn't my idea to build a brand new store. It wasn't my idea to paint the walls orange and aqua and green, or (in the case of the women's restroom, brown with big, beautiful aqua polka dots). The Turners did the work. They planned and prepared and built and painted and, most importantly, they pay the bills. I'm just proud to say that I get to play along. Afterall, if I've got to work, then I want to do something I enjoy. And if I work at a scrapbooking store, then I want to work at the coolest, biggest, funnest, most outrageous one there is. If I'm going to be on a team, I want to be on the winning team. So I do and I am.

Click on the picture and enjoy what you see.