My Mini Me!

Let me introduce you to Abbigail Anne!  We are practically the same person as my full name is Abigail Anna.  This cute little button is the week old daughter of my coworker, Drew.  Even though I know she's not named after me, I still find it quite an honor that someone could know me and still name their child Abigail.  It means that the name Abigail doesn't leave a bad taste in their mouth.  She is actually the second baby to share my almost exact name (that I know of).  One of my high school drama teachers named her daughter Abigail Ann as well.

We also thought we'd get a picture of her first trip to dad's work.  As you can see, Drew is an excellent multitasker! (PS- we staged the picture...he's actually a very responsible dad)

I Have Faults Too

I mean, I know everyone thinks I have it all together and life is just wonderful all the time and I do everything right and nothing goes wrong and my family is great and my roommates are awesome and my job is the best job on the planet and that I have a rockin' body without ever working out and my room is always clean and my clothes always match and I bake delicious baked goods and my hair falls perfectly across my shoulders as the wind blows luscious curls across my face and I have a 4.0 and I get nine hours of sleep every night and I have a butler who brings me chocolate on a tray and a seamstress to custom fit all my clothes and Frank Sinatra to sing me to sleep and a feather mattress and....oh you know....life is just perfect.  

Well, my friends, I have a fault.  

I do not floss my teeth.  

BUT this is quickly changing as I have flossed for the last three days at least once a day.  So pretty soon I will be perfect and have perfect teeth.  Maybe I'll change my name to Mary and be practically perfect in every way.  Except I don't want to be practically perfect...I'm going to be perfect. 

I'll keep Abigail.

My Health Communications group handing out free flosser kits (popcorn and floss) for a project....I made the giant flosser our fairy is holding!

PS- I'm tired.  And when I'm tired and want to blog, this is the kind of stuff I come up with.  One day I'll look back and this and wonder how I ever got to be so weird...one day will probably be tomorrow....

Meet Luella

She's the newest member of my family...born on my birthday.  Compliments of Alexis.  I now have a new bed buddy!  That sounds kind of weird....but it's true. 

Tandem for Two

Yesterday I went on my very first tandem bicycle ride and it was a blast!!  I wish there was a video (besides my video in heaven of course) of us trying to get the bike going the first time.  I'm sure it was quite a laughing matter.  We managed to ride the bike all the way up the Rexburg hill and then into the great nothingness fields outside the city.  On one street I saw six "slug bugs" in the space of about five minutes.  Good thing I don't punch hard or Blake might have a bruise on his arm. 

On our way back to Rexburg we biked though a bunch of neighborhoods and went right by a family out playing badminton in their yard.  As we were passing the dad yelled at us asking if we wanted to challenge them...of course we flipped a u-ey and accepted the offer!  Needless to say, we creamed them.  I found out one of the little girl's names was Abigail and before we left I told her she better live up to her name.  Her dad then said "oh she does!"  I have no idea what that means....

Using google earth we calculated that we biked approximately 18 miles.  That's pretty good for being almost the only physical activity I've done all semester and not even breaking a sweat.

Tikki-Tikki-Tembo

My family has this obsession with baby names, I think.  I found this baby name book a few years ago at a garage sale and it's the best purchase I've ever made.  Maybe not the best but it was a pretty good purchase.  Anyways, I had Meredith bring the book to North Carolina for Thanksgiving so I could take it back to school with me because I missed it so much.  My uncle laughed at me for obsessing over a baby name book and then I told him to read it and he was sucked in for a good half hour.  I told you it was good!  It's not a normal baby name book, that's for sure.  Meredith was depressed that I took the book, so for Christmas she got another copy of it.  A newer edition but I'm not jealous.  Mine is the original!

The other night, Eli, Meredith and I sat in my room for an hour looking at names.  Please don't judge us.  It's quality time together.

Now I'm going to take some time to reflect upon my own name.  Abigail.  I haven't always gone by Abigail.  Through my senior year of high school I went by Abby.  For some odd reason in eighth grade I changed the spelling to "Abbi" but that only lasted a year.  Although one friend still calls me "A-B-B-I" and spells it out for me.  I decided that college was a new chapter in life and since no one knew me I could go by whatever the heck I wanted.  I could have gone by Fransisca and no one would really know the difference.  It took some time to get used to introducing myself as Abigail because the name was new to me too.  But I like it and I stuck with it.  When people asked if I preferred Abby or Abigail I would say Abigail, although for some reason I always felt a little guilty...like I was making them work more because it's an extra two syllables.  I'm over that now.

I really like my name and now it feels weird coming home and calling myself Abby.  It doesn't feel weird having people call me that because that's how everyone knows me.  But if I introduce myself to people it takes a second to make sure Abby comes out.  If I say Abigail, I get strange looks from my friends.  And I don't need more strange looks than I already get!

According to my trusted baby name book, Abigail is an old-fashioned and intelligent name.  I can live with that.

I think I'm going to call my kids their real names from the get-go so they don't have to do this whole "what should my name be?" crisis.  And I like long names.  Not Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo long but they're going to be solid.  Not like Chang.  That's just wimpy.  No offense. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about you should wikipedia "Tikki tikki tembo" or just become better acquainted with Children's literature...it's one of my favorites).

Last Christmas Zach got me a book about preparing for marriage.  This year he got me "What to Expect When you're Expecting" (Next year I think I'll get him a book on retirement...).  I'm not going return it since someday it'll be useful, but I definitely won't be bringing it to school with me.  I don't think it would look good to have that sitting next to a baby name book in my room....

Moral of the blog post: If you're ever bored, try reading 1) 100,000 Baby Names and 2) Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo.