Abby’s Saturday // Two Hundred And Seventy

Highlight of the Week

It’s officially the “off-season”.
What I mean by that is: the Lake House is closed up, theme parks are (for the most part) closed, and even tho I still have 2 weddings & a few shoots planned before the end of the year, things are quite abruptly quiet.

We were home last night, starting into a weekend without anything major happening, for the first time since early spring. It felt so weird!! What in the world do we do with ourselves?! Seriously you guys – what do “normal” people do on the weekends, because we’re suddenly at a complete loss. It’s strange & wonderful all at the same time. I’m definitely looking forward to some quiet, at-home weekends over the next month or so, but then I predict that we’ll be going out of our minds & probably plan a trip to either the Great Wolf Lodge or Kalahari or something!

Yes, This Happened

• I know I said we don’t have anything “major” happening this weekend, but that doesn’t mean we’re sitting around, twiddling our thumbs. Since we’re home, we’re back on the “renovate the 3rd floor” trail (a project I’ve been talking about forever and one we officially started last winter). We really didn’t work on the 3rd floor at all over the summer – just too many other things going on. But, now that it’s the “off-season”, we’re back at it! We officially went & picked out carpet this week! It will be delivered & installed in 2 weeks – so we have this weekend & next to finish whatever we need to finish in the room. Derrick’s already been hard at work today cleaning up the room & ripping out all of the old carpet & flooring. 3rd-floor usable space, here we come!
• Braelynn has been dressing herself almost every single day this week. And, to clarify – she’s 4 years old – she’s completely capable of putting her own clothes on herself. What I truly mean is: she’s been picking out her own clothes – all on her own. Typically, I would help her – she would say that she wanted to wear a dress & I would help to make sure it was “weather appropriate” (sorry babe, but all of those adorable sleeveless dresses are on the “no” list now that summer is over). Or I would help to make sure that the shirt she wanted to wear was matched with the proper color skirt – that sort of thing. Well, all this week, she’s been simply going upstairs & coming back down dressed for the day. She’s been doing a pretty good job, but let’s just say, most of her outfits this week have been quite “colorful”. I love it though & haven’t made her change once.
• Last weekend, while Derrick & I were at Linden Hall, photographing Danielle & Tyler’s amazing wedding day, my parents were watching Braelynn & Leander. They found a fall festival to take them to – complete with hayrides & a scavenger hunt! One of the prizes from that scavenger hunt that they gave the kids was a stuffed animal – Braelynn picked a small brown dog that she affectionately named “Brownie”. He has quickly risen thru the ranks this week as Braelynn’s “favorite” stuffed animal & she has taken him everywhere. On Wednesday night though, he somehow got missed during bedtime and she went to bed without him. We didn’t even realize the problem until she woke up, at 11pm, crying hysterically that Brownie was missing. Thus started a major hunt – Derrick & I looked all over the house – thru all the toy bins, under pillows, under the couch – Derrick even went outside with a flashlight to check the treehouse to see if he’d gotten left outside. We couldn’t find him anywhere. We calmed her down, filled her bed with about 100 other stuffed animals to take his place, and promised that we’d find him in the morning. Morning came & guess where we found Brownie? Yep, in the one room we couldn’t look thru in the middle of the night: in Leander’s bedroom.
• They say that things break in “three’s”, right? Well, our washing machine broke a few weeks ago & we had to buy a new one (it’s fantastic by the way). Then, both of our vehicles back, right taillights went out (yes, the same light, at the same time, on both the Suzuki & the Mitsubishi). So, I was just kind of bracing for the 3rd thing. And well, it happened this week. While I was photographing Danielle & Tyler’s wedding, I randomly got an “error code” on my camera. I pulled my lens off, snapped it back on, the error code cleared, and I went on with the day – never having another problem. I’m definitely not willing to simply let something like that go though, so I sent my camera body & the lens into Canon for a cleaning this week. They needed to be cleaned anyways, so no big deal. That is, until I got an email from Canon saying that they had replicated the error code & discovered a faulty mechanical piece in both the camera body & lens that needed to be repaired. Additionally, they said that the shutter count on my camera was about double what “normal life expectancy” is for a camera shutter, so they highly recommended I replace the shutter in my camera body as well. Ding-ding-ding – we have a winner! The third bad thing to need to be repaired/replaced! That means we’re done, right?
• My birthday was last week, but since it was such a crazy week, Derrick waited until Sunday to throw me a little party. We had my entire family over & it was a lot of fun! We’re still eating up all of the desserts that were brought – nothing like stretching a party out a week plus, right?

Feeling Blessed

Derrick bought me these small Mickey Mouse “stud” earrings last year for Christmas & I absolutely love them. I wear them all the time – they’re small, so they aren’t a huge temptation for little fingers to grab (I love me a good pair of dangly earrings – but not in this season of life!) Anyways, Leander realized I had them on on Thursday morning & decided to grab at them. I pulled away, but not before he got his chubby little fingers wrapped around one of them just enough to yank it out of my ear. I caught the front of the earring, but had no idea where the back went. I carefully stood up & looked around. I shook out my hoodie, looked between the couch cushions – I couldn’t find it anywhere. Losing the back of an earring isn’t that big of a deal, but I didn’t want it to be on the floor & for a certain little dude ot pick it up & eat it! So, I looked & looked & looked. No luck. I eventually gave up, thinking it must have gotten flung somewhere & the vacuum cleaning would find it. Fast forward until the end of the night – Derrick & I were getting ready for bed & as I picked up clothes that had been tossed into the bathroom (but not into the hamper), I heard a faint little “clink” – I looked down & under that pile of clothes (none of which were mine by the way) there was the back of my earring. I have zero explanation for how it got there but I’m just so thankful that I found it!