Nieces and Birthdays

September is a big birthday month for my family.  Yesterday, my adorable niece Abby turned 1!  My brother lives in California, so I don't get to see my nieces very much.  Hopefully Cullen and I will get to plan a trip to see them soon, but until then we just call and Skype.  Since it was Abby's birthday, I called to hear about all new things going on with the girls.  Summer is 2 1/2, and I'm pretty sure she is the smartest 2 1/2 year old out there (I'm not biased or anything).  Jenni is teaching her so much, and I hope that I can be half the mom she is one day.  Every night they practice memory verses with Summer.  She now has two memorized, and I am very proud of her.  One of them is Matthew 5:14-16, which isn't short so it proves how smart she is :)  I admire Jeremy and Jenni for doing this, and I plan on stealing this idea when I have kids.  How awesome it is to fill your child with God's word at such a young age.  During my talk with Jenni, I also learned that Abby can walk!  Apparently, she is capable of walking, but doesn't choose to do so very much.  Summer, being the helpful big sister she is, wants to "help" Abby while she is walking.  This means she accidentally knocks Abby over since she is not very steady on her feet yet.  She will walk to Jeremy and Jenni, but she prefers to crawl still.  Jenni says she caught her walking by herself once when Summer was busy playing with something and she knew it was safe.  I'm sure Abby will be running in no time (if Summer isn't around)!

We had Abby's birthday yesterday, and Cullen's birthday is today.  He turned 25, and I don't really have anything exciting to share.  He is helping a friend with something tonight, so we celebrated last night by ordering some take out.  I got him the movie Hancock and some new measuring cups since he does a lot of the cooking, and we needed some new ones.  Can you tell we are definitely useful gift kind of people?  Some might think it's boring, but we prefer to get gifts that we actually need.  I'm sure he will get me some boring gift that I really want as well :)

My birthday is in two weeks on the 26th.  I will be 25 as well.  I don't really care about getting older, but saying that I'm going to be 25 does feel weird.  My birthday will probably be as uneventful as Cullen's, which I like.  There is no school the Friday before my birthday because of conferences, so that will be nice.  I love this time of year because of all the birthdays, the weather changing, and school starting to settle down a little.  Happy September!