College reunion & Abby's imagination

This past weekend we had a ME reunion again in honor of the Chandler wedding reception!  The Garadi's stayed with us which meant Abby and August finally got to meet!  Yay!  As usual, we did not do a good job of taking pictures as the kiddos kept our hands full.  Believe it or not, this was the best picture we could get of the babies!

Vik, August, Bryce, Xiao Xiao

Lao Yie had Monday off so once again me, Abby, Ruby and Elliott spent the afternoon together!  Elliott did a lot of sleeping, eating and sleeping so no good pics of the cousins together this time.  Abby must love her cousin because he got about half a dozen kisses from her that day!  And she sure was fascinated with his car seat and insisted on sitting (aka "up!") in it even though she is clearly too big for it.  She even tried to buckle herself in.  Safety first!

Back in the day Ruby and I always got gifts at the same time and usually they were two different gifts.  One time Ruby got this awesome Strawberry Shortcake oven set and we think I got the Charmkins Jewelry House.  I remember donating the jewelry house years ago but Ruby hung on to her oven set.  It's awesome.  The strawberries, pie and bread are even scented and believe it or not, it's STILL scented after 26+ years!  Well, the oven set wasn't technically mine, so Ruby used to make me ask for permission to play with it because she loved the set too.  On Monday she was nice enough to let Abby play with it and boy did she LOVE IT!  It kept her busy for almost 2 hours.  Amazing.  :)   Thanks a-yi!

It was awesome because this was the first time for me to witness Abby using her imagination while playing!!  It was such an exciting moment!  She was using the fork and pretending like she was cutting up the strawberries, she would pretend like she took a bite from the fork and then proceeded to fake chew the strawberries!  Then she was proceeded to "feed" me, Ruby and Lao Yie strawberries which we scrumptiously chewed up as well.  :)  My best childhood memories are of all the make believe things that Kirk, Ruby and I invented so it was so wonderful to see Abby doing the same.