Halloween Pictures

Since it's October, everyone is in swing of putting pumpkin pictures on their blogs and we decided to follow suit. We didn't go anywhere special, we just picked up a pumpkin at the Knollwood Mall Pumpkin patch and then carved the pumpkins on Tuesday night. Here are the pictures we took.

Before we left to go pick out the pumpkin.

At the pumpkin patch, the first one she sees is almost bigger than her. "Oh, I want this one mommy!" (My thoughts were, 'good grief, we can't afford that at 39 cents a pound.')

Pickin' the Perfect Pumpkin

It was a little dirty so Abby wanted to wash it off. She's such a neat freak. She OBVIOUSLY didn't get that gene from me.

We all had jobs, Abby pulled the guts out, Jason seperated the seeds and I scrapped the inside.

Abby told us what kind of expression she wanted on the face, she chose a happy face.

The finished product.

Abby was so proud.

I love Saturday's (and other pics)

I LOVE SATURDAYs ... Saturdays are family days for the Beals. We all sleep in (sometimes till 8:30) we bum around in our slippers and bathrobes, sipping coffee and just goofing around till it's time to get dressed. Here's some Saturday pictures. Some of these pictures Abby took.

Here's our slippers

Here's our Coffee, Abby took this picture.



Here's Abby's Robe

Here's the Fam, even Duke got in on the picture.

Even Duke has a Robe. He really doesn't like it though.

Also, here's a little video of Abby Doing a magic trick. She tries to copy Jason and she hasn't quite mastered the trick but it's cute.

Arboretum

So, Jason got some sweet FREE tickets to the Arboretum through work and a few weekends ago, it was BEAUTIFUL outside and we decided to utilize the weather and use the tickets. Here's a bunch of the pictures we took. I highly recommend going here, it might be even more beautiful during the fall season. Enjoy the pictures.

Abby sitting by the water fall, "Cheese"

Another Waterfall

Vine Flowers

Koi Pond, Abby couldn't get enough of these fish.

More Fish!

Abby and Daddy sitting by the pond.

Some of you may know that Jason has a tattoo of a Abby's name with her birth flower, we just happened to find her birth flower growing at the Arboretum. It is called a Larkspur lily.

Little Miss Abby Pants walked the entire time. She was such a trooper, she found ALL the water fountains.

These were the biggest petunias I've ever seen. I just had to get a picture of them.

Daddy and Abby in one of the Japaneese gardens.

Statue of Mother and child in the Hasta Garden

Daisies ...

Stair Climber ...

Abby has 1 speed to keep up with mommy and daddy ... and it's not run, it's not walk, it's JOG. She basically jogged the entire time we were there.

Quick picture with mom between the hanging trees before we go home. Mom is always the one taking the pictures so it's rare to get one with Abby and Mommy together.

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures

Where has the time gone? We haven't posted many new pictures lately so here are a few cute ones from the past 2 months or so.

Jason replaced the alternator on my's car a few weeks ago and Abby decided she wanted to help so Daddy suggested she use the tools to fix her own car. It's funny because if you were to ask her if she can drive a car she'd say "yep, I have my own car that I drive, it's red." (If you can make this picture bigger, you can see that she's wearing some of my safety goggles that I had for chemistry class in college. I knew those would come in handy some day. :) )

Abby wanted to play dress up so we took out her new dress up clothes she got for her birthday and then I took out some old clip-on earings from my days of dress up at Grandma Gerry's house. She loved the noise they made when she turned her head back-and-forth. Biz and Bobby probably recognize these earings too.

Quick picture with Mommy. I have no idea how she became such a girly-girl. I was more of a tom-boy growing up. Hopefully she likes playing sports cuz she's doomed to play soccer if she like it or not. (kidding) You can't see it in this picture but she even has her fingers and toes painted bright red, what a glamor girl.

This picture reminds me somewhat of Tom Cruise in "Risky Business" (Sort of ...)

This kid has quite the sense of humor. She's pretty much ALWAYS happy. I'd say she's either laughing or smiling at least 95% of the day. Amazing.

Our peanut is 2!!!!!!!!!

Well actually she was 2 yesterday but I didn't get a chance to update then so I thought I better today! A lot has been going on in the Beal house since the last time we updated the blog. We are still working on potty training and Abby has been wearing big girl underpants in the evening and on the weekends. She is doing pretty well, although today she had 2 accidents within and a few hours but other than that she has done great. Abby has also stopped using her sippy cups and started using regular cups. It took a few days but she has it down and almost never spills. Today will be her actual party and we will get some pictures up of her from the party, but until then here are some pics we took over the past few weeks.

Just being silly!

She loves our friend Bargmann's motorcycle.

In fact everytime he rides it to our house she insists on sitting on it.

If rambo was a 2 year old girl I think he would look like this. The best part of this get up is the fact she picked it out and dressed herself.

Potty Training!

So, it's been a busy few months here and I noticed the blog hasn't been updated recently and I've had all intentions of doing so but other things have taken priority BUT, Jason and I have been doing something extremely important with Abby recently and we are very proud of our little peanut. Recently we started potty training! In March, we bought Abby her own little Princess Potty which is pink, purple and white and it is so high tech that it makes music when Abby goes poop or pee (pretty cool huh?). We didn't pressure the potty training and just let her get used to the idea of using the potty and sitting on it etc. Then, in the middle of April, we decided we needed to have an incentive for Abby to start using the potty more regularly and make it FUN! Now, when I was potty trained, I am told that my grandparents trained me by giving me KING sized candy bars (that's quite the incentive). Learning from that, we decided to go with something that wasn't edible and was cheaper thus, we came up with the idea of using stickers and developed Abby's Potty Charts.

Here's the rules: Abby gets a sticker every time she tries to go potty or actually "goes" on the potty. (Mom and Dad make sure to "high five" and jump around to make it extra exciting.)

So, we started on April 19th when Abby actually wanted to go potty. For a little while before, the charts were hung outside the bathroom upstairs so she could look at them. Most of the time when we asked her if she wanted to use the potty, she said no but once she understood the positive reinforcement of the stickers (and the high fiving with mom and dad) she got the hang of using the potty and the potty charts.

Here is the May Potty Chart. As you can see, some days have multiple stickers and only a few don't have any stickers for this month. YEAH Abby! We also ended this month on a high note with the last day Abby actually going POOPY on the potty. The whole month and a half before she never wanted to go poopy on the potty because she was scared and on May 31st she closed herself in the bathroom without her diaper on and she decided she was going to do it on her own. (Mom and dad thinking "yeah right, she's probably just pretending") About 5 minutes of her behind closed doors yelling " I'm doing it! I'm Doing it! I did it! I did it!" to our suprise, there was actually poop in her princess potty!!! What proud parents! Now the rules are if she goes poopy on the potty, she gets to put a sticker on and she also gets a few chocolate chips.

That's not poop on her face, that's Chocolate. We're SO proud.

Just some pictures

We have had a few posts pretty recently but no new pictures so I thought we better put some up. Hope everyone enjoys them!

Just laying around with Mom.

This was Abby's idea, everyone thought is was funny but Duke.

Abby was helping me fix something on our porch when she tripped and hit her nose on one of our patio chairs. Well it resulted in a bloody nose, but she handled like a champ.

Most likely watching "Elmo Opposites" for millionth time.