Miss Abby turned one year old on March 7th.  I can’t believe how fast the time has flown by.  As I was contemplating this I decided it was time for me to start on two projects for Abby.  

Project #1.  Start a savings account for Abby’s wedding dress.  Now you may think I’m jumping the gun here, but you see how fast her first year sped by!  

I had opened a savings account for Ashley when she was a teenager and I put money into it that my mother gifted to Ashley.  I was saving for Ashley’s wedding gown.  

In 2011 Ashley and I went shopping for her wedding gown.  She tried on many gowns of course, but the moment she put on that very special gown and I saw tears in her eyes, I knew she had found the gown of her dreams.  She whispered “This is the gown I want mom” as she spun around and hundreds of tiny rhinestones sparkled in the lights and glittered in the mirrors.  I told Ashley that the gown is a gift from her grandmother.  My mother had passed away seven years earlier but she was still able to have a significant role in Ashley’s wedding day.  

Now I will start a savings account for Abby.  God willing I will be with Abby on that special day and watch her dance the first dance in her husbands arms, but if not, Abby will feel my presence when she puts on her wedding gown the morning of her magical day.

Project #2.  Start filling Abby’s hope chest.  I have my mother in law Yvonne Zeck‘s Lane hope chest at the foot of my bed and I’ve been storing blankets in it for many years.  I emptied out the blankets last week and took a deep breath of that magnificent cedar smell.  This hope chest will be Abby’s one day.  What should I put in it?  The first items were a lace doily and a hand embroidered handkerchief that had both been purchased in Italy in the year 2000.  I also put in my 8th grade and 12th grade yearbooks and a Life magazine that my mother had given me which was published on July 9, 1956 (the day after I was born). 

I put in the teddy bear that I’ve been saving since 2002. When Ashley was in high school she was on the dance team.  Each spring one of the dance team moms bought teddy bears and sewed costumes to match the dance teams costumes.  Since I was team advisor for the dance team (for 11 years) I got a teddy bear also.  I decided I would put mine aside from 2002 because that was the first year we won our state competition and it was Ashley’s senior year.  Then I put a framed photography of Ashley on the dance floor at the Memorial Coliseum into the chest.  Dance is very important in our lives and I hope that Abby catches the dance bug also!

Next I wanted to put Ashley’s baby book in.  I got out a chair, went into my closet, and brought down several boxes.  The first box sent me reeling, inside were some old photographs that I had never seen! I brought the box downstairs and my sister Lori and I went through old and new photos.  Some photos were of ancestors we did not recognize.  I follow many genealogy blog posts and have always been so jealous of people who share their stories of long lost boxes of photos they had just discovered.  Now I had one of those boxes of my very own!  The next few hours were spent going through the photos.  As time permits I will post them here so that you can enjoy them (and help me figure out who they are).

As you can see I did not get too far filling Abby’s hope chest before I got side tracked.  It will clearly take me the next 17 years to fill it up.