Star Student, Chapel and first admirer?

Maggie was blessed to be picked as the first star student for her class.  She's had a lot of fun learning about all the privileges and responsibilities that come with it.

The fun started on Friday when she got to bring home the Star Student Poster.  She spent the weekend coloring it and filling in the blanks.  Mrs. Robbins told us during orientation that we of course could help them fill in the blanks.  However, Maggie insisted on doing most of it herself.


Monday she got to present her poster to the class.  Her favorite book that she listed on her poster is rather obscure - it's called "Winter's Gift " and was a gift from Grammy last Christmas.  We stuck it in her backpack and Mrs. Robbins ended up reading it to the class during story time.

This week Maggie gets to be Mrs. Robbins helper - collecting papers, etc.  She gets to be line leader which means she must also hold the doors for the rest of the class.  Today in chapel she was recognised by the principal, Mr. Currie.  She also got to help him lead the pledge of allegiance.  You can watch that video by clicking here or on the link to the right.

During Chapel, the kids recited their memory verse.  The K5 class did great at this! Everyone that tried got it right.  Also, Mr. Currie told them the story of Samuel and Eli and the kids really enjoyed his interpretation. :-)

On the way home from school today Maggie told me that there was a boy who yanked her hair while standing in line to go to the playground.  My first thought was "Oh! Maybe He likes her!"    I tried to explain this phenomenon to her but she didn't get it.  I can't blame her.  Boys are often hard to understand. :-) 

They finally came. . .

 . . . the tears that is.

Today, for the first time, when I dropped Maggie off at school I just dropped her at the curb instead of walking her into class.

The school has lots of helpers - older students and the principal - out there to greet students and walk the younger ones to their classes.

She took it like a big girl.

I wanted to bawl!  It didn't hit me until I was pulling away, but as I watched her being led into the school in my rearview mirror, I thought "There goes my heart."

 

First Day of School!

Well today was the BIG day! Daddy took off work so he could go with us to drop off Maggie and pick her up.  We all did a good job getting out the door on time - I have to say I was proud of myself. :-)

Maggie showed signs early on of being nervous.  We let her have Fruit Loops for breakfast - usually she only gets them on her birthday!  But she just picked at them for a long time.    Then on the ride to school she was very quiet - I started taking a few pics to document the day and asked Maggie to look at me.  She just said "no."   I didn't bother correcting her. :-)

Once at school she did ok until we got the door for her building - I had to give her a couple of gentle nudges to get her to walk forward.  And while waiting for her turn to enter the classroom she was VERY quiet indeed!  

But she did smile for the picture with Mrs. Robbins and didn't make a fuss about going into the room.

Mommy and Daddy did quite well today also.  It felt weird not to have her with us but there were no tears. :-)  

When we picked her up, she looked like she had a fun day! 

Her attitude in the car was back to the usual happy girl we know and love.

And she even got a prize out of the trinket box.  Apparently the whole class did so well today everyone got to pick out something. :-)

We took her out to lunch at Moe's - her choice.  By the way, I was very disappointed in that the restaurant seems to have stopped greeting it's customers in the usual manner.    I digress.


She told us all about her day, well, as much as she could remember.   She found out today that as the "Star Student" for next week, she'll get to be line leader and Mrs. Robbin's helper for the class! She was very excited about that!  
We're all looking forward to day two!

Summer's Last Blast

Maggie wanted to go to the beach again before school started so while most of our county was already in school, we took the opportunity to go to Dauphin Island!  Daddy even took the day off so he could come to (which was a life saver because there was NO way I could have hauled at that stuff by myself!

Maggie had a great time.  We set up a little canopy so we could have some shade.  We had lunch on the beach - Maggie and Daddy got to spend quite a bit of time in the water in a shallow spot.   The water was very very calm - it was the perfect day to go!

Even Abby was a good sport! She also proved to us that she will eat just about anything - even if it's covered in sand.  Her favorite part was just watching her big sissy play though.

Every time I go to the beach I think "I should do this more often!" 

Did I mention it was hot?  This picture is a little deceiving - it didn't feel quite that bad except for the sand - the sand was BURNING hot by the time we left.  Once again, I was very thankful for our cheapo canopy.  It's a pain to put up and take down but the shade is worth it!

Abby's lunch was finger foods which she eventually just dumped on the blanket and ate off of that.  I gave up and let her.

Eventually this fellow came peeping around looking for some crumbs.  We also saw several fish in the water.

It was a great end to summer!  I think we should make this an annual event!

Abby's 11 months. . .

Abby's rapidly approaching her first birthday and we're having lots of fun with her.  She is still working on standing up - she practices that frequently and is getting pretty good at balancing.  I predict she'll be walking before her first birthday.  I've now ensured that won't happen by putting in in print but I'm sticking with my prediction.   :-D

Abby will now wave, actually it's more of a wild flapping of the arm.  But we'll take it.  She even accompanies the flapping with a sounds like "Ha!" which I take to mean "Hi!"   She's mastered "ma ma" but usually only says it when she feels I'm not giving her the attention she is due.

Abby has now transitioned to milk and is off the bottle.  Don't yell at me, I'm following Dr's orders.  You can take it up with our pediatrician.

Abby likes food.  duh.  I often joke with people that I've never seen her get full, I just get tired of feeding her and stop.  I'm only half joking though.   She is still eating mainly baby food, but is transitioning to more table food.  She loves bananas for breakfast! She is also a big fan of watermelon, goldfish, black beans . . . ok, she's really never tried anything she didn't seem to like.  But I'm sure we'll run into one eventually. . . .

This picture was taken one evening when Daddy was cooking out in the carport - our rain location.  We've been grilling in the carport frequently the past few weeks. :-)   Abby was not too pleased to be left inside the house. . .

Where did they go?

Will YOU let me outside?

Just pitiful.

Maggie phones home

Last night at dinner Maggie was telling me our phone numbers and I was glad that she had finally learned them without me having to prompt her.  So I asked her if she'd like to call our home number.  I gave her my cell phone and let her call the house number.  She thought that was pretty cool.  Then, when the home phone rang, I went to answer it and she thought that was VERY funny.  We had a nice little conversation. 
So then she wanted to try it the other way around, so she called my cell phone from my home phone and told me to pretend that she was calling from college.  What?!?! I'm not ready to THINK about that much less pretend it - she hasn't even started kindergarten yet and she's already thinking about college.  sheesh! 

So I'm chatting with her like she's a big freshman and she wants to know when I can come to visit her at college. 

Me: "How about today?"
Maggie: "ok! What time can you be here?"
Me: "In an hour!"
Maggie:  "Ummmmm, I don't know if I can get the house clean that fast."

Oh, I died laughing!  Maggie says "What?!?"

:-D

Our little ballerina!

Maggie is starting ballet lessons this fall.
 
 

She's been wanting to do this for about a year. :-)  




Watch out world, here she comes! :-)

Happy Birthday Ben!

Last week Ben celebrated his, um, 39th birthday! Yeah, that's it.... 39! ;-) We were blessed to have his family join us to help celebrate. Of course the kids couldn't be happier than to have a house full of ready arms and laps to hold and play with them!

Maggie has gotten to the age where she has definite ideas about what she wants to get people for birthdays and other gift giving occasions... she picked this out especially for Daddy:

Yes, she knows her daddy well. (It was the SEC championship game on DVD by the way).

We also had the privilege of dog sitting for a friend again . . . here's Sidney "helping" Ben with his gifts:
I think perhaps she was hoping there was some milk bones in there or something we could play fetch with... sorry, Sid.

One of the highlights of the weekend was taking Ben to the Naval Air Museum at Pensacola. Ben LOVES this museum. Back in our early married days we used to go to the beach for each anniversary and no trip was complete without a trip to see this museum. We hadn't visited in several years and they had recently completed an update and opened 55,000 sq. ft of displays so of course we had to check it out!

Here's Maggie and Daddy by one of the flying tigers:

We weren't sure how Maggie would like the museum - it's definitely a "guy" kinda place and Maggie is ALL girl. But she had a GREAT time - her favorite thing was getting into the trainers to "fly":
She had to try every one! And she was especially proud when she could climb into and out of them herself:
The new building houses post WW II planes and helicopters. It's got a "Top Gun" F-14 (gee I hope I got that right), a harrier jet, some coast guard 'copters, and this particular plane of interest. Look under the window (that's probably not the right word for it) and see if you can make out the pilot and rank of this jet: (you can click on the photo to enlarge it)
The new hangar had lots of room for crawling, which was good because by that point Abby was getting more than restless. So at the end she decided she wanted to get into the action:
Maggie politely informed her she wasn't big enough to fly the helicopter yet.

"NO, AB-BAY!"

Whenever Maggie is scolding her, Abby's name turns into "AB-BAY". I digress.

I think one of the highlights on this trip for Ben was getting to try out the new 360 degree simulators! They strap you into a box, shut the lid and you are completely enclosed. For 5 minutes you have control of the stick and the box will spin, flip, do anything you tell it to do! The instructors tell those riding they can either try to win the game by shooting down the enemy plane on their virtual screens, or they can just get in there and start doing barrel rolls and what not. From what we observed, the younger "pilots" got in there and just immediately cranked the stick over from takeoff. The more, um, mature "pilots" tried to win.

Ben said it was a great ride, complete with realistic vibrations which increased as your increased the throttle (it was suppose to be a WWII prop plane I think). Anyways, I think he enjoyed it, you be the judge:
That was Ben exiting the ride... you'll notice all the stuff in his hands - you have to empty out your pockets before getting in the simulator.. hehe.

So Happy Birthday to my Ace Pilot! Baby, I'll fly with you anywhere!

Big Hair!

Recently Maggie got to visit a kid's salon called Smiles N Styles to help a friend celebrate her birthday. They had mini-makeovers and the kids had SUCH a blast. Hair, makeup, mani- and pedicures, not to mention the GLITTER! There was glitter in her hair and on her nails... then eventually glitter on my face, on the bed, in the living room.....

When she got home of course Mommy had to have a little photo shoot.

And Abby had to get in the action.....

Maggie liked her fancy hair so much she wanted to keep it in for 2 days until Sunday so her teacher could see it. So I agreed. Sunday evening we finally took the braid out:


Can you imagine if ALL of her hair had been braided like that? I felt like putting on a musical or something.... Anyways, we all had a good laugh.