Christmas is coming!

In honor of the impending advent season, I have loaded all the Charlie Brown Christmas songs onto my playlist....enjoy!

And check out the Sara Groves song - click on the banner at the top of the page. I LOVE this song and so I was excited to get to share it with you for free. It's a great Christmas CD.

Ooh-rah!

Ben just got back from a trip to DC with his dad for his bi-annual Marine Corps Officer Basic Class 3-56 Reunion (whew! What a mouthful!). They had a great time!

There's a new National Museum of the Marine Corps at Quantico which Ben enjoyed a great deal. When you arrive you get to pretend you are just arriving at your Basic Training - complete with drill sergeants yelling at you! Then there are some great exhibits about WW II, the Korean War and Vietnam. But as always I think Ben was most excited about the planes they had displayed.

Monday they got to do some sightseeing. They went to the National Archives as well as the WW II Memorial and the Air and Space Museum (of course). Ben even got to see President-Elect Obama's motorcade drive by on his way to the White House.

Monday evening was the Birthday Ball for the Marines - 233 years! I was very sad to have missed this because not only did Ben look very spiffy in his suit but there was DANCING! Had I known I would have an opportunity to dance with my spiffy husband I would have gone! But alas - I digress. The ball was held at the top of the Key Bridge Marriott - where they were treated to a lovely view of the city. Ben raved about the steak dinner they served, complete with 2 desserts (Mousse and birthday cake). They have a tradition at the Birthday ball for the oldest Marine present to cut the first piece of birthday cake with his sword and feed it to the youngest Marine present.

Ben had a great time with his dad, but Maggie and I are very happy to have him home!

PT 6

Maggie had another great day - only accident was during naptime so I only partly count that one. :-)

Tonight Maggie went to Will's birthday party (he's 3!) and they had SO much fun! It was a Curious George theme and Maggie liked holding her George mask up to her face and going "ooo..... oooo.....ooooo". Joy had quite the dinner laid out and even had chocolate-covered frozen bananas as a treat while she cut the birthday cake! After dessert we watched a Curious George video which was very cute and funny. Everyone had a great time.

It makes me wonder what kind of birthday party Maggie will want when she turns three. . . hmmmmm. . . .

PT 5 & Family Fest

Today was a big day for Maggie. In the morning, she went to the barber shop and to Bellingrath with Daddy and had a great time! Then she took a nap in her underwear without wetting the bed... yea! Then we went to Family Fest at church. Maggie went as a tiger (Tigger?) and Ben and I went as Tiger Keepers. I had my old zoo vest on and the pockets stuffed full of all the things I needed for Maggie - change of undies and pants, sippy cup, leftover hamburger, epipen. . . :-)

The best part of the day was that Maggie was accident free all day!

PT 4

Maggie wakes up now and says "I no ax-dent today" so she is trying to not have any accidents which is exciting to see. She gets easily discouraged when she has one - doesn't want to use the potty after that, but we push through and so far things seem to be going well. Yesterday she wanted to nap with her underwear on so I was willing to try it - but she never napped. Oh well. Today Maggie is at Bellingrath with Daddy so we'll see what happened when they get home.

Potty Training (PT) part 3

Today Maggie went to church for about 5 hours today and managed to stay clean and dry. . . until 5 minutes after I picked her up. :-) Oh well. She WAS in a playground which can be pretty distracting. Then she had another accident shortly after we got home a few minutes later. Life lesson: Make them sit of the potty after an accident, to make sure they are done.

So after her traumatic afternoon she was ready to throw in the towel and go back to diapers ("I wan diaper!!") but I was able to convince her to give it another go with a bribe of Chocolate Milk. No, I'm not above bribery to get out of changing diapers. It worked for the time being.

An encouraging note: Maggie woke up from a 3 hour nap with a dry pullup! Yea!!!!!

Potty Training (cont.)

Today she was so upset at the thought of taking off her underwear and putting on pull-ups for naptime that she didn't want to take her nap. But I convinced her that it was ok because she could but her underwear back on when she woke up. oi.

Maggie was going to a birthday party tonight at FiFi's house (a neighbor) and wanted to use the potty at her house! She talked about it all day. As the time drew near she got excited and decided she would NOT use the potty until she got to FiFi's - which was about 30 minutes from then. So she ended up having an accident about 10 minutes before we left. oh well. I thought it was kind of cute that she wanted to show off for FiFi.

Today Maggie was playing with my hair - she grabbed two big fistfuls and lifted it up and said "you angel!" I said "You're an angel!" She said "No, I daddy's girl." I laughed!