Dear Little Baby Jesus (and other Christmas Happenings)

I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas. Mine was as good as it could be, considering.

Some highlights included

• Church on Christmas Eve our pastor talked about Taladega Nights and how Ricky Bobby prays to Little Baby Jesus
• TWO calls from hubs on Christmas Eve AND a wake up call this Christmas morning
• A wonderful prayer for all those overseas AND their families at home that brought me to tears in church
• A fabulous Christmas Eve dinner (pretty sure I mentioned this before, but it's basically my favorite part of any holiday)
• Lots of leftovers and cookies
• Good gifts for the whole P household, including some of my most-needed baby items that I was startin to stress about getting, and a piece of Americana art my mom got for me. It's a bunch of Americana photographs all put together to make a bigger pic of Elvis. It's greeeat!
• Good gifts for my family, everyone seemed genuinely happy and greatful
• Lots of time spent with my mommy today playing games
• And of course, another day down, another day closer to Baby Girl's arrival and Mr. P's homecoming.

Hope you all had fantastic Christmases and enjoyed any and all time you got with your loved ones!!

Riding the Rails (Clickity Clack to Maryland)

Yesterday, I took my first train ride. I'd have to say overall it was a huge success and I am now pretty much a train fanatic. I could see myself riding trains everywhere!

Reasons why the train is great:

1. You don't have to drive. Just to and from the train station station, that's it.
2. You don't have to go through years of security and metal detectors/brain scanners to board.
3. You can walk whenever you want. No seatbelt sign, no waiting on the captain to say it's ok. In fact, they even start moving before you sit.
4. You can bring your own foods and drinks, there is a place to buy food if you forgot to bring some (or you're tired of the PB&J you did pack).
5. You can stand up and streeeeetch
6. You don't have to put your whole trip on pause to go pee
7. There are outlets at each seat, Hello movies on the laptop
8. Way cheaper than plane tickets and the price for just me was also cheaper than gas, etc. to drive
9. Train stations are really cute!

Reasons why the train is a little sketch:

1. Bathrooms, while numerous, are pretty freakin' dirty and very smelly

All in all the pros definitely outweighed the cons (even though I do go to the bathroom frequently, I found a way to deal) and I am now a big advocate of train travel. Mom and I are riding business class (woah-hoah) on the way back, so we should have bigger comfier seats with more leg room and better foot rests and free sodas.

Now I am just going to enjoy time at home with the fam. Mom and I are about to bake up some cookies (even though she cheats and buys cookie-dough) and the Christmas Eve brings family church time and a big delicious family dinner. Can't go wrong there. I love the tradition of going to mass on Christmas Eve and I am soooo looking forward to Christmas Eve dinner (as you can tell from my last post, I'm looking forward to any dinner...)

Hope you all have wonderful Christmas Eves and Christmas Days!

Wintry Weather (Not For ME!) Day 12

Well apparently my hometown and several others in the area got slammed to the extreme with some wintry weather this weekend. Maryland was in a state of emergency and had gone under blizzard conditions. Luckily, the good ol' east coast NC where I hang my hat got none of this powdery white stuff.

I did, however, enjoy pretending we did! I woke up Saturday morning and after reading all my home-friends' snow statuses, got to craving hot cocoa. So I made a quick run to the g-store to plan for my snowed in day, without having to deal with actual snow day g-store madness. I got the items on my lovely WIC voucher before the expired in addition to LoftHouse cookies (OMG my faaaave), Orange Juice (we've been over this), hot cocoa, beef stew, and bottled water. Quite an assortment. Then I came home and proceeded to totally veg out for the day. Enjoying far too many LoftHouse cookies... oops.

The joy of the whole thing? I didn't have to go out and shovel a thing! I didn't have to clean my car this morning! I could have gone back to the store a hundred times if I wanted! The malls weren't closed, and while it was a madhouse out there in shopping land it was not a snow day mad house! It was pretty awesome.

Until around 10pm when I realized I was bored. But then it was late enough that I just vegged out some more til bed time. Haha. We all deserve our sit on the couch and watch movies and do nothing days. Especially those of us who will hit the NINE MONTHS pregnant mark on Christmas! Another happy note, is that with two feet a snow, it is likely I will still be able to enjoy the winter weather when I go home on Wednesday... after the roads/driveways/cars have been cleared.

Pretty awesome.
Hope the week continues to be awesome and you all have an awesome one as well!

Thinking Happy Thoughts

Ashley at Kiwis and Cocktails is basically one of my favorite bloggers. Not only are her posts so funny and light, does she enjoy some good drinks and fun nights out, and have beautiful wedding pics in her header, she also nominates me for lots of awards. Go check her out now. I command thee!

Speaking of the award, she has nominated me for this Happy Little Award:

And the rules of this award require me to list 10 things that make me happy and 10 bloggers who make me happy as well.

Thinking about happy things and being positive is part of my First Goal of Deployment, so this is great timing for me to think positively about what makes me happy and not what (or who) I am missing so very, very much at this moment.

So on with the happiness...

1. My Husband. Total duh, but my hubs is the light of my life. He is the one person who just, as cliche as it sounds, completes me. He makes me smile and laugh and feel loved. He thinks I'm beautiful he does his best to make me happy all the time. I am thankful and sooo happy I met him and have him in my life.Before he left
2. My family. I am soooo lucky to have the family that I do. Especially a mom who will sit up and webcam with me until I fall asleep and a dad that will buy headphones to make sure HIS granddaughter can listen to music and an auntie that continues to send me love and support and prayers through a tough time... Among many many other things. They are really an amazing group of people. And if ya met them, you'd totally get me - we're quite a silly bunch.
3. My daughter. Feeling her move is definitely one of my favorite parts of the day. I love my big belly and knowing that my little baby is in there growing away and will be here to meet me in only a couple weeks.33 weeks
   
4. My friends. I could seperate friends into a few categories... I've got my home friends, my Phi Mu sisters, and my USMC friends. They are all equally important to me and do so much to enrich my life. They are all helping me out so much through this deployment, from phone calls and messages to hanging out all day and road tripping to another lonely Marine wife's house - we have a blast. Being with my friends makes me happy, makes me laugh, and helps me to keep on truckin'.
5. Christmas. With everything else that's going on in my life right now, I have not been paying much attention to my favorite time of year! Mr. P and I set up our little 4ft tree and had a mini-Christmas before he left. It was a good time and a nice way to celebrate for a holiday we'll miss together.Blurry pic in front of our little tree
   
6. Webcams. I got to see my hubby last night. It was amazing. I'm telling myself not to get used to it, but am secretly wishing he could get on right now. Webcams are pretty awesome. I also webcam with my mom at night so I don't feel so alone in my house.
   
7. Pedicures and massages. Man do I LOVE being pampered!!
8. Dogs. Mr. P and I are very excited to start looking for a puppy when he gets home. We both wanted one so badly but couldn't have one per our lease, so when he comes home and we're in the house we own, we're going to entertain the idea. We might not get one right off (settling in, new baby, money, etc) but I'm very excited to start looking!!
9. Traveling. I always have so much fun when I am on vacation. I can't wait to go on our next vacation. I think we (Ariana and I) are going to Disney with my family around Easter time. It will be right before we move into our new home and a few months before daddy comes home. I'm very excited!
10. Food. I love eating. I'm a total fatty at heart, whatever. At least being preggo I have an excuse to eat whatever. Haha too bad I'll be on chicken and lettuce once Miss Thang gets here. I have started to enjoy cooking and baking and I looove making things for my hubs - he always thinks it's delicious, even when I screw up. I have all intentions of sending him food, mom says she knows a good way to keep cookies fresh so you can bet your butt that there will be cookies shipped!!

So there is a limited list of the things that make me happy! I am WAY too lazy to tag 10 people right now, so if you would like to list the things that make you happy, feel free to yoink this! Reading blogs in general makes me happy so anyone is free to have at it :-)

Cats and Cribs

Hope everyone had a very HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

We had a very low-key Halloween, and while I missed all the festivities of Halloween's past in Maryland, being with hubs on Halloween and just hanging out was pretty sweet, too. On Friday at work was costume day, so I had to throw something together, seeing that I hadn't even considered what costume would fit over my new body shape this year. I ran to WalMart the night before and found some tiger ears, tie, and tail and some costume paint/make-up. I had a black dress and leggings at home and a tiger would have to do it! My coworkers and the kids all seemed to like it, so my quick-fix was a grand success!
I visited Mr. P at work when I got off to bring him lunch. I forgot about my face and gave him a huuuge hug, since he had had duty and I hadn't seen him since about 5pm the night before, I was excited, ok?! Buuut oops about his face... haha
Friday evening I was feeling pretty bummed about our lack of Halloween plans and low and behold hubby comes home telling me we got invited to a party! So I redid my face paint and we picked out something to throw together for the hubby, and we headed out!

It wasn't the best Halloween party I'd ever been to, but we had a good time, got to cut loose a little bit and have some Halloween fun - Oh and dress up :-D

Halloween day (Saturday) we decided to take some time to move the futon out of baby girl's room so we could set up her crib that my mom had bought and had arrived at our front door on Wednesday. It looked like it was going to be a really daunting task, but it wasn't that bad at all and didn't take much time - and Mr. P only cussed out the parts one time! haha. Crib assembly success.

Our bellies were growling after our grueling labor, and we wanted some delicious Chinese. We looked at ordering and we both wanted SO much that we decided it would be more cost efficient and more satisfying to our bellies if we just went in for the buffet. And let me tell you, what a buffet it was. A preggie woman's dream I like to call it. So much food, and desserts. I think I got like 4 plates of food... oops. Haha. All the Chinese goodness and fried deliciousness we could eat for two? $22. Fooding our hungry selves... total success.

Now we're having the laziest Sunday. I have picked up a cold or something this weekend and am wicked congested and feel like doing nothing. Our typical Sunday ritual consists of meal planning/grocery shopping, hair cut for Mr. P, errands, and house cleaning, but I won't be surprised if only part (or even none...) of that gets done.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend and your week is just as awesome!