Today brought a small drama. For the past couple of days I’ve noticed a rotten egg smell in the basement which I know can mean that I was smelling natural gas. Rather than wait until something terrible happened, I decided to have the gas company come take a look. Sure enough, we had ourselves a little leak coming from the water heater. The gas technician had to turn it off and put a “danger ticket” on it until we got it repaired. Fortunately, a plumber was available to come immediately and do what was necessary to fix the leak. No major disaster struck us this time.

Mimi cleaned her plate at dinner before anyone else this evening, so we let her run along while the rest of us finished up. I noticed her doing something adorable and was lucky enough to get her to repeat it for the video. See for yourself…ain’t she cute?!? Sorry for the background music. Annie insisted on a musical ambience at dinner.

Since 4:30 p.m. today, this is what I’ve been dealing with:

Mike informed me on his way home from work that he was sick. Upon his arrival home he almost immediately made a beeline for bed. I couldn’t even coax him to make an appearance for dinner, a dinner made especially for him–grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup and oranges (gotta get that Vitamin C). Dinner in bed, must be nice…

In other news, Mimi tinkled on the potty last night. It was a banner moment in the Hawley home. She got a buck for her troubles. It’s still a work in progress with no success today with quite the poopy mess to clean up:( I even bought a 5 pound bag of M&M’s (you heard that right) in hopes of motivating her. We’ll see what happens.

Annie had a little spill at school today which left her with a shiner. Apparently, walking up the stairs causes her much strife. She’s definitely her mother’s daughter. Annie’s being a real champ about it though with only a dozen mentions of it since returning home from school. See picture above (not as noticeable as in person though).

The things Lucy has to put up with…. I can’t seem to make the girls understand that Lucy is not as intrigued by the princess lifestyle as they are.

Makes you wonder…
Mike and I were putzing around the kitchen the other day when all of a sudden he proclaimed that he was suddenly compelled to give a Nate a call. Nate is a childhood friend who lives up by Baltimore with his wife and 2 daughters. Not long into the phone call Mike discovered that they would be moving at the end of January to London for the next five months and wouldn’t return until after our departure from D.C. We had them over for dinner on Sunday night. I’m so glad we got a chance to see them again before they headed to the UK. It was certainly our last chance. Annie and Mimi had a blast with their 2 girls. At some point all 4 girls were dressed up in princess gear. Too cute! We’ll miss them and wish them the best on their new adventure. It sounds like such fun.

Once again, we visited the Washington D.C. Temple for the wonderful Christmas light display and the musical performance. The evening we chose featured a bell choir. The music was delightful. It was quite interesting to see all those bells and the different ways they were played. Somehow I ended up sitting with both girls with Mike about 10 seats away. Halfway through the concert Mimi brought me to my limits and was sent down to Daddy. That child cannot sit still for more than a nanosecond. We met up for pizza at Mama Lucia’s beforehand with six other families. However, the restaurant only fits about 10 people in its entirety. Let’s just say it was a tight squeeze, but we had good eats and lots to chat about. I really wish we could’ve gone to the temple a few more times to see the different musical concerts.

Next up was our visit to the National Christmas Tree. The Parks, Cooks, and we stopped for dinner at Potbelly first, then walked over to see the massive evergreen decked out with bows. An interesting feature set up around the tree were Christmas trees to represent each state. My idea of having everyone in our family pose next to the state of their birth was nixed by Mike. What a stick in the mud! There was also a lifesize nativity scene, and huge fire pit (it was actually very cold that night). So now we can check off another thing to do while we live here. Oh, I almost forgot, I put together an album of pictures from these outings. Have a look on the memories page under “Christmas Outings 2007“.

Last night we finally got around to taking down all the Christmas decorations (on…cough… January 13th…cough). The saddest part for me was removing all the holiday cards because I really feel like our friends and family are close by when I see all those pictures and Christmas wishes. Part of being in the Navy is moving a lot which has its pros and cons. The best part about moving so often is all the new friends we meet and make for a lifetime, but then it also means we’ve left friends and family behind from the other places we’ve lived. And yet, here we are again, another move upon us in just a few short months. I may as well make this the official announcement that we’ll be heading northwest to the Great Lakes Naval Station. The base is 40 miles or so north of Chicago. We’ll probably settle even more north up in Wisconsin which is about 15-20 miles away from base. Of course, I’ve already started to check out the real estate there, and I’m quite pleased with what’s available. After living here with all the expensive housing prices and higher standard of living, the housing in Wisconsin seems dirt cheap to me. I’m looking forward to a change from the big city. We’ve dealt with so many big city woes, and Mike and I are plum ready to move on. The other great part of moving to Wisconsin is that we’ll be close to family. My parents are only about 4 hours away, and it’ll only be about a 7 hour drive to Minnesota to see Mike’s family. We’ll keep you posted in the upcoming months about where/when we’ll officially be moving. Mike gets a house-hunting trip in late March, so we’ll be driving to the area then to find ourselves a new home.

Annie has been making great strides in her education these past few months. She can pretty much read now. Her Grandma Minnesota sent a letter last week that I promplty gave to Annie to read. I was flabbergasted by the fact that she could read the entire note with only help from me on a couple of tricky words. Annie is really grasping how to sound out words, and she seems to be remembering words that she’s read before. I’m constantly hearing Annie repeating words she hears and then sounding them out. Of course, she is quite proud of herself, and we are, too. Mike and I decided that Annie is also big enough to start doing chores. It is now her responsibility to feed the dog twice a day. Lucy has a tendency not to dring enough water during the day, so we fill her food dish with about a cup of water. Annie even makes sure to get the cup of water each time. Mimi has been helping, too, but she’s only allowed the responsibility of pouring the food into the dish. At the end of each week, Daddy gives the girls each $1.00 to put into their banks. Actually, Annie puts her money into her wallet that she got for Christmas. Periodically, when we’re out shopping Annie will ask if she has enough “dollars” to buy certain things. Of course, she never does. One day she’ll understand how money works. In fact, we’ve already been working on adding and subtracting with her, but it’s still in the confusing stage for her.

Mimi definitely has her own personality in this household. She is not a fan of getting her hair brushed each day and usually screams hysterically the entire time. Same goes for having to put her head/face in the water in the shower. The other day while getting her hair brushed I decided to sing her a song with words specifically designed for her sitatuation. I wasn’t really paying attention to what she was doing/saying until I noticed her singing “along” with me. However, when I listened more closely, I heard her singing, “Let me go! Let me go” as she was slowly inching her way away from me. Such a stinker! And, have I told you how much she loves Lucy? That poor dog gets harassed by her on a daily basis. Mimi chases her, lays on her, picks at her, pushes her bark “button”, dresses her, and on and on the list goes. Lucy’s a pretty good sport about it all though. She usually just gives Mimi the warning growl to leave her the heck alone. Of course, Mimi just ignores Lucy most of the time, and there have been instances that Lucy will snap at Mimi. No worries though because Mimi has never once cried after being snapped at. That must mean that Lucy doesn’t actually bite her. The other day the cutest thing occurred. Mimi had moved Lucy’s bed closer to the t.v. in the living room where Dora the Explorer was playing. Lucy was happy to accept the new position of her bed and quickly made herself comfortable. After I a few moments I looked over to find Mimi laying in there with Lucy, and Lucy didn’t seem to mind. It was darling! I have a feeling those two are going to be great pals one day.

Stayed tuned for pictures of the National Christmas tree and of the D.C. Temple.

Last night Mimi took a huge step and tinkled a teensy bit on the big potty. We were out for dinner, and I was taking Annie to the potty. Mimi declared that she, too, had to go potty. Of course, I was willing to let her have a go at it. She and I were very excited about her accomplishment. However, today she’s not as gung ho about doing it again. Maybe I need to take her to another public restroom. I’ll keep you posted. On a different note, Mimi and Annie received princess dresses from Grandma Indiana for Christmas. If we are at home, then Mimi is in her Snow “Whipe” dress, high heels, “princess” necklace (which is just an elastic headband with a barrette clipped to it), and “veil” (which is just another elastic headband with a bandana tucked into it). Each morning I’m greeted by her request to close up her dress in back with the velcro squares. It’s really very darling! And, yet another quick gem about Mimi. She LOVES her baby cradle. It has to be where ever she is in the house. If Mimi is in the living room, then baby is in her cradle in the living room. When it’s naptime, then baby has to sleep in her cradle in the room with Mimi. Many times Mike or I have tripped over it when it’s placed in odd spot such as the doorway to our bedroom, in the bathroom, or in the middle of the kitchen. Mimi has even demanded that we take it along with us on car rides. That’s where I have to put my foot down. I mean, seriously, would Mimi hold that big thing in her lap?!? Too cute! Boy, that was a great $20 spent on an eBay purchase.

>Like I said before, I was planning on giving updates on past events. Let’s see, the last update was on Christmas, so that brings me to Annie’s Christmas program at school. Each class had a theme and dressed up and sang a song to go with that theme. Annie’s class had the Nativity as their theme, and Annie was an angel (a very sweet one, I might add). The program took place in the church’s chapel, and I was surprised to see how many parents/relatives ended up coming to watch. The pastor from the church was the guitarist and also sang along for each song. All the kids from the school sang a few songs together and then broke up into their class groups. I videotaped most of the show with my handy, dandy point and shoot. I realized about halfway through that I didn’t need to document the classes other than Annie’s. So right as I finishing up videotaping Annie’s class the battery went dead in the camera. If I had continued filming everything before, then I wouldn’t have been able to capture Annie singing with her classmates. Sorry, but I’m not going to post any of the videos because I want to respect that parents of the other children in the videos may not want their children posted on my website:( Annie was awfully cute though singing her little hear out. Have I mentioned before how much she loves to sing? A lot. Like several times a day. And she makes Mike and I get tickets to watch her “shows”.