Guest post written by Nicole London

I guess that some people may say that a Barbie is kind of an early gift for a 3-year-old, but I decided to go ahead and buy one for my daughter. She’s really into playing with baby dolls anyway so it would only make sense that she would love Barbies.

But I actually got the idea to give her that for Christmas when I was out shopping for my niece. She’s 6 and my sister told me to just pick her out a Barbie for Christmas. So when I was looking at Barbies online I was thinking about how much I was looking forward to buying Barbies for my daugther. That’s actually also when I found some information about a new internet service and I chose to sign up for one of its packages for our home internet service.

Well, I went ahead and ordered a really simple Barbie for her so that there wouldn’t be a bunch of small parts for her to put in her mouth. When I open it for her I’m going to take away the shoes and any other small parts.

Part of the fun of being little is playing dress up. One of Hailey’s favorite things to do is to get dressed up and play pretend. And I know that when I was teaching pre-k the most popular center during free play was the dramatic play area- where kids could dress up and pretend to be whoever they wanted to be. And it’s certainly the same with Hailey- one day she is pretending to be Cinderella, the next she is Lilo (from Lilo and Stitch) and lately she has been Captain Hook. Watching her imagination at work is so much fun!

Written by Sherri Hicks

In your opinion, who are the top three teams in college football right now? Quick. Don’t think about it. It should be the first three teams that come to your mind. If you’re like most college football fans, the answer will be Auburn, Oregon, and TCU. This is because these are the current ranking. But even if you throw away the rankings and you make your own, you would probably put Wisconsin and Ohio State in there. There is one team that most people don’t put in there for some reason, which is Stanford. Has everyone forgotten what this team is capable of? Have people been witnessing their dominance on the gridiron? These guys win in an interesting fashion. They’re not flashy and they’re not methodical, either. They’re what would be known as a very solid and intelligent team. They don’t make stupid mistakes and they’re very efficient in everything they do. They also display poise when they’re down. There is no doubt that we will see Stanford in a championship game, and when they play, Im going to watch it on my Satellite TV deals. I will enjoy watching them pound on whoever they play. I will enjoy it even more when they are then brought up in national title game talks. If you think this is not possible, you havent been paying attention. Watch them play once and you will understand.

Tonight on Facebook one of my friends posted a link to a site called The Ribbon Retreat.  It’s a really neat site with all sorts of ribbons and bows and cute ideas for your little girl’s hair. There is a section of free hair bow instructions with step by step directions for how to make some cute bows.  There is also a section where you have to join in order to get the instructions.  I looked through the free instructions and think I might be able to try some of those out.  I’m not all that crafty though, so I don’t know.  I’m going to try some free ones and see how they come out.