Big Helper

Lyla likes to spray things. When I'm cleaning that is the part she wants to do. Spray the dust spray, kitchen counter spray, window spray, etc. I convinced her that in order to spray the spray, she had to be willing to do the wiping too. So, she cleaned the windows on the inside and outside of this door. I love it when they feel like cleaning!

Preschool Christmas Program

This year Lyla would not tell me what songs she was going to be singing in the Christmas program at preschool. She really likes surprises. She kept telling me that I would "just have to wait". It was very cute. Lyla's feet aren't in the

Santa

Sitting on Santa's lap is a holiday tradition. Santa always visits Phil and Melissa Roe's house from church and all of the Harpeth Hills kiddos are invited to come. There are lots of goodies to eat and plenty of time to visit with Santa. This year, the girls wore their holiday jammies. Lyla's jammies have/had a gingerbread girl on them with a pink bow in it's hair. She made me change it so there was no pink on it anywhere. Thank goodness she likes red!

Lyla's PreK Christmas Party

Lyla's prek Christmas party was special because Santa stopped by for a visit. He read to them and passed out presents for each child. The kids were very cute to watch. I didn't get to stay for the whole party because I had to get back to my preschool class for their party. Lyla didn't like that. She told her teachers later about it too. It was still fun though.

Paint and Icing

I love crafts. I love for the girls to do crafts, even though it's messy. I wanted for them to do more this month, but we only did 3 sessions of crafting. One of them was decorating ginger bread houses at Joni's house with Reesi. Joni made these houses out of grahm crackers for Reesi's school and made a few extra for us. It was a quick project. Lyla ate more then she decorated. Oh well. One day I would like to do more work on the ginger bread houses.

Then they painted several Christmas ornaments. I found these great ornaments on sale for $.67 each at JoAnns. Grace and Lyla had one painting session alone and then Reesi came over for the next session of painting. I had to paint a couple myself. I love painting.

Finally!

This was how Grace looked after Larry tried to pull her front tooth. He got to give it a little pull but then Grace would stop him. He pulled it enough to make it look completely ridiculous! I couldn't stand to look at it. It was crooked because the root was caught on the new tooth coming through. It was very weird looking. She would not let us touch it though. It was quite frustrating. That was Monday night. Then...

On Wednesday night she went to a sleepover at her best friend's house. The next morning when I called the mom said, "Well, we had a little emergency this morning. Grace's tooth came out during breakfast and she swallowed it." What?!?! She swallowed her tooth? It was kind of funny because Larry kept telling her that if she swallowed it the tooth fairy wouldn't come. On Monday night she was crying before she went to bed b/c she was afraid she would loose her tooth in her sleep and swallow it. I assured her that wouldn't happen. So, evidently, she was eating pancakes and when she took a drink she tapped it with her cup. She noticed it was bleeding and when the dad of her friend was holding a paper towel on it he finally looked and said, "I don't think there is a tooth there!" Grace didn't even realize it had come out! She swallowed it with her juice evidently! Crazy. Now here she is... She wrote a note to the tooth fairy explaining why there wasn't a tooth under her pillow. The sign reads "Dear Tooth Fairy, I accidentally swallowed my tooth. I was taking a drink and I accidentally swallowed it. Please leave some money. Merry Christmas!" This was Christmas Eve. Larry and Eric had also told her that the tooth fairy doesn't work on Christmas Eve. The next morning she came down and said there wasn't any money under her pillow. There was, but she was just too excited about it being Christmas morning to care. I asked her if she would let us pull the next one so this doesn't happen again. She said no!

Grace and her hair and best buddy

This is Grace and her best buddy from her 1st grade class. She came over to play one afternoon and they were wild! I'm glad she has a good friend. Her friend actually had a sleepover the Wednesday before Christmas. Grace was very excited and counted down the days until the sleepover. She wasn't nervous at all!

These are pictures of Grace's hair one morning before school. She fixed it herself. She came down with it done up like this. She said the other girls in her class fix their own hair and can do clips and ponytails themselves. She's such a big girl. It makes me a little sad. Not because she's not a baby, but sad because I don't want her to be a tween/teenager. I love this age in Grace. She's sweet, funny, innocent, still wants to play like a little kid but is old enough to obey and be a really good kid. I'm trying to enjoy this time as much as possible and appreciate these sweet days with her this age. The teenage years will come way too soon!

Isn't that the sweetest, purest, most precious little face? I think so!