She is so sweet

This post is actually about Grace even though the picture is of Lyla. I have a couple of stories to record about Grace that demonstrate what a sweet little girl she is and this picture shows one of the things she recently did.

First of all, here is the conversation between myself and Grace last Friday when she got home from school.
Me: Grace, how was school today?
G: Good, but Ms. Hudson cried.
Me: She cried? In the classroom? Why?
G: She got a phone call and her daddy might have said his last words.
Me: Did he die?
G: I don't know. I just heard her say, "he might have said his last words." So me, Delaney and Alana said a prayer for him.
Me: Did the whole class say a prayer for him?
G: No, just me, Delaney and Alana.
Me: Who said the prayer? You?
G: We each said our own little prayer.
Me: Whose idea was that?
G: Mine. I told them we needed to pray for Ms. Hudson's dad. Then I told them we needed to be extra good for the rest of the day for Ms. Hudson because she was so sad.

Grace has always thought of the feelings of others. She is so intuitive about the people around her and knows how everyone is feeling. She is so sweet and sensitive. That little story made me so proud of her.

Then on Saturday she decided to make a birthday party for Lyla. Lyla's birthday isn't until May but Grace was just being creative and wanted to do something nice for Lyla. So she got a ding-dong out of the cabinet to use as the cake. (The ding-dongs were in the cabinet thanks to Mimi. She always provides special sweets for the girls when she comes. They love it.) She decorated it with icing and candles. Then she lined up Lyla's cars around the plate because she knew those are Lyla's favorite toys.

Tonight for dinner she decided she wanted to make dinner special. She actually wanted to decorate but I said we couldn't do all of that. So she made treat bags for me and Eric instead. She spent the longest time drawing on the bags. She put a little candy in each bag and then she put a story that she wrote in Eric's bag. She was very proud of her treat bags. The pictures above are of the two bags and the story she wrote.

Those are just a few stories from the last couple of days. There are a ton of examples of how sweet little Grace is. I just wanted to document these examples so I could remember how she is at age 6.

Church picnic

Last Sunday was the church picnic. They had 3 bouncy things, pony rides, face painting, several games, and a famous songwriter perform his music. It was a fun night. I didn't take very many pictures though.

Kentucky Lake

Last weekend we had the privilege of going to a lake house on Kentucky Lake with some very dear friends. Stephanie's great uncle owns the house and she finally got the nerve to ask him if we could use it for a weekend. And we are all very thankful that she did. It was awesome!!! We left early Friday afternoon (around 4pm). We thought it would only take a couple of hours. Well, we got a little lost, made a couple of loops, had to stop at Kroger, and BP and for dinner. I think we finally made it to the house around 9pm! We were all very excited to see what a great place it was. It was really pretty. We all had our own bedrooms and bathrooms. We stayed up late playing cards. The next morning we rented a pontoon boat for the day. The guys weren't very impressed with the boat. It was a little old and not very powerful. We planned on tubing. The guys said tubing wouldn't have been as fun because the boat wouldn't go very fast. It seemed fast enough to me. The weather was unusually cold though. Nobody ended up tubing because the temperature was only about 71 degrees the whole day and with the wind it was freezing. The girls had jackets and towels wrapped around us. There is one picture below of Laura sitting in the tube wrapped in a towel. She was down there because the water spraying on her while we were moving was just too cold. We did find a restaurant on the lake that several people had told us was the place to go. It was called Fat Daddy's. We all agreed the food wasn't bad but it wasn't really good either. That's where the picture of all of us at the table was taken. That afternoon we relaxed on the couch, ate some of Nathan's very special wings, and then grilled dinner. We had a great time! I really wanted to go back this weekend too. It was so nice and relaxing. Thank you to Stephanie for arranging everything. It was great!

"Sometimes I wish I could do this forever"

Last week I had Reesi and Elye on Monday while Joni worked. (or maybe it was the week before last, not sure) Anyway, I really needed to get some cleaning done. Reesi loves to clean so when I started cleaning the kitchen floor she jumped up to help. After I finished my turn of cleaning I handed over the swiffer and let Reesi have at it. Then Lyla had to do it. They still wanted to clean so I gave them Windex and paper towels. They did a very nice job on the back door. After that, they still wanted to clean. So, we moved to the bathrooms. For some reason, the girls love to clean the toilets. More power to them! When they started cleaning I ran to the computer to record their conversation. They were cracking me up. This is just a portion of the conversation....

Lyla: This toilet is really dirty. (for the record, it wasn't that bad)
Reesi: Yeah, my mom's toilet is the dirtiest.
Lyla: Yeah, my dad poops in this toilet a lot.
Reesi: This is surgery for the toilet.
Lyla: Yeah, this is surgery for the toilet, because it's sick.
Reesi: It looks like sea water. (blue from the cleaner)
Lyla: Let me go potty in it.....It's turning green. Now you have to do it all over again.
Reesi: OK. Sometimes I wish I could do this forever.
Lyla: Yeah, sometimes I wish I could do this forever.

Hilarious! After they finished performing surgery on the downstairs toilet, they moved to upstairs. I got the camera then. Here are pictures of them cleaning the sink and toilet upstairs. I'll have to remind them how much they love cleaning toilets when they're about 16 years old!

By the way, this was at about 1pm and they were both still in their pajamas.

Grace's 1st grade teacher

This is Grace on her 2nd day of 1st grade. This is her new teacher, Ms. Hudson. She seems very nice but has a very structured classroom. Grace is having a hard time wanting to go to school right now because Reesi and Lyla aren't in school. I hope once Reesi is in school fulltime (next week) and Lyla is in preschool she won't have such a hard time going.

Williamson County Fair

When we lived in Spring Hill we couldn't skip the fair because we would pass it every time we went into town. The girls would see the big Ferris wheel and insisted that they ride it. Eric and I never really enjoyed the fair though. It's in August so it is miserably hot and it's dirty and it's hot and it's a lot of people and it's hot and the girls are little and it's hot! Did I mention it's hot? One year, the August after I had Lyla in May, Eric and I got a stomach virus at the same time! Not good! Anyway, the fair was going on and Grace wanted to go so bad. We did take Grace and the very little baby just a day after finishing our bout with vomiting and the other bad thing that comes with a stomach virus. We were up but we weren't feeling very well at all. After that year we took a summer off! Then we went again when Lyla was 2. Then we moved to Franklin. When we moved I told Eric that meant we never had to go to the fair again b/c Grace and Lyla wouldn't see it on the road and know it was happening. We did skip last year. But this year Eric was given tickets at work along with a $5 unlimited ride pass, which is very valuable! So, we went, despite my lack of enthusiasm. The girls were excited though. We went at 11am on Saturday and had until 5pm to ride the rides. When we got there we went to the ride ticket booth to get our $5 passes. It wasn't the right booth so we walked to the other side of the fair to another booth. This wasn't the right booth either! The correct place for us to get the special $5 tickets were right at the front door where we came in! We had just walked the whole fair and it was right by the front door! The girls were not happy about passing all of the rides and just walking around for the first 30 minutes. I have to say I wasn't either. By the time we got the tickets Eric and I were hungry. We rode 1 ride and then convinced the girls to eat. We got catfish poboy sandwiches from Uncle Bud's. They were very good but I don't think the grease was a good mix with the heat. After the food we did the big slide, then the rocking boat, and then a ride that spun us like we were in a washing machine. The girls loved it! Grace yelled out in the middle of the ride, "You call this a ride? I call this the time of my life!". I died laughing. Where does she come up with this stuff? That was the best quote of the day. Anyway, when we got off the ride Eric was looking a little green. He sat the next one out and I thought he'd be OK after that. He never did recover from that ride though. I think it was a mix of extreme heat, grease, and too much spinning. He wasn't too excited about the fair after that. We had to keep going though. That was only our 3rd ride! We had to convince the girls to keep going to the next ride. They just wanted to get on the same rides over and over again. We walked down the hill next to where there were some bigger rides. Poor little Lyla Belle was about 1 inch too short though. I took Grace on the big ride and Eric stayed with Lyla. When Grace and I got off Lyla was in the middle of a huge temper tantrum, kicking dirt and all. We tried another ride that I thought she'd be fine on. Nope, denied again! Another temper tantrum! She was not happy at all. We got them to go see all of the animals to take Lyla's mind off of the rides that she couldn't ride. That worked. Eric got out of the sun, which helped him and we got some water. He still wasn't great but I stopped worrying that he was going to puke. We didn't really ride too many rides after that. We told the girls that we'd ride the big Ferris wheel and then leave because Eric would take them swimming. That was our ploy to get them out. Eric was so hot he was happy to take them to the pool. We were sure Lyla could ride the Ferris wheel. But, nope, denied again! By the time we got out of there it was too late to go to the pool. They didn't like that either. Eric ended up taking them to Joni's pool for a little bit to cool off. I think the girls had fun overall but next year I think we should go at night when it's not so hot!!!

1st day of 1st grade

Grace's first day of 1st grade happened while I was in TX!! I hated to miss her first day of school and actually struggled to decide if I should go on our trip at all or perhaps fly home early. Grace said she didn't mind if Mimi took her on her first day so I decided she'd be OK without me. I still hated to miss it. Joni took these pictures of her on the morning of her first day of school. She has her new dress, tennis shoes (in case she had P.E. she wanted to be ready) and her new backpack. She's getting so big!

This is Lyla at Joni's house while I was away in TX. Mom and Dad were both here to keep all 4 of the girls because while I was away Joni started inservice and had to work all week. Thankfully, Mom and Dad are able to come down and take over for us. This is just a random picture from the week of Lyla climbing. Typical Lyla.