Things That Make Me Smile 12/23/11

1. Alyssa took an impromptu nap while at my parents house and woke up very sweaty. Upon seeing her own reflection in the mirror, she said, "Um, my hair is not right. We definitely need to brush it."

2. Our church performed our Christmas cantata (musical drama) on Sunday. With Leighton being the choir director and in charge of the whole production, we (especially he) have been very busy with practices and preparations and such. We performed both Sunday morning and evening and had over 100 visitors between the 2 services! During the evening performance, a man in our church talked Jake (who was one of the characters in the play) into adding to one of his lines. After he said, "I'm a sheep cowboy!" he yelled out "Yee-haw!" Jake was so excited about that last part that he skipped over the lines that came before. 

3. Me to Zac: "You have the cutest little face."

Zac, very adamantly: "No! Lyssa do!"

 4. Alyssa had a mini-spiral notebook and a pen and was testing me on my letters. She'd write an A. "Mommy, what's this?"  Then she moved on to a T and on it went. It was good practice for letter writing for her and evidently good practice for letter recognition for me. 

5.  I just love this picture of Jake and Alyssa coating pretzels in white chocolate. They were having so much fun! . . . Maybe even too much fun. 

6. Alyssa's and Zac's teachers at church made foam snowmen ornaments with the kids' pictures in the center. Once Zac saw them hanging on the tree, he walked over to his, squatted down, and said, "Hi Zac!"

7. Wednesday evening was the children's Christmas program at church. Alyssa moved her mouth as she "sang," though I'm not sure any noise actually came out. Zac walked around looking confused and never even attempted to sing. Jake was in the play for the older kids. He said his lines well and was the cutest little shepherd. He didn't sing much of the songs expect for "Go Tell It On the Mountain." That one he was the loudest of all the kids - but just on the chorus. The kids mumbled their way through the verses, then sang at the top of their lungs for the chorus, with our Jacob being the loudest of all.  

8. Alyssa came running into our room in the middle of the night. She was nearly in tears when she asked, "Are we ever gonna see Sugar Cookie again?" Jake had misplaced his beloved teddy bear the night before. Apparently it was still traumatizing to his sister. (P.S. He probably should have looked in the Christmas tree!) Even being woken up from a sound sleep for something as trivial (to me) as a lost toy made me laugh.

9. Alyssa said "I can fix that easily." Ok, that statement might not mean anything to you, but after all, this is a list of things that make me smile. The English teacher in me beams with joy when my kids use adverbs properly.

Merry Christmas! I trust you'll have lots to smile about during the next few days!