Reagan's Busy Holiday Season

Now that Reagan's a big five-year-old, she really needs her own day planner to keep up with her schedule. Besides all her school activities (parties, reindeer day, gingerbread day, holidays around the world, etc.), she's involved in several Christmas programs at church. She's doing "Fear Not Factor" with the big kids. It's a musical--all the kids are angels--and Reagan has a duet with Reece (Curry's older brother). Then, because the Pre-K class is full of boys and no girls, Reagan was asked to be in their mini-musical, "Joyland." She gets to be a Shirley Temple doll--so cute! Finally, Mama is organizing a group of kids to do a nativity scene and sing "Who Would Imagine a King" with her, and Reagan is singing in that and will probably be an angel. And did I mention that she and I would be singing that song together at Grandma & Grandpa's church this weekend? Busy, busy!


Reagan got her performance season off to a great start Saturday night, when she danced at the Hanging of the Green at church. Reagan got to dance with her beloved teacher, Mrs. Donna, and her friend Gracie and another "big girl" Jacqueline. Reagan did such a great job, and she took the whole thing very seriously! Unfortunately, our video camera did not work. But, fortunately, Gracie's parents took photos. Here she is, our tiny dancer:

Half of Our Christmas Card

We spent a couple of hours at the Opryland Hotel on November 1. According to their calendar, the Christmas decorations should have been up at that time. And while some were, the really iconic ones (like the poinsettia tree and the big tree in the Delta section) were not. Nonetheless, we put Christmas sweaters on the girls and attempted to get a picture suitable for our Christmas card. My dad had his fabulous camera (I would compare it to a semi-automatic weapon, in terms of shutter speed) and took over 100 photos. It was pretty hard to tell what we had until we got home and uploaded them to the computer. But with that many shots, we were sure we had something that would work. But we were wrong.

Most of them looked like this:

Or this:

And not one of them was picture-perfect enough for our Christmas card. :(

If I were a master of PhotoShop, maybe I could cut/paste one together. This one of Scott and me isn't too bad. It was actually of all four of us--I cropped the children out. Think anyone will miss them on our card?

Reagan's Sweet, Sensitive Heart

I didn't get to witness this story (got it second-hand from Scott), but it made me tear up a little when I heard it.

Scott had planned to take Monday off work, and I mentioned to him that it might be a good chance for him to have lunch at Reagan's school since he had been wanting to. Her school encourages parents to come anytime they'd like. When your parent has lunch at school, you get to pick a friend and eat with your parent and friend up on the stage area of the cafeteria. A few weeks ago Reagan got to have lunch with Grandma, Grandpa, Presley, and Mama--and she invited her good friend Azur along.

Tonight when Scott took Reagan to bed, he asked if she'd like him to come have lunch with her on Monday. Of course she was excited. She said, "And I'm going to invite Drew up on the stage with me." Having been around Reagan's entire class on numerous occasions (including an all-day field trip), if there was one kid in the class that I would expect her to never want to be friends with, it would be Drew. The kid clearly has ADHD--and heavy on the H for hyperactivity. He's in trouble A LOT! He has bloodied a kid's nose on the playground (and this is Kindergarten!!!). Even Scott had heard a few Drew stories, so he asked, "Really? You want to invite Drew?" And Reagan said, "Well, nobody ever invites Drew up on the stage. So I'm going to invite him."

What a sweet, tender heart! Mama is so proud--and glad it's Daddy and not her who gets to have lunch with Drew.

Do You Mind?

I hated to make Presley's adorable JoJo pics drop down on the page, so I added another one to this unrelated post. But I just had to write about Presley's latest language development. For the last couple of weeks, Presley has been saying pretty much whatever she wants--and we can actually understand most of it. But she said something yesterday that cracked me up.

We were watching TV--specifically football--when Presley asked, "You mind changing the channel?" (No, I didn't. But apparently Daddy did.)

Then again this morning, as she had joined us in bed before 6:00 a.m., she asked, "You mind turning the TV on for me?"

I love her new "Do you mind?" way of asking for things! So cute!

TinkerBell

Reagan continued with her TinkerBell obsession by dressing as her for Halloween.






Apparently, her cousin Ashley likes Tink too!

JoJo the Clown

Here's Presley in her JoJo costume for Halloween. It was quite a hit!

And with her cousin Ashley and Reagan (both as TinkerBell).

Halloween

Aren't JoJo and Tink the cutest?