Pixiemom

We don’t usually do Halloween stuff, but this year Amie wanted to do something to reach other children. Hand out tracts along with our candy. It was her idea. We’ll be heading up to the church tonight for the Trunk and Treat thing and do that. We’ll be taking our pumpkin along too. It is carved with a cross in it, not a face.

This is one of our ways of showing our faith to our neighbors.

EDIT: We left the tracts with our pastor’s wife and the pumpkin with pastor. It was too cold and the kids were not able to stay out too long. Jeremy had to work late, so I couldn’t stay up there without him here to watch the kids. I forgot to say earlier that yesterday we had the pumpkin shining out our back window which anyone driving by on the busy street beside our house (or walking by on the sidewalk) could see easily. There was residential trick or treating yesterday, but because of ballet practice, we weren’t here to pass out our stuff.

Found in a chinese cookie today:  You begin to appreciate the importance of sharing your personal beliefs.  All I thought was, “Amen!”

We were listening on the radio to Mark Shultz’s song, Broken and Beautiful, on the way home from getting groceries on Saturday.  All the kids had apples to eat and Noelle was just holding hers and looking at it.  Suddenly on the third time you hear the chorus, I heard her singing almost perfectly with the song, “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful” and I nudged Jeremy to pay attention.  She then ended it with “apple!”  It went very well with the music, but Jeremy and I couldn’t help cracking up.  Now I can’t hear that song with out putting “apple” in it.

Noelle got herself dressed today with no help from me.  It was loose clothing, so it was much easier for her and she was so proud of herself.  She got her shirt backwards, but didn’t mind me helping her after she was all done to get her shirt the right way.  She’s been trying for months to dress herself.

This week was where the family could come up and watch the dance classes. I missed AnnaBeth and Christine’s classes on Monday because of the SHE event, but I saw Amie’s yesterday and Noelle’s today.

Amie has really improved a lot. She can turn out her feet much better and doesn’t have as much trouble keeping them that way even when jumping. She is still really enjoying it. Her only problem that night was that she kept looking over to see if I was watching her and wasn’t paying attention to her teacher as much as she needed to.

Noelle has the director of the dance classes for her teacher. She really loves her class and I saw that she is making friends with most of the other kids. That is one thing that AnnaBeth doesn’t do. She likes having one or two friends and they are usually quiet like her. Noelle just seems to like playing with other kids and doesn’t care what they are like. Her teacher had trouble keeping the kids doing what they were supposed to be doing today with all us parents watching. Imagine 6 kids, either 3 yrs old or almost 3. One was so excited that her Daddy was able to come that she kept running everywhere and running out to him to hug him. Another was shy with all the adults and kept coming up with reasons to go to her mom or aunt to hide her face. Noelle did fine in the first activities all done in a circle. They were the warm-ups and a few dance things. When they lined up though, she wanted to come over to me. I finally got her to go out there, but she refused to march. She walked on tiptoes and ran on tiptoes and then sashayed, but kept coming over to me inbetween them and I had to encourage her to go back out and show me what she was learning. I wish I’d remembered my camera.

Yesterday, they had a SHE event in a nearby city.  I took Amie to it and my co-leader, S, joined us.  It was a lot of fun.  Amie was kind of nervous in a strange place with so many strangers, but after a few songs, she was enjoying it.  It was good for her first concert/event because it wasn’t a loud affair.  The main person was Rebecca St. James.  Another was an older singer who’s been singing for quite a while, Evie.  The other two singers were new to me, but they were good.  They were Charmaine (Rebecca’s back-up singer) and Vicky Beeching.  Both have wonderful voices and were able to really talk to the audience well and get their points across.  They used the church’s sound system and just had a few back up musicians, two guitars and a keyboard.  It was done to be a more intimate setting and even had a question and answer time.  They only had a few people able to ask questions.  They talked about purity and modesty as well as forgiveness and trusting in God with all your heart.  I was picked as the second person allowed to ask a question.  I asked for a little more details about their sense of modesty and Rebecca St. James seemed to enjoy telling about it.  She layers a long tank under many of her shirts, so her stomach never shows and she likes to wear leggings with her skirts.  It was a really good time and Amie seemed to enjoy it.  She didn’t understand the purity stuff yet and I’ll be explaining that to her in a few more years and she doesn’t have any big problems yet to worry about or try and forgive, so that didn’t really apply, though we talked a little about it.  She did understand the modesty part though and wants a pair of leggings like Rebecca St. James’s now.

We were planning on just leaving afterwards, but Amie heard the announcement that all the singers would be in the lobby signing autographs later, so she asked to see Rebecca.  She wanted to talk to her, but was tongue tied when she got up there.  I wasn’t.  I have no trouble talking to anyone.  I’m sure Amie will be the same when she gets older because I was like her when I was young.

No, not me.  Amie is going to do some today with her Grandma.  She took a bag of clothes and some school books with her to church last night along with the disk that has pictures from when she was down at my parents house this last summer.  Grandpa took her home from church to spend the night with them.

My Mom sent a scan she did of the first page of her scrapbook for Amie. I put it on as the first picture in Amie’s set and adjusted the link in the previous post, so it will take you to that picture.

Thanks Mom!

Oh, and Jeremy’s Mom put up a baby picture of Amie on her site as well.