Analogies of a Five year old-

Tonight while tucking Grace into bed she said, "Do you remember how badly I wanted my pillow pet last year? I wanted it SOOOO bad! How badly I wanted it, that is how mean I feel you are being towards me. You ALWAYS make me do chores."  Other than the part about me being mean, that is a pretty good way to describe her feelings! I was pleasantly surprised with her ability to get her point across. We had a really good talk about the fact that we will ALWAYS have chores to do. We walked through what would happen if we stopped washing dishes, doing laundry, vacuuming, etc.  She got the point quickly. She realized it is less painful to take 15 minutes and do the laundry then to go to school naked.  That is never fun!
I can't believe my baby is going to be six soon. She is growing up so quickly. I am amazed by her maturity some days, and frustrated by it others. This life is definitely a learning process.
I love my sweet Gracie Aryn.

Christmas time is on the horizon-

For those of you that have heard of "Elf on the Shelf", get this...Gracie's friend has the elf at his house and asked Grace where her elf was.  Well, I had every intention of getting said elf while shopping the other day, but I forgot. Heber is too small of a town to have this cute book, so I did what any desperate mom would do. I improvised. Big time.  I concocted a letter from "Roofus". And who is Roofus you ask, he would be a small monkey from the North Pole. Santa sends him out when all of his elves are busy. So far, so good. Roofus returns to the North Pole every night to report on how Grace has done for the day. Grace is slightly freaked out by this little monkey watching her all the time, but on the other hand, she loves it! She wakes up first thing and runs around the house looking for him. So far she has caught him in the fridge eating Jake's pie, climbing the vines over the kitchen table, and roosting in our other plant. Tonight, he will be hiding in one of many balloons which I will blow up and place around the house. We will see how that goes:)

Grace for the past month and a half probably has been talking about a boy in her class named Austin.  From the way she talks about him you would think they spend all of class talking. Turns out, he doesn't even sit at her table. She just really likes him. I don't know that I would mark this up as anything, but when Daddy asks her about him, she turns red and won't talk. Pretty funny.

Funny Grace-ism for the day "Mom, have you laughed today?" While holding out a laughing cow cheese. Needless to say, I laughed.

Welcome to Kindergarten-

My baby started kindergarten.  I almost cried. She, on the other hand, was just fine. When I gave her a hug before leaving, she grabbed Hudson (the baby I've been watching since April) and says, "It's ok Hudson. I'll be done really fast. You'll be ok. Sariah will watch you now." Apparently Grace has been the one babysitting, I've just been an innocent bystander. Good to know:) When I picked Grace up from kindergarten, she was all smiles. It was "the funnest thing in the whole wide world." Oh, and my personal favorite, "I had such a great time mom, I didn't even have time to think about you one bit." Sweet.  I guess that is a good thing. According to Grace, Bryson cried for his mom two days in a row. She was perplexed that somebody would cry over such a simple thing as attending school. She has friends from church in her class, and a friend from last years preschool so she is doing great.  One of her friends is a sweet little girl named Emmaline or Emmy.  She and Grace are now bosom buddies. It will  be interesting to see if Gracie's likes and dislikes change now that she will have a chance to play with girls.  Right now she likes hotwheels, the color blue, mud, big trucks, police cars, firetrucks, playing 'cops n' robbers', and playing babies.

This week both Jake and I have been super clingy with Grace. Both of us wanting to hold her and snuggle any chance we get. Grace was up at 6:29 a.m. Tuesday morning to get ready for school. Jake was late for work because he was just holding her on his lap, kissing her head, and looking....dare I say, misty-eyed.  The crazy thing about being emotional due to this change in our life, school is only two and a half hours! It is so short! I am not complaining, it just seems crazy.

On to other news--well there really isn't any other news. Grace is our life. We love our sweet, crazy, backtalkin',  procrastinating, "I can do it myself-and better than you", monkey hugging, best snuggler, Pink Panther lovin,  daughter.  There you have it.

Things that make me go Hhhhmmmmm-

Pretty much everything that come out of my sweet Gracie's face makes me go "Hhhhmmmm"  Jake told me today that we need to get her checked out. Jake and I were trying to take a nap while Grace was on my laptop with the headphones on. Jake and I would just doze off when Grace would randomly shout something like, "Ms. McGuilicutty!! Yellow. AAAAAAHHHHHhhhh!" Seriously. She is something:)

I know I posted this on FB but I need to write it here for posterity! This week Grace and I had to run to Kamas on an errand. The errand took all of five minutes but we wanted to spend a little more time there so we went to the park, a new thrift store, and a few other places. Grace informed me that she was in dire need of using the bathroom. By this time it was around lunch so we decided to go to the deli at the grocery store. While we were waiting for a bathroom stall to open up Grace is jumping around, doing the bum clutch, she was having a REALLY hard time waiting. This little old lady finally shuffles out of the stall and Grace is in there in seconds. As soon as she sits down, she sighs, clasps her hands together and says, "Thank you dear Lord, I nearly pooped my pants." I, nearly choked. Not from the fumes from the previous occupant of the stall, but from laughter.
I never really know what to expect out of Gracie's mouth.

She is so excited for kindergarten to start. I am not. She has been my little sidekick since she was born and it feels all wrong to have her gone 5 days a week. She is a little social butterfly so it will be no big deal for her. I have the feeling though that I will be hearing from the teacher quite frequently. Being quiet is not one of her strong points. She does come by being a "Chatty Kathy" honestly. I was looking through Jake's report cards from grade school, on all of them the teachers wrote, "Jake's penmanship is improving, he needs to work on not talking to his neighbors." Or something along those lines.

This coming week will be our last full week with just the two of us before we both go back to school. I think we are going to go to the lake, park, Dairy Keen, bike rides, and maybe just watch cartoons late one night. Come join us if you'd like!

Summertime Fun

This summer has been full of fun adventures. Bike rides, playing in the sprinklers, going for walks, fires in the mountains, pretty much we have been spoiled. I love living here in Heber. When Grace and I go out in the morning and there are hot air balloons flying around, the mountains are so green, and the sky is so blue, we just fall in love all over again with this beautiful valley. And that is what gets me through 9 months of winter!

Grace has been in her usual character; saying crazy things, doing crazy things, crying about crazy things, pretty much we would go crazy without her. She is a handful, but such a cute handful if I do say so myself! The current habit I am trying to break with Grace is this..."Hey Woman, aren't you going to feed me today? It is 1100:00 o'clock and I am starving." (or) "Let's go Woman."  Grace's wonderful father called me woman, I told him not to, so now Grace does. Thank you Daddy.

Another thing that Grace is into right now is babies. Playing babies. She has four different boys that she plays this game with. From what I have observed this game is played by one of the boys being the "daddy" and Grace plays the "baby". Which means, the daddy has to go to work, fix stuff around the house, and she, as "baby" has to lay around and cry or be fed. The game does have various alterations where they bring an actual baby doll to play the role of "baby" and she and boy-toy play the roles of father and mother. I have heard each of these four boys tell her that they need to finish their game.  Funny thing about this game...it never ends! While I have watched her play this game, I have come to a startling discovery; Grace is bossy. (I say startling because it sounds better, but if you recall, she does call me Woman and demand things.) I better lay the smack down before this gets out of control!

Always with the titles...not my favorite.

It started with Uncle Lee coming...ok, that is not totally true. It escalated with Uncle Lee coming. Grace is completely obsessed with poop. She wants to talk about it, sing songs about it, call people strange names involving it. I hear more about poop in a day than any mother (of a daughter) should. She and her best friend Will make up ridiculously silly ryhmes about poop. Well, I guess she went to far.  On Tuesday when she came home from school she told me she wouldn't be getting a turn at helping hands in preschool. I assumed it was because she had had a turn that day. Big mistake. Ms. Katie told me today that she didn't get a turn due to her "potty language".  Some kid ratted her out for saying poop. Better to hear her say poop than what she said to Jake and I on Sunday. That conversation went like this; Me, "Grace, would you like strawberries and cottage cheese for lunch? Grace: "Mom, I want sliced strawberries but I don't want your DAMN cottage cheese!" I bawled my eyes out I was laughing so hard. Methinks this is not a great way to discourage your kid to NOT do something:) Oh well. Being a mom doesn't come with a handbook. It is a learning process. Some days I get better grades than others. So now Grace is trying really hard not to talk about, sing about, or make up names about poop. 
Even with all my sweet Gracie's talk about poop, I love that kid.  Where would I be without her? She makes Jake and I laugh so hard. She is a live wire. Yesterday while I was cleaning the bathroom, she went downstairs, got some of Jake's tools and took a part her piano. Completely dissasembled it. That girl needs her own tool bag and something cheap she can destroy with no strings attached.  
Sometimes it may seem that I only blog about Grace because she has done something crazy and that is why I go so long in between posts...I am just waiting for her to act. Ha HA! What a joke. That girl never stops. For instance, three days ago she drew measles in semi-permanent marker or her friends face. Yep. All over his cute little face were little red dots. And the grin on her face could've melted your heart. 
All in all, I live with a crazy, cute, loveable, poop lovin, 5 year old that makes me smile:)