Sunday

This morning I was doing my makeup while Grace was in the bathroom. She was singing and talking to herself, like always.  This mornings song went like this, "I love the porta-potty, the porta-potty, the porta-potty. They are so handy when you have to pee.  They even shrink down so you can pee, so you can pee, so you can pee."
She makes me laugh. Daily.

Preschool, kindergarten, and now...1st GRADE!

So school has been in for a month. I am very behind.
  Grace LOVES school. She loves her teacher, she loves having two recesses, she loves eating lunch in the caferteria, she loves going to school all day long. She is a happy girl.
She is reading better already, she loves math, what a fun year so far!
She is starting to discover why having girlfriends is nice. She loves to play with her best friend Will, but it is becoming more and more often that they can't agree on what they want to play. He wants to play ninjago, or draw race cars, and she wants to play babies, or house. This friendship that has been going on for three years now might be dissolving by fault. Gender differences. Gotta love them!

 Grace is working on sounding out words now. That has proved to be an adventure for both mom and dad. Sometimes we can't quite make out the words she is trying to spell, other times we wonder if we need to wash her mouth out with soap for the words she has written down, only to find out what the word is supposed to say. This has been humorous.  Today she wrote down what she wanted for dinner. We have "wooflls" and "Frishtust" or waffles and french toast. I love this part of the learning experience. She will look back one day and get a kick out of how she spelled things. Jake and I both got a really, really, long laugh out of her spelling last week. She made two gift certificates for Jake while I was at school. She wrote them out herself, made an envelope for them herself, and gave them to Dad. Jake, nearly fell over when he read them.
1st one- "I will wrck Dad."
2nd one- "Gifsrtfuckit snuggling"
Yep, my baby spelled the "f" bomb. I laughed until I cried. Jake wants to frame them. They are the most precious things ever.
Sweet Gracie girl, you make us laugh. You are a character for sure!

Change is good-

My Sweet little Piglet chopped off her locks.  Jake and I are still both in shock.  I love it! She looks so cute and sassy with her new haircut.  Jake is having a hard time letting go of his baby growing up.  She does look so much older. 

Ok, to catch up my my Piglet's life.  She finished kindergarten. Done. Off to first grade this fall. She is one lucky girl, she has Mrs. Cummings for a teacher. Grace couldn't be happier.  Grace is loving summer right now. Sprinklers, water balloons, otter pops, warm sidewalks, sleeping in, watching cartoons in the morning, falling asleep in her sleeping bag on the patio, playing t-ball, jumping on the tramp with her BFF Will, pretty much playing non-stop.  And we are only two weeks into summer.  Life is good.  In three weeks Grace and I get to hitch a ride with Grandma and Grandpa out to Missouri for a couple of days to see Mark and Michaela and the kids. WooHoo!  This is already an awesome summer.
I love my sweet girl! She is so funny, sensitive, spunky, crazy, and a light in her parents life.

Thank you Daddy...

Last year Jake taught Grace the word "defecate", not only that, but how to use it in a sentence.  She has been very proficient in her use of the word for quite sometime. A couple of weeks ago she took it to a whole new level.  While leaving church our home teacher asked if he could come over. His wife's name is Katie. Grace is listening to my conversation and starts talking to herself. Pretty soon she is singing "defe-katie".  I of course thought it was super funny and told her she should let her dad hear her witty nick-name.  She tells him when we get home, the story ends, we thought.  Mitch, the home teacher comes over and we have a great visit.  Grace will not say two words to him but right as he is walking down the sidewalk Grace pipes up with, "Mitch, I have a new nick-name for Katie."  Jake is already red. Grace momentarily is unable to remember the name. Jake is trying to shoo Grace back in the house before she remembers again. I am already in the kitchen laughing so hard I am having trouble breathing. Mitch is almost to his car when Grace shouts, "I remember now! Ms. Defe-Katie!" Jake is BRIGHT. RED. I am hyperventilating on the floor. Then the kicker. Jake tries to smooth things over by playing dumb. "Grace, where did you learn that!?!" She turns to him and says, "From you daddy!"  Jake found me on the floor in my almost hyperventilated state and was of no help because he too was laughing.  Grace was looking at us like we were crazy. It was a good day.  I don't know that Ms. Defe-Katie likes her new name. But in all honesty, it was totally Grace's doing. Once she was taught the word. Pretty witty for a six year old.

Six years old and wise beyond years.

My sweet baby turned six. Where in the world has the time gone? She received SO many birthday calls. She was a little overwhelmed and had no idea how to handle it.
We kept things pretty low key, no party, no big hoopla, just a family dinner and a few presents. I told her she could choose anything she wanted for dinner. Texas Roadhouse came up, I was excited, but then, the ultimate letdown. She choose Manwich and chips. Seriously. Nasty. But, that is what her heart was set on, so that is what she got. She also choose a lemon cake with pudding and cream cheese. Dad was not impressed. She and I were the only ones who ate any of it. It wasn't that bad actually.
  Today while at the grocery store she needed a drink. While standing at the water fountain she said, "Holy cow! Being six makes it so much harder to drink out of this baby water fountain." Apparently she had some HUGE growth spurt between Monday the 23rd, and today the 28th. Turning six will do that to you folks. Watch out. She also had to pull out all of her "six year old clothes" she keeps in a tupperware under her bed.
She is cutie.
Welcome to the age of six Ms. Grace Perkins!!

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.