First Day of Preschool

We recently decided it might be time for Mary to start preschool.  I started asking around a little bit.  We happened to go to a make-up gymnastics class last Thursday where I met a mom that told me about her little girl's preschool.  She said she had researched and checked out several preschool's and this was the one she liked the best.  Later that day I called and set up a time to go check it out.  So this past Monday we went to meet the teacher and look around.  Mary immediately started talking with Miss Karen and Miss Kristen.  When we left Mary said, "That was fun, I played at preschool!"  We decided she would start on Thursday and here we are.  My little baby had her first day of preschool today.
The preschool is held in Miss Karen's basement.  She has a bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Development or something like that.  She has a piano and they teach the kids a lot of songs and they have programs--I think that's what sold me.  Of course, there are all kinds of toys.
When I dropped Mary off she went right in, gave me a hug and went with her teacher.  Fortunately I had Anna or I might have been to sad to leave.  Even now my heart is sad that my baby girl is already growing up so fast. The time went quickly while she was gone--it was awfully quiet though.  When I picked her up she seemed happy.  The teacher said she did great--was a little clingy to her at first and then was fine and played with the kids.  Mary said she played with a girl name Lily and a boy she didn't know his name, but told me what he was wearing.  She said she got to paint and sing and learned about the letter H and that her teacher helped her write her name and the letter H.  I was proud of her.

First Snow

It snowed on Saturday.  Quite a bit.  Mary was so excited when she saw it.  She gasped and said, "Mom, is it Christmas?  Did Santa Claus come?"  Santa Claus didn't come yet, but she got to play in the snow so it was ok.  On the side of my grandma's house, where we are living, has a hill that is the walkway to our door.  But when it is snow covered it makes for a great sledding hill.  Mary went down over and over again, screaming and laughing and saying, that was fun, can I do it again--faster?  I took several videos, but never got the times she fell off and went rolling, face in the snow.  She thought it was so great.  Anna just loved being outside, watching.  I don't know why I have such a hard time formatting these posts, but I can't do anything with these videos.  I only put one on, but there are two showing up and I can't for the life of me delete one or move them anywhere.  So there they will stay.  I hope at least one of them works!

Halloween

For Halloween this year Mary was a Sparkle Witch and Anna was Love-a-Lot Bear.  We had our ward Halloween party on Friday night.  Then on Halloween we went to Grandma Shirley's to go Trick-or-Treating.  One lady had made homemade donuts.  We didn't go to all that many houses, but still ended up with a lot of candy because the neighborhood we went in doesn't get many trick-or-treaters so each house gives a lot of candy.  Mary kept saying, "I think this is enough candy.  Let's go home and show Grandma."  And I would say that we should at least finish the street we were on and she would say, "OK mom." I think she tripped and fell (completely flat on her face) 3 times in the short time we were out.  It was pretty funny.  Later that night we found a large snail-like bug in her Halloween bucket because she had fallen right in the dirt and must have scooped it up somehow.  She had fun though.  And Anna just likes to be in the action.
To explain the pictures, Mary is riding her tricycle home from the mailbox carrying her Halloween package from Grandma Sue.
Mary likes to dress Anna up as a princess.
We joined the rest of my brothers and made a rice krispie treat pumpkin for Family Home Evening.  And the last one, John carved an extra special jack-o-lantern for the                                                                                                    

ward contest.  If it would have been a real contest it would have won.