my little performer

Dennis sang along with the Preschool Choir and Children's Choir this morning during two church services. I dropped him off at the gym for practice for his first performance, and somehow he escaped after the practice, crossed the street, and came to find me in his Sunday School class (where I had to teach and couldn't watch his first performance). Scary! He got to walk BACK across to the gym for his performance, this time escorted by the Children's Minister. He'd thought he was all done after they practiced and somehow missed the fact that he had to stay and actually perform during the service! I did get to see him sing at the Traditional Service, and he was making his customary joyful (loud) noise. He sang every word and did every hand motion. I'm so proud, especially since we've missed so many practices with the illnesses lately!

We treated him to lunch at Whataburger, where he asked the profound question "is there a cloud machine up in the sky?". He was treated to a more scientific explanation and paid attention to every word. We rushed back to church for the "hanging of the greens", a tradition we participated in last year for the first time. Dennis loved it, so this year, we invited his friend Marshall and his family to join us. Marshall is also age 4, and those two guys had a rip-roaring good time decorating the tree, pretending to give church announcements into the microphones, playing a duet on the piano, having free roam of the sanctuary and balcony, and eventually playing "superheroes" all over the church. Dennis wanted to distribute peppermints to the others there for the decorating, so we'd stopped to buy a tub of the soft ones to give out. Marshall followed him around, and Dennis would announce "here's a peppermint for you!" and Marshall would pipe up "they're the GOOD kind!"--they did this to every person present, more than once. They were so funny! They also helped me prepare the altar, cleaning off the Thanksgiving decor, packaging up the fruits and nuts that were in the cornucopia (and eating all the grapes), and helping me hang the purple banner to signify the season of Advent (just a week away!).

This morning in Sunday School, Grace brought her shiny pink diary and shiny pink feather pen over to me, turned to a blank page, and asked if I'd write "I love Dennis" in it. I was happy to do so. She was happy to show Dennis afterward. He was very cool about it, too, not making a big deal about it. She asked him to sit by her at the older children's musical performance tonight, and we took him there just so he could. And we watched a number of the children we've gotten to know perform in their show--SO much talent! Who knew we had so many little violinists? And we were so surprised by Dennis' friend Laura (neighbor at the lake) and her beautiful solo of Silent Night! We baked sugar cookies for the kids' Star-Studded Social for after the peformance (star-shaped, of course), and Dennis socialized with all his good friends at church (from age 2 to age 80+ as he's a pretty popular guy!). What a blessed day it was!