Flower Girl, Belated

So this actually happened back on the fourth of July, but I forgot to blog about it, and these pictures are worth sharing. My mom's best friend, Kay, and her family have been like part of our family for as long as I can remember. This past July, her oldest son, Wesley, and his beautiful bride, Amanda, were married in San Antonio. They asked Grace to be their flower girl, and I must say she did fabulously! With Grace, you never know. Sometimes she gets really excited about something like this that's such a big deal and "performs" perfectly. Sometimes she shuts down and refuses to do anything. Thank the Good Lord, this was a good performance day. I was way more nervous than she was, mostly about keeping her adorable but snow-white dress clean until the ceremony.

As the ceremony got closer, at one point I had to leave her to go and be seated. The maid of honor was incredibly kind and patient with Grace and later relayed this story of what happened after I left to Kay. Apparently Grace tripped and dumped her petals out on the ground close to showtime. The maid of honor was helping her pick up the petals and trying to speed the process up saying things like:
"It's okay, Gracie. That's good enough. We have most of them picked up Gracie. Let's go Gracie." Finally, Grace looked up at her, deadly serious, and said "The name's Grace, and I want them ALL." That's our girl!

During the actual wedding, she was precious: very meticulous about dropping and spacing of the rose petals, and she cracked everyone up when she got to the end of the aisle, turned her basket upside down, and hit the bottom of it to make sure she got every last one out. Wesley and Amanda were both so sweet to her, and made her feel like a special princess, even though it was their day.

Lee and I both, or course, cried watching her. It was awfully hard not to project to "someday" when it will be her, our baby, walking down the aisle to the man God has planned for her. I can only imagine how quickly the time between now and then will fly by. She is already about to turn four, and that seems impossible. Sometimes when she falls asleep while I rock her before her nap, her little face will relax, and as she snuggles down to my chest, I still see my little firstborn baby girl somewhere in that fiercely independent bundle of energy. There are days when she challenges by patience and mommy endurance to my absolute core, but there is nothing I would change about this incredible little one. Because even with the frustrating things, we are so blessed by God to have our one-and-only Grace Elizabeth.