Sweet little prayer, strolling, and bad behavior

Maybe it's just me, but I find the prayers of small children so adorable. They are purely sincere, with no pretensions or "expected" language. A few days ago, while taking Grace and Lily to the library, an ambulance sped by us. They were obviously headed to an urgent call, because the lights and sirens were blazing. One thing my mom always tried to encourage my brother and I to do when we saw a speeding ambulance, police car, or the like, was to stop and say a prayer for the paramedics, and for the person to whom they were going to help. So, this day I said a very quick generic prayer. Grace then, very quietly, asked if she could pray on her own also. This is what she said, or at least as much of it as I could jot down at the time:

Dear Father,
I wish you would go with that ambulance. Take care of who's in trouble. They might have had a fire or be hurt or something. I wish you would put your hands on whoever's having trouble. I love you Jesus.

In Jesus name,
Amen

Then I was crying. Thank you, God, for the faith of my little child. Help me to remember just to talk to you with that simplicity.


On a more trivial note, last Thursday night was the annual Graham Christmas stroll and parade around the square. Lee, Gary, and my dad's bank participates in this, so we met up there and hung out with Grandpa (my dad) for a while. Grace helped him greet people at the front door and schmoozed with him; it was so funny. Then we walked around the square looking at the lights, which the girls loved of course. We resembled that little boy in the movie "The Christmas Story", because it was FREEZING and we were bundled almost to the point of immobility, but we had fun!





Today, there was a good example of typical Lily behavior.
I've told lots of people tons of times about my monkey, Lily, who climbs absolutely EVERYTHING! and quickly. and stealthily. Her new favorite "perch" is the bar in the kitchen, which of course she is fully aware that she is not allowed to be upon. This is how I caught her this afternoon. She's wearing her favorite hat. ("at, momma! at!")






Also today, after all of the rest of us were done, and Grace was STILL eating our lunch , Lily spontaneously started something adorable with her sister. Listen carefully and you can hear her going "mmmmmm" at the end . . .