Another Busy Saturday

Well - as Craig put it - another Saturday full of activities! Mikayla was in her first pageant today. Drew was invited to ride in our hometown Christmas parade this morning as well. Mrs. Hayes, one of his teachers from 4k, asked him to ride with their church after she heard how much he'd been wanting to ride in a parade. He had been asking since last Saturday when Mikayla was in her parade. We had a slight problem though because of times. The parade started at 10 and the pageant started at 11, but registration started at 10. Mrs. Hayes offered to bring Drew to the pageant after the parade, but I hated for her to have to drive the 15 minutes out of her way to get there. So, Poppi came to the rescue again. He wanted to see his "little man" in the parade anyway and his "princess" in her pageant so was gracious enough to pick Drew up after the parade and come to the pageant together. I am saddened that I didn't get to see my little man in his first parade, but I have pictures coming soon thanks to Mrs. Hayes. Drew had a ball riding with his friend Bryson, waving to everyone and wishing them a Merry Christmas, and throwing candy for everybody to pick up. Look for pictures from the parade soon! Here are some pictures from Mikayla's pageant:

Right after I had gotten her dress on - she looked real thrilled didn't she?

Aunt Jennie holds while we wait for the pageant to begin. She still doesn't looked like she is excited to be here.

Mikayla goes on stage (with the help of daddy) for the first time for the group line-up. We were hoping that Mikayla would walk on stage holding daddy's hand, but after the first step she wanted him to hold her. She is such a performer, but she doesn't like everybody watchin'!

So mommy has a turn to see if she will show her beautiful face. I had a hard time with this part because this was not something I was prepared to make her do! I even told her "we don't have to go up there if you don't want to". She wanted a trophy and a crown so she decided to go with me holding her. She never smiled or waved to the judges, but we sure are VERY proud of her! It takes a lot to get up on that stage with all eyes on you! They were able to see her beautiful face - she was even named Overall Angel Face (she had the highest score for facial beauty in her age division)!

Mikayla in her element - with her "bubba" and Poppi! We were waiting for scores to be tallied.

Mikayla and daddy go back on stage to receive prizes - Mikayla's favorite part of the whole process! They are checking out the prizes that had already been awarded to her!

Mikayla was crowned princess of her age division, and was awarded a tiara, sash, and trophy. She also received a prize for overall angel face, and received other participation prizes!

Mikayla and daddy leave the stage with all of her goodies. Look at her with her tiara - doesn't she look precious? We always knew she was a princess!

We are glad that Mikayla seemed to have fun while participating in this (for the most part)! She met some other little girls and had fun interacting with them. I liked this pageant system because every girl/boy that participated received gifts/trophies/crowns. I also liked that it was a more "natural" pageant system - I'm not into making Mikayla look like a mini model. There were still some fancy clothes/hairdos there, but we were very happy with Mikayla looking just like she looks every other day! My favorite part was the sheet we filled out for Mrs. Patti to use while she emceed. It had the usual things on there like her name, age, parents' names, hair color, and eye color, but it also had questions on there that Mikayla had to answer about her favorite things. It asked about Mikayla's favorite T.V. show and she answered "Barney". Then it asked who her favorite person was and she answered "Aunt Jennie". Then it asked what she wanted for Christmas and she answered "a princess T.V. and Dora". She might give you a different answer to any of these if you were to ask her right now. That's the cutest part in my opinion! We are very proud of our little munchkin - but, just in case you were wondering, we will not be participating in pageants that often.