And we haven't stopped yet!

We got lots of comments on our "party post" that we seem to be very busy. Well in typical Tucker fashion, it seems we have jam-packed another week full of busy! But it was a good busy.

This last Friday, Jesse and I decided to go to the Temple. We try to make it once a month, so we snagged a ride with the in-laws, and took Lyla with us. My mother-in-law and I took turns going inside. Apparently while I was inside, it got dark, and so the grounds keepers turned on the Christmas lights, which they had just started putting up.

Lyla was right in the middle of them, and when they came on all she could do was shout "light!" over and over. In fact when I got out there, she was still shouting "light!" every few seconds. I really enjoyed seeing her so excited about the Christmas lights.

So here are just a few pictures of Lyla's wonderous adventure! Then the camera promptly died, so we didn't get lots of shots.

Lights by the Temple Reflection Pool

Just like a bug! She is so drawn to lights!
Lyla running around like crazy out of sheer happiness

So most of you know I'm a clean freak. Or at least my family does. And most of my friends do too. I keep a clean house, and I like it that way. And I try not to do anything too messy, because I don't want a big mess to clean up. But last Thursday I had a moment of weakness, and I decided that painting might be a fun idea.

Because all I could find was acrylic paint, I decided this might be an outside activity. So we spread out a moving blanket, took a plastic top from a broken rubbermaid we had, and we opened the paint and let Lyla go to it! She had a ball, and I did too. I was actually trying to stencil Noah's ark onto a little hat rack to go in her nursery. No pics of that because it turned out mostly awful.

Everything went great, that is until Lyla dumped the water all over the garage and it stained my floor a yucky greenish brown, but we were still having fun. But what really made me decide I was in over my head was when Lyla left nice purple hand prints on our Tahoe. That made me promptly take a water hose to Lyla and the car. After an almost heart attack, I calmly cleaned everything up, and managed to not lose my mind or my temper. I didn't want to ruin Lyla's fun.

Lyla couldn't just stick to her plastic lid, her legs... and eventually her own

belly became her favorite painting canvas. This was early on, she was eventually

covered in paint, head to toe. Even in the hair! Yikes!

Mess maker, mess maker, make me a mess!!!!

Needless to say, it took not one, but two rounds of bathwater to actually get her clean. Lucky for me acrylic paint actually washes off the skin and from the hair pretty easily. Thank goodness.

It was fun to see her having such a ball, now when I let her draw on paper with pencils or crayons, she says "paint, paint!" Nope, sorry Lyla, crayons and paper will have to do for now.