The big day has come and gone. Alison's dance recital and the church Christmas pageant were yesterday.

Alison did great in the recital. She knew exactly where to be and when to be there, and she would wait for the rest of her class to catch up so they were all together. At the end, the other four girls ran off the stage and Alison was still standing there as the curtain closed. She was actually looking for us. We were on the opposite side of the room from where we had been at the dress rehearsal and that side was really dark, so she hadn't found us when she first came on stage. You can watch a clip of it here: Alison's dance recital. She's the one the red dress, as if you couldn't tell.

The Christmas pageant didn't go quite as well. First off, it's very hard to keep an active three year old, who is not used to sitting in church in the first place, quiet for nearly two hours. But Alison really didn't do too badly. 45 minutes after the service started, it was time for the pre-schoolers to go up and sing their song. Alison had been singing it off and on since we sat down, so she was ready. She went up to the chancel steps with the rest of her class, but the call of the stable set, which was sitting out of sight, was too much. Runaway sheep!!! She took off across the chancel and had to be corralled by one of her teachers. She kept trying to get away, but did settle down enough to sing, kind of. Of course, we didn't realize until well after the pageant was over exactly why she took off like she did. She had been saying that she wanted to go "play in the house" but it wasn't until we were on our way home that we realized that "the house" was the stable. Oh well, there's always next year. I guess we couldn't possibly expect her to be as good as she was the last time she was in the pageant. At four months old, she played baby Jesus and slept through the entire show.