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After her sister & I went to see Wicked for her birthday back in February, Katy fell in love with the soundtrack. Knows every word. I looked around and saw that they were doing the play in Nashville & took Katy as part of her Christmas gift. She said at intermission, “I told myself i was going to mouth the words to all the songs so i wouldn’t disturb the people around me but i just couldn’t take my EYES off the stage! i was just too interested!” All the thanks i needed, right there.

We stayed in a hotel overnight and went to the historic Rhyman Auditorium-the “Mother Church” of country music-and the home of the original Grand Ol’ Opry where my grandfather played the upright “bass fiddle” for Pee Wee King. He is standing with it in the 1942-43 cast photo that Katy is pointing to in the photo above.

They have a nice little “recording studio” set up in the auditorium and Katy sang Amazing Grace with a nice little gospel style accompaniment.

My grandfather also had many stories about honky-tonkin’ on Music Row! One of the favorites for he & his buddies was Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge right around the corner from the Rhyman. So…Katy & I went and had a coke & listened to the guy play for a few minutes around 11am.

Wonderful memories…hope as many for her as for me.

Really? Its been 9 years since Katy arrived on the planet and totally rocked our world? Katy is maybe the most sensitive little girl i’ve ever met. her feeling can get hurt so easliy, but at the same time she feels so deeply and cares so much for others.

Katy has a big heart. its the way God made her and its awesome. i don’t think i have ever shared the circumstances surrounding her kissy fingers. now seems like as good time….

the day she was born we had no idea we’d have so much to deal with. at the time it seemed huge. now it seems strange that it seemed so huge. we started noticing little differences as soon as she was born. most notably we saw webbing on a couple of fingers, short crooked fingers on her left hand, cleft tongue, and cleft palate. our wonderful pediatrician warned us that multiple anomolies that we COULD see often meant there were things that we COULDN’T see and they could mean she had a chromosomal abnormality. that could mean BIG stuff. she was tested for everything. ultrasounds, heart tests, blood tests, hearing, eye sight…nothing unusual. she was diagnosed with a random recessive gene thing that usually caused nothing other than what we could see and she had surgery to repair her palate, separate her fingers and remake her tongue when she was 10 months old. it wasn’t fun, but it certainly could have been much worse…even the random things we delt with could have been more serious. they told us that we would have to have another surgery when she got older to straighten her fingers. but since then, her fingers have become so uniquely “katy” that no one, including her, wants to change them. i call them her kissy fingers because three of them come together and are the same length and i can kiss em all at once. i had a print made recently that i can wear around my neck. katy’s kissy fingers are the BEST.

so…now she’s nine years old. and she’s loving and funny and so cute (can i say that even tho everyone says she looks just like me??). katy is perfect just exactly like she is.

Katy and I were invited to accompany our precious Katie Causey and her mom, Cindy, to her physical therapy appointment and Christmas party at Children’s Hospital in B’ham. Katy got to try some of the fun “toys” Katie gets to play on when she goes for pt and then she enjoyed different activities, as you can see. Santa came out and gave GOOD gifts, too.

We had an abundance of pagentry to attend this Christmas season! Katy sang with the Eaglaires in the Christmas pageant at school and then played a “jingleless bell” in the church children’s performance. This was an auditioned part and Katy had a solo and lines. She was very proud, as were her parents, grandparents, great-grandmother and friends all shown here in attendance. Ella Grace’s part of the program with the k/1st grade choir was really cute as well.

Katy’s chorus concert at school was precious. They pulled out these sunglasses and were so cute. Frank like to call the obvious picture below the “one of these things is not like the others” pic. Katy is the minority. Hilarious.