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One of my favorite things at the end of each day is our good night prayers. It's so sweet to hear the 'evolution' of Anna's prayers as she grows up. We went from 'Now I lay me down to sleep..." to The Lord's Prayer, and now we say individual prayers.

First of all, there is an important order of events. We each get to pray ONCE. Daddy goes first, Mommy goes second and Anna goes third. We know it's our turn when Anna points to us. And the order is because with our hands folded for prayer, Daddy's hands are biggest, Mommy's are medium and Anna's are smallest. I can recite that from memory because Anna RE-explains it to us each night, like we're slow children who need explicit instructions. (Perhaps we are?)

So, when it's Anna's turn, she started off praying "Please help XYZ to feel better." The XYZ of that list included anyone that we had thought of during the day or was sick. And once you were on the list, you STAYED on the list. Just before we moved to our next phase, the list went something like this:

"Please help Mommy, Daddy, Oma, Pa, Grandma, Michael, Riktor, Mariah and Kodi to feeeel better. Is that everyone? Ok, yeah, I guess that's everyone. AAAAmen."

Then, it recently got truncated to, "Please help everyone who is sick to feel better, whenever they need it."

And now, to "Please help everyone who is sick to feel better, whenever you feel like it."

She has also stared adding a few original thoughts, which Curtis and I always peek through our closed eyes at eachother to smile about how sweet she is. Some of my recent favorites:

"Please help our flowers that we planted to grow just a littttttle bit faster."
"Thank you for letting me win my fish."
"Thank you for cute lovies so that I can take good care of them."
"Thank you for Rigby because I love him soooo much."
"Thank you, God, for watering our flowers with the rain today. But we *were* watering them ourselves."

I love that she prays. One of the things that *I* pray for is that she will have a good relationship with God. I am thankful that my parents taught me that God is a friend, not some far removed "being" to be only feared. I hope that for her too.