April fooled us!

I've never been a big fan of pranks really. I don't like it when they are played on me, so I don't have much motivation to play them on anyone else. But, my Gracie is a different story.

Last year on April Fools Day, Grace really wanted to do something to her daddy. I knew he wouldn't suspect anything from us, so we had a clear shot. We were making chocolate chip cookies and I suggested that we use salt instead of sugar in part of the dough and feed daddy a really salty cookie. Grace was so excited, she almost couldn't stand it until he got home to try one.

David's reaction was the best. He went for a cookie and said "what did you put on the outside of these cookies? They taste salty." I said "nothing." So he went on to take a bite and chew it. He nearly gagged. Grace couldn't control herself. It was so funny. She has talked about it over and over for the whole past year.

When she knew April Fools was coming up again, she started planning. David was onto us now, though, so he was being very wary. We found a couple of really cute ideas in Family Fun magazine. Neither of them were mean tricks, but just funny ones. One was a bathroom joke where you write "you will soon be FLUSH with cash" on a piece of toilet paper and tape it to the toilet (or float it if you know the person will use the bathroom soon.) Then, you slide a dollar bill into the toilet paper roll and write APRIL FOOLS somewhere inside the roll near the bill. We set it up so that David would see it when he got ready for work yesterday morning. He quite liked it - hey he got a buck out of it! (he said he was hoping for a c-note, but come on, what kind of joke would that be?)

Then, Grace and I set up another one. In the magazine, it looked much more believable, but you make "homemade" breaded "fish sticks" out of a cookie or bread stick rolled in peanut butter and then coated in crushed corn flakes. Then, you make "peas" out of rolled up bits of green taffy and serve it with "ketchup" which is really jam. This one was way too involved for the unconvincing look it had in the end, but Grace was still dying to feed her daddy the taffy "peas" at dinner time. David was a good sport and went for it and she loved it.
For the rest of the night, Grace kept trying to trick us with "look there's a spider on your head" or "look there's an airplane outside" and things like that. I got her with a couple of those too.

Grace headed into the bathroom after dinner. As I was doing dishes, she yelled "mom, my tooth came out" in a very calm way like she was telling me just about anything. I didn't believe her after all the pranks she'd tried to pull and also after the FIT she's been having over anyone trying to wiggle her very loose tooth out. I thought she'd be inconsolable when it actually came out. But, I headed in to check on her anyway, and sure enough, it came out! She insists she did not pull it out herself (I believe her too) but that it just came right out on it's own. We are so relieved. I thought we'd have to take her to the dentist or have Uncle Randy pull it out when we go to Salt Lake.
So, in the end, Gracie really did pull off the best April Fools joke. With so many attempts all day, we didn't believe her about the tooth, and boy were we fooled!
The tooth fairy did visit our house last night. She brought Grace a toy to exchange for the tooth. Grace peeked early early this morning to see and then came into our room to make us get up and go in to officially see what was under her pillow.

What a big girl I have! I'm hoping to post more big girl news soon. I was hoping that Hattie would have the next big girl post before Grace's tooth came out. She's been trying hard to use the potty and she's nearly there. We have 2 weeks until we get on an airplane, can she do it before then??!