Happy (almost) New Year!

Where did Christmas go? I always wonder - with all the preparations, baking, shopping, wrapping, decorating....and then POOF! it's over so quickly. But we did have a wonderful time, although busy busy. Hayley had her dance recital that was postponed from the weekend of the power outage - she did such a great job and was so stinking cute! See for yourself.... in case you can't figure it out, she takes a hip-hop dance class. :)


We had fun staying overnight at the Lights of Christmas again, then our 4th (?) annual Guay family Dec. 23rd tradition - put on our pjs, fill our cups with cocoa and drive around town looking at Christmas lights. And this year we actually got to attend church on Christmas Eve for the first time ever - the girls loved the candlelight service and Ainsley managed to not light anyone on fire with her candle. We had our inaugural "Christmas Eve BLT's with the Irey's" event. :) Christmas Day was so fun at home - Ainsley really "got it" this year and was in awe that Santa filled our stockings. Then a loud, crazy, fun-filled day at Grandma & Papa's where we made a mess, played games and ate WAY too much food. So fun!
Now we're at that point when you start looking at the decorations and thinking "I should take these down...." but I really don't WANT to do that yet. Instead we get to prepare for a fun weekend with Sam, Brandi, Ella and Anna visiting - YAY! and then 2007 will be upon us. Wow.

That's about it in a nutshell - here are some photos to enjoy - I love the one of Ainsley on the horse, she was SO excited to get on that HUGE horse her smile was ear to ear and she is still talking about it! Merry belated Christmas and Happy New Year! (I'm posting the pics small but hopefully everyone knows you can click on them to see them larger!)

Sweet, sweet, fun....
Last night we had fun decorating a gingerbread house at Puget's Christmas Party. It was all we could do to keep Ainsley from eating all the decorations! We had a great time and I think our little house turned out rather cute....tasty enough to tempt Hansel & Gretel! Here's a photo:

Kids Say the Darndest Things!!!

Heard from the backseat of the van this evening....
"Hey, I'm sleeping! You need to close your mouth and be PATIENT!"

Seriously. That was Ainsley saying that to Hayley. Wow - and she thinks Hayley is the bossy one? I guess the worst thing was that those words have definitely come out of my mouth MANY times - she was just recycling them. Oh joyful noise!

Stormy days are behind us...?

Wow, what a storm we had! Last Thursday night was a wild, windy night - I can't believe how hard the winds were. I think we had gusts up in the 60mph range. Thankfully the wind was coming in from the south so there wasn't any danger of trees falling on our house. Our power went out sometime early Friday morning and finally came back on Saturday afternoon. We did manage to buy a generator (probably the last available one in Pierce County...) so that kept some normalcy to our day and we actually could plug in a lamp, use our stove and I was even able to blowdry my hair Saturday morning! Dan left for San Francisco early Saturday morning and I was just not up to dealing with the generator and trying to find gas (most stations around us were out of gas, though they did have power) and not much that we were able to do so we packed up and headed for my parents house. Yay - heat & light & people!!! It was nice to spend the weekend watching the kids play with their cousins, Reilly & Mackenzie, and making cookies with Grandma. Of course the power came back on just a couple hours after I left but it was nice to have a weekend off and not worry about my "to-do list". It was a terrible storm that left so many (1 million customers!) without power for a long time so I am thankful that we were one of the very fortunate ones. I really need to focus on that when I start to complain and think I'm so bad off and there are others that still don't have power.
I am praying that we are done with the wind and storms for a long time!

More cute pictures....because I seem to always have so many!

This one of Ainsley just surprised me - she looks so OLD. Where did my little pork chunk go? :(

And my two girls getting in a little snuggle and being silly at the same time. I love these moments when they show that they really DO love each other!

Okay, so we finally have a blog! You would think that with us being so technologically inclined, we would have done this sooner. But the to-do list is a mile long and this was WAY down at the bottom. However, my desire to share cute pictures of my kids moved it up the list! I can't promise I will post regularly but I will try to keep semi-current. Ish.

So here's my first picture. Ainsley was watching Miracle on 34th Street and apparently succumbed. She conked out right on the couch. The photo is deceiving - she's not actually laying down but is almost sitting straight up. This was comical to me as my kids NEVER fall asleep like that, especially in front of the TV!