Happy Birthday Ainsely!

Ainsley is now officially nine years old.  It has been a little weird watching slowly transition into 'tween-dom' and not wanting to be little kid anymore.  I'm having a hard time with watching her deal with what were awkward situations for me as kid.  I love wathing who she is becoming though.  She is silly and weird just like I was (which may or may not be a good thing!)  She devours books and is rediculously smart.  She is naturally good natured and a perfect oldest child.  She is obedient child....sometimes almost too obedient.  I may be the only parent in the history of the world to encourage her child to be a little more devious, but it might be the only way she will be able to keep up with Owen's shenanigans.  She is beautiful and fun and loved by many, inside our family and out.  I get comments from people all the time about how much they love Ainsley, and it makes me smile.

She got to have a friend birthday this year so we had a pool party in January.  We bedazzled flip-flops and then headed to the YMCA to go swimming.  Then we came home for her ice cream cake and presents.  It was the easiest friend party I've ever done.  I'm now sold on the idea of going to do something for a friend party rather than trying to do the whole thing at home!  She and her friends had a blast, it was a fun afternoon.

Her actual birthday was on Sunday.  Family came over in the eveing for her second birthday cake and to open presents with her. 

 I'm glad we had such a good time Saturday because if I'm being honest her actual birthday was a bit of a bust.  She got to go to church, eat her requested french dip sandwiches (which were delicious I might add), watch a movie we had DVR'd, and then we had a family night of fighting and Owen being a pest.  I think everyone went to bed a little angry that night.  Poor Ains.

A confession...

I have recently had 2 incidents that prove that I am a crazy mom driver.  I have actually hit 2 cars in the past 6 weeks.  Both of which I hit while driving in reverse.  It's embarrassing.

My first incident happened while I was picking Ainsley up from piano at my parents store.  I was backing out of a parking space and totally ran into a car and took off the front light.  The guy I hit worked for my parents.  It's still a little awkward when I go in there.  I had to pay $500 for a new light for his old 80's Chrysler. I wasn't too happy about it. The silver lining in the whole incident was that I was able to pay for the repair instead of using insurance.  And while my van was pretty scratched up on one side, an auto body shop worked on it for about 15 minutes and made it look almost like new and didn't charge me a thing!  You can bet they got hot Krispy Kreme's the next day!

Incident #2 occurred while picking up Ainsley from a birthday party.  It happened on the evening of the kids recent snow day.  I was once again going in reverse and totally hit a car.  This time it was my bishop's new Prius.  Lucky for me I only had to replace the plastic piece that holds on the license plate.  Guess how much those tiny pieces of plastic are?  Roughly $70!  Can you believe it!? 

John's only request is that I start looking behind me when I go in reverse.  It's not bad advice.

While I am willing to make a confession I am not willing to share the pictures pictures.

Flash Back to the 80's

There was an 80's dance at school.  The kids were really excited.  And now Ainsley is totally into 80's' music.  Particularly, 'Hey Mickey' and "Girls just want to have fun'.  I think it's cute.  What it don't think is cute is that the 80's are back and we didn't have to work too hard to come up with their rockin' outfits. 

Christmas Day 2013!

While our Christmas morning pictures are seriously lacking, you can be sure they prove this was the Christmas of the sewing machine, the beyblade, and the bike.  And the Christmas morning of sheer exhaustion. Seriously, exhaustion.  

Did I mention the entire family went to bed late?  And did I mention that Owen was in mine and John's room at 1:30 (yes, am)?  And at 2:30.  And at 3:00.  And then slept in our bed at 4;30.  And then woke up every 3 minutes from 5:00 to 6:00 (yes, all still am).  By Christmas night we were all exhausted.  But this picture was taken at about 7:30 in the morning!  That about when we all realized we were tired.

It was a wonderful Christmas. Really. We are living our prime, awesome, Christmas fun years right now. I love it!

So this is Christmas.....(Eve)

How do I know Christmas vacation is over? Because I'm no longer spending my mornings like this. Those were the days....

Owen's Decor

Owen took it upon himself to decorate his room for Christmas. He did a very good job.  It was very festive!

Emmie Lately

Emmie seems to be growing up way to fast,  Sometimes I wish I could freeze her.  But alas, I cannot.  So here is just a bit of Emmie lately.

Here she is enjoying some of her favorite foods, chocolate and avocado.  Had I let her have cottage cheese as well she might have died and gone to heaven.

Emmie worked very hard on these....um....actually I'm not sure what they are, but she worked very hard on them.

Also, for a great video of Emmie singing her heart out, click here!

Also Emmie started Primary this past Sunday.  Due to the shear earliness of starting 9:00 church and having to be there an extra 30 minutes early to get my sharing time set up and all of the pre-church primary stuff taken care of we missed taking a picture of her.  She was cute.  What was weird though was that she started crying at the beginning of sharing time.  Even though I was sitting 3 feet in front of her.  It was kind of funny that she was the sunbeam with a mom right there and she was the one crying.  So she ended up on her teachers lap for a good 30 minutes!

But then after church, at about 6:00 that night we noticed that she had this awful rash over her entire body.  It was hot and red and swollen.  It definitely freaked me out a bit.  After a few days of benadryl and steroid cream it has finally faded.  What a fun memory to share with her first day of primary.  Good thing we got a picture of that!

Snow Day!

I have a lot to catch up on, but today is a snow day.  I think it's been a success (even if we all started out the morning on the wrong foot!)

Welch Family Christmas Party

This year I decided that my family needed to have a "Welch Family Christmas Party." And so I put one together. Kortney helped me plan. We had dinner, played minute to win it games, and did a white elephant gift exchange. My grandpa and Bonnie even drove up from Twin Falls for the event.  My entire family was in Boise for Christmas this year.  It was so much fun to have everyone together.  I must admit, the party was a huge success, and hopefully will turn into a tradition.  Especially since I kept our team distinguising headbands.  And now I'll stop rambling and let the pictures do the talking.