Maya's 6th Birthday

Hard to believe our baby is 6! She wished for snow (which is funny because last year her party was cancelled because of a blizzard) and got a bit of a dusting. Her birthday celebration was spread out over 2 days.


Birthday proper: We spent  the morning at home opening presents, having birthday waffles and just relaxing. Then we headed over to the Tkachuk's for their New Year's Eve gathering and the girls got to hang out with other department kids and light some sparklers!

New Year's Day: We rented a party room at a local hotel for a pool/mini golf party with the Theye's and McThors. It was a great time to just let the kids rock and roll. We ordered pizza and had fabulous cupcakes.

Flashbacks

Six years ago Danny and I went to a movie matinee before checking in to the hospital for Maya's delivery. Today I had my 35 week appointment for baby girl #3. Crazy!

Hanging with Grandma Babe

Before we left town we stopped in to have some quiet time with Grandma Babe. It is hard for her to hear during the chaos of Christmas so it was nice for the girls to spend some quality time together.

Four Generations!

Christmas Day

The good thing about having an exhausting and long Christmas Eve is that everyone slept in until just after 7:30 on Christmas morning! Wahoo!


Let me just start by saying how much I love this picture. Fin adores her big sister! A lot.

Both looking at the camera...sort of.

Maya by her stocking and Santa present.

Fin waiting patiently...although truth be told, I'm not sure she was quite awake.

Maya got just what she wanted! A Barbie Styling Head! Wahoo!

Fin got more babies!

And took to combing their hair immediately!

Danny got his 2011 book of photos with each of the girls.

Fin took a keen interest in telling the stories of each picture in both her book and Maya's book. It was amazing to listen to her brain recount the stories of the year.

You can see the chaos! We were definitely blessed!

We enjoyed monkey bread and bacon wrapped little weenies before heading off to Albert Lea to spend time with the Kuchenbecker crew!


Hanging with Grandma Barb chatting.

New clothes, new jewelry and a harmonica plus a comfy chair = happiness.

More snuggles with Grandma Barb.

Present overload

Holy crazy face!

Barbies and more Barbies!

New hats + even more crazy face!

What a wonderful day and evening! Such generosity and sense of sharing! Definitely a wonderful end to the Christmas holiday!

Christmas Eve

We started out the morning by opening a few presents. It feels better to offer the girls a few presents over a couple of days rather than ambush them with all of them at once. Danny even got to open one!


Tearing in!

Playing with the Strawberry Shortcake house.

Dad opening his present! Apparently it was a good surprise!

Doing a little fashion show!

Then it was off to Christmas Eve lunch at Grandma Babe's with the entire Wesely crew!


Giving Grandma Babe a hug.

A crew sitting down and chatting (Uncle Mike, Grandma Babe, Grandma Ormson, Cousin Jason)

A little love...

A little more...

Fin could often be found near the candy table with this face.

When asked what she had in her mouth we would get this face...

There were songs sung for Santa

And Santa's great arrival

And yes, the creepy Santa lives on

This year, for some reason, the Santa's broke out in a dance.

There was lots of present opening (here Maya opened her clogs)

The girls, of course, decided to put on a dance for everyone

And eventually, donning their matching Perry the Platypus pajamas, everyone fell asleep!