Disneyland Trip

Steve really wanted to go to Disneyland while he had a few days off. Seems like about a million other people had the same idea.

Some of the lines had 3 hour waits so we just went to the shorter lines. Here we are getting ready to paddle a canoe around Tom Sawyer's Island.

The haunted mansion ride scared Hailey. She cried the whole time.

The Haunted Mansion was decorated like the Nightmare Before Christmas.

Hailey wanted some ears, but we didn't want to wait hour in line to pay for them.

Hailey and her mom don't like waiting in long lines.

We stayed until almost 11:00 p.m. and there were still a gazillion people in the park. Even Hailey, who is a night owl, decided she had enough.

We did love all the Christmas decorations.

It was sad that both nights we were there they didn't do fireworks.

This is at 10:30 at night!

The line for Small World was so long we couldn't even figure out where it started. It was more like just a solid block of people over there.

Hailey's Second Christmas

We spent Christmas Eve at Steve's parents' and Christmas day at my parents'.

Christmas Fun

Christmas morning at the Ashcraft house.

Why brush your hair when you could be opening presents?

After Church I sat down and read an entire new book in a little over 2 hours.

Where was Hailey?? I don't know who was even watching her.

This new camera and I have to compete for Steve's attention.

All dressed for Church.

My youngest sister had a birthday right before Christmas. The night of her birthday it was too dark to go outside and break the pinata.... so we smashed it to pieces after Church.

My sister's new husband is like Steve's long lost twin. So many common personality characteristics. We Ashcrafts.... we know how to pick them!

Hailey was the only one who did not have to wear a blindfold.

Hailey likes to find the elf and then put him back in one of his previous hiding spots.

I told Steve if he made me breakfast I would brush my hair and put my makeup on. Otherwise I was going to go to Church looking like the bag lady... and he would have to sit next to me.

Even Hailey found time to take a bath before going to Church.

Making homemade gingerbread houses from scratch is a ton of work. This year I bought a gingerbread house for Hailey that was already assembled that just needed to be decorated. Much more enjoyable for everyone this way.

My sister Lauren and her husband Tyler flew in from cold Provo for a few days. Tyler wanted to go swimming in the ocean so to the beach we went.

Hailey thinks she is a beached whale. She did go down to the water with my siblings, but the water was too cold for swimming. Personally, I like to stay dry on land and watch. I do not like being in water where I can't see the bottom.

Tyler has a ninja turtle chest... just what he always wanted. I remember when I was little we would bury people at the beach. After we covered them in sand we would dig little holes over their stomach and drop sand crabs down the hole.

Merry Christmas

This was our Christmas card this year. We printed it two different times at Costco and the coloring was so off and ugly looking I told Steve to forget it. Steve was working a ton and I knew it would be my job to cut, glue, address and put the cards together. I just wasn't motivated to do it.

Getting ready for Christmas

Santa told Hailey even though it was naughty to draw on the front door with crayons she could still get presents!

This year Steve and I had all of our Christmas shopping done by the end of November. I like having it done early and think we will do that from now on. Even better than that I wrapped a few gifts that I wanted to wrap and called it quits. I got my visiting teachers to come over and wrap everything else, and a few gifts I picked up from my mom's house.

We told Hailey if she didn't go to bed she would have to sleep in the dryer with the local mice.

Last year we got out all of our Christmas decorations. I left all our decorations and our tree up for the entire month of January. Why? I was dreading how much time and energy it was going to take to put everything up. This year we only got a few decorations out. In general the older I get the more I begin to believe less is better.

Every morning Steve hides the Christmas elf and Hailey looks for it. After she finds it she usually wants to put it in one of the previous hiding spots. The favorite spot so far has been been inside the grandfather clock.

We also got her a chocolate advent calendar from my favorite store Trader Joe's. Hailey is obsessed with this, and I like for her to wait for Steve to get home to open up her treat. That is a very hard thing for her to wait for. Sometimes we don't wait for Steve because he has been working a lot of 12 hours days and doesn't get home until 9:30 or 10:00 p.m.

She thinks chocolates magically reappear every time she opens up a flap. She opened this same flap several times.... she is still waiting for it to come. She must have forgot she already ate it.

Her vocabulary has improved and she has learned lots of new words. Not all of them are nice, she recently told me, "Go away!" At night we like to walk around and look at Christmas lights which she seems quite impressed by.

The apple in the middle is from my CSA box. The two apples on the side are from the tree in my front yard. I think we have gotten close to at least 50 apples off our tree this year. It sure beats buying apples at the store. Hailey and I like to make cinnamon apple chips out of these on our dehydrator and they are delicious!

Playing Inside the Dryer