Blog Catch Up Post Part 4: January Jumble

Happy New Year 2013 from the McGuirts!

                                         

 We began our new year with a fun celebration at the Powells'. We wrote letters to be opened 5 years from now, played Pictionary, ate fondue, and had a great time!
On January 5, we celebrated Rachel's 4th birthday! We can't believe she is already 4! She is growing into a beautiful young lady each day and we are so proud of her!

We celebrated her birthday on Sunday afternoon at a party with our church family. Here she is trying to break open her pinata

Enjoying every minute of the inflatable!

We had a blast with the inflatable and the play dough table! Thank you to Judith and Tim for all your help with Rachel's party and we are thankful for everyone who came to help us celebrate Rachel's special day! 

Around the middle of January, we had a couple of beautiful springlike days with highs in the 60s. We made the most of our time by being outside as much as we could!

 One of the days, we headed to Gypsy Hill  Park with our friends Matt, Molly and Hannah. Gypsy Hill is a great park about 30 minutes from us with two parks in one, both a big kid and a toddler park.

Yes, they do look alike!

As you can see, most of the pictures of our girls are taken on the swings. My girls could spend hours in the swings! They did finally make their way around to the slides, train and other fun things around the playground

Matt, Molly and Hannah on the swings

Hannah trying out the slide

 Following our beautiful days in January, we had a couple rounds of snow and highs in the 20s. Certainly a wide variety of weather here where we live now! We have also figured out that we finally live in place where if snow is forecasted we actually get...SNOW. In Eastern NC, where Brent and I grew up,when snow is forecasted  we almost always get...cold rain. Actually, the area of the county where we live now tends to get snow even when other parts of the county do not.

Both of our girls actually like sledding a lot!

Snow Angels

 We had fun together as well. Rachel is working on her drawing skills. Rebekah loves to "walk a mile" in her Daddy's shoes. Rebekah and I also had fun "just clowning around."

We also enjoyed Constitution Sunday at FMBC, which celebrates our history as a church. It was a great time to be reminded of all God has done and all He is continuing to do in the body of believers that make up our church. Of course, we had a great meal after the service too! The girls had a great time getting to play with their friends

Rachel, Alexis and the hula hoops

Amaya, Kayle, and Bekah

 Since we had the special service, we did not have Sunday evening services. We realized that this happened to be the same time our friends Randy and Melissa would be at Tamarack to attend a reception for photographers with images placed in the gallery there. So we took a little road trip to surprise them and see Randy's photographs in the gallery. This was really neat because Tamarack has works of art from artists, photographers and craftspeople from all over West Virginia, so it was great to see images by Randy there in the gallery. We also saw Sarah, another photographer friend of ours, whose images were also featured in the gallery at the same time.
They were pretty surprised to see us and we had a great visit. It was great to get to meet some of their family including Randy's mom, Judy, and his sister in law, Robin.

 

Our family with Melissa and Randy

We had a full and fun January. We are looking forward to February and especially looking forward to the upcoming spring!

Blog Catch Up Part 3: North Carolina Christmas

 So this is what we woke up to the morning after Christmas, which was also the same day we were headed to North Carolina to see our families for Christmas. It was this crazy mix of snow and sleet. We barely made it out of the driveway (it did take two tries), much less down to NC. The Lord protected us though and we did arrive safely.

 These two are really liking that both of their car seat face forward now. This is how I found them when I looked back to check on them at one point on the trip.

 This was Rebekah's response about 4 hours into the trip when I told her we were not quite there yet!

 First stop on our NC trip was to visit with Grandpa, Cici, Andrew, Ethan and Emily. After eating together, we headed to Meadow Lights. This is an outdoor light display near where we are from that is great for families. After a carousel ride, we hopped on the train to go around to see the lights. Then we headed back to open gifts together.

Next stop on our NC trip was Mimi and Pop's house. Pop always cooks us a giant breakfast when we visit usually including grits, bacon, eggs, toast and fruit. As you can see, my girls headed right into the kitchen to find out what Pop was cooking on this morning.

 

This is one of my favorite pictures of Mimi and Aunt Ashelyn reading with our girls

Here is my Grams with each of my girls. My girls love spending time with their Grams!

 

 We enjoyed just spending the day visiting together.

Gifts courtesy of Brent McGuirt Photography

Rachel's princess tent from Mimi and Pop

Mom, Grams and I

 Rebekah says "Are we all done?"

     After we left Mimi and Pop's, we headed to Nana and Papa's house. On the way we stopped by the town I grew up in, which is also where Papa's Royal Trustworthy Hardware Store is located. The girls love playing at Papa's hardware store.                    

Trying to get her sister to stand still so she could measure her

Papa and his precious cargo in the wheelbarrow

Trying out the tractor

Trying out her sister's bike

Rachel joining the McGuirt guys pick up game

Rachel talked Aunt Brooke and Aunt Brittany into playing nativity with her

 As tradition, we enjoyed McGuirt Family Christmas Lasagna. This year Jared and Brooke made the lasagna for us and they did a great job!

McGuirt Family Christmas 2012

Nana opening her photo books from the girls

 The last day of our visit we had an early birthday lunch for Rachel. Since we were down to visit so close to her birthday, we went ahead and celebrated a little early with our families. Thanks to all the family who came to celebrate our special 4 year old with us.

We had a great trip to North Carolina to visit our families. We are very blessed to be able to visit when we can and to have families that love us so very much!