Last summer when we first moved into our house I showed you these pictures of our family room:

One view of the family room.

And another view of the same room.

We (I) got tired of the dark paneling so we (I) decided that Rich should redo the room.

First Rich took all of the old paneling down:

After all of the old paneling was down Rich and my dad replaced all of our electric type stuff and added some more outlets.

Then Rich and my dad put a bunch of insulation in since it was a bit chilly in our family room during this winter.

Then they wrapped the walls in plastic.  I’m not sure exactly why they did that but I’m sure it was an important step.

Then the new drywall went up.

Rich painted- the color is kind of a light tan.  I think it’s called cappuccino something or other.  It turned out looking lighter than we thought it was going to, but we like it anyways.

And now for the new, updated family room….

There’s an end table in the corner between the couch and the love seat and I need to find a lamp to put on there.

Another view.

Another view… we (I) plan to replace this entertainment center with something much smaller.

And one last view.

Last weekend Hailey had a Valentine’s Day Tea and her ballet class danced to a song called “Little Wheel.” It was soooo cute!

Waiting in line to go up on the stage.

“Two hands clapping in my heart…”

“Some kids sleeping in my heart…”

“A big truck honking in my heart…”

Listening to the audience clap for her.

Hailey enjoyed watching the other groups of older girls doing their dances too.

Cute little ballet shoes.

Here is a video of Hailey dancing.  She is the third one in from the right.  In order to get the video to upload we had to reduce the size of the clip and for some reason when we did that- the sound came out awful.  It doesn’t sound like this at all on my camera- but you can get the idea anyways:

A few weekends ago Rich and I went on a little getaway to Niagara Falls.  It was nice to be able to get away for a weekend.  Even though it was freezing it was still fun to be able to get away together while my parents watched Hailey.

It was super cold in Niagara Falls and we could only be outside for a few minutes before any exposed skin started to hurt.  So we did lots of shopping and watched a glass blowing demonstration that was very interesting.  We always like to eat at the casinos when we are there because they usually have such good food, so we did that too.  You have to be 19 to get into the restaurants since they are in the casino and this trip was the first time I didn’t have to show my ID to get in.  Every other time we have gone I have had to show my ID but this time I even walked through the 30 and over line and didn’t get stopped.  So apparently in the few years since we have been there I have started to actually look my age- which is really depressing!

Anyhoo- we had to stop and see the falls while we were there, so here’s a few pictures:

It was a fun and relaxing weekend.  On our way back into the US we got stopped at the boarder.  When the guy asked where we were coming from Rich said, “Canada.”  Well, apparently the guy didn’t like that answer- I guess he wanted something more specific, so he decided to search our trunk.  He went through our stuff in the trunk and left our bags all open and unzipped.  He was sooooo rude to us. Other than that little incident we had a great weekend!!

Back in November Hailey started taking ballet, jazz and tap class once each week.  Every couple of months they have a watch week so that the parents can come into the lesson and watch what the kids are learning.  Since Hailey started about 2 months late I had missed the first watch week.  The next watch week happened the first week of February.  So Rich and I went to watch her class.  We took a few pictures of her class.

There are usually a few more girls in her class but some weren’t there during watch week.  Since I have worked with groups of 3-5 year olds I was pretty impressed with how well everyone cooperated for the teacher and how she could get all the girls to do the same thing at the same time.

We also took some videos of Hailey’s class doing a couple different dances.  But she actually has a recital for Valentine’s Day- so I’m going to wait and take a video of her dancing then and post that video sometime next week.