Merriment

Holy cow...where has the time gone? I last posted in late November. Over a month ago. LAST YEAR for crying out loud. And I can only imagine the turmoil that I've caused by my absense. I bet that you are all on the edge of your seats waiting, aching for that next bit of news from the Waddells. Well, you're in luck. Here's one now.


I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!  Ours was pretty special.  Pretty special, indeed.

We did the North Pole cruise across the lake again this year.  It's pretty fun.  The kids love hearing Santa read their names from the nice list.

Waiting to see Santa's dock light up

Santa reading the list.  Exciting stuff.

The kids decorated some yummy sugar cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve.

And Sloan had a big moment on Christmas eve night.  She decided to give up her binkie.  We had talked about it for a few months to get her comfortable with the idea, and she went for it.  She was actually quite excited about it.  She left it near the plate of cookies so Santa could take it to a baby elf who needed a binkie.  Santa, in exchange left her a Barbie.  That's how Noah got rid of his binkie too and it has worked like a charm both times.

Saying farewell.

Considering if it was worth it. :)

We got to stay home for Christmas day this year.  I love having Christmas at home.  We had our traditional Christmas breakfast of pull-aparts and eggs, and spent the wee hours of the dark morning opening gifts.

The one thing that Noah asked for was jammies.  He begged for new pjs.  Partially because I had just a few weeks before bought Sloan & Kimball a whole slew of new pairs, and none for Noah.  Poor guy.  He's starting to figure out the whole hand-me-down thing.  He cried and cried the night that the other two put on their new jammies.  Talk about breaking my heart.  It was SO sweet when he opened the present with his new jammies.  He pulled them out of the box and hugged them tight to his chest like it was the most wonderful, valuable gift ever.

The boys simutaneously opening their Nerf guns.

And this was Sloan's face with EVERY present she opened.  Each one got more and more exciting.


My favorite gift this year:

Bahahahaha!!!  Brian put it in my stocking.  What a clever fellow. Guess I took that one Edward blog post a little too far. :)  Luckily, he let me exchange it since it was just a joke. It was $8 for heaven's sake! I'm not just gonna let that go to waste.  I traded it for the Jacob version.
(totally kidding)

The kids spent the entire day playing with their new toys. And we got in some quality family time playing everyone's new Wii games. The favorite was Brian's gift from yours truly - Cabela's Monster Buck Hunter. I gotta say that I am surprisingly very good with a gun. I beat Brian. He of course blamed it on beginners luck, but I know better. He has had plenty of practice since he and his cohorts at work spend quite a bit of time at Pizza Factory in front of that game. Pure skill, baby! :)

Here are the boys just getting started on their new skateboards from Santa.

After several near disasters...

they started getting the hang of it.

And here is Sloan enjoying her new scooter, also from Santa.

I swore I would NEVER buy anything "princess" themed for her. Crap.

The next day we drove down to Boise.  That was interesting, stressful and downright scary at times.  At about halfway (just north of Riggins) the radiator broke on my rig.  Lucky for us, a really nice maintenace worker that lived on the Nez Perce Ranger Station where we were stranded was able to patch up the radiator for us, enough to get us safely into Boise.  I don't know how he knew what to do, but I do know we pulled off there for a reason.  My panic when we first pulled off the road soon turned into peace when I realized he was the answer to our prayers.

The stress of the radiator calmed temporarily just in time to turn into major stress about the blizzard we were heading into.  From New Meadows all the way to Smith's Ferry, we were in a white-out storm.  We were able to see about a foot around us and went maybe 30 miles an hour.  Holy cow.

We safely made it into Boise about 12 hours after we left home (which normally takes only about 8 hours).  We were watched over and cared for during that drive and I am so thankful.  As for our car, we took it into Peterson Motors on Monday and the news of it's repair didn't bring me such joy.  It was going to cost a ridiculous amount of $ to fix all that needed repaired, so we had to say goodbye to my beloved rig.  I loved that car and really miss it.  We were able to find a great car from a very trusted family friend and are happy with it.  It definetly wasn't on the agenda to buy a newer car any time soon, but are thankful for all of our blessings and for the way it all worked out.  The drive home to Coeur d'Alene on Saturday was MUCH less exciting.  We made it with no real incidents after a measly 8 1/2 hours.

We hope you all enjoyed a wonderful holiday season with your loved ones.  We are so thankful that we could see lots of family and friends while we were in Boise.  We weren't able to see everyone we wanted, but hope you all know how much we love and miss you.  Best wishes for your 2011.