Sloan's Big Day

My sweetest ever little Sloan is 3!  We had a super fun and very girly Hello Kitty birthday party.  She is such an amazing little girl and I am so thankful for her.

A hello kitty invitation with a satin bow and pom pom nose. Turned out pretty cute.

My beautiful girl.

Puzzle piece scavenger hunt...then assembly.

The cake! I didn't want to use food coloring...so I made a bow out of Laffy Taffy. :)

Birthday morning. Surprise, surprise...pink donus. ;)

The spoils!

My big girl. She took off instantly. No instruction needed for this cyclist!

Happy Birthday Sloan.  I can't wait to see how much more amazing you become.

Nar Nar is five

Happy 5th Birthday, Noah!!

Actual Birthday-day (June 15) festivities:  Donuts (yummmm), presents, and a two-on-one lunch with mom & dad!

He chose Red Robin for lunch and gracefully accepted the embarrassing Happy-Birthday-singing by the staff...only because he knew it would come with ice cream!

The Saturday-after Star Wars Birthday party festivites: 

The inside of the invite (I know you can't see it that well, but trust me when I say that it was pretty awesome.) ;)

Yoda paper-bag puppets

The finished Yodas

Pin-the-lightsaber on Yoda

Presents

And R2D2 cake! He was delicious!

The birthday gang.

We love you so much Noah!  Here are some fun facts about you:

Your latest favorite toys are Bionicles/Hero Factory guys. Your newest favorite movie is Bionicle: The Legend Reborn. Your favorite food is macaroni & cheese, which you will always order @ restaurants if it's available.  You love the color yellow.  You love to read, which you learned to do really fast!  You will be in Kindergarten in the fall, which you are so excited about!  You are still a really deep sleeper, which I love.  You are an amazing big and little brother. You love to cuddle when we watch TV or movies, usually with dad.  And you have a fantastic deep belly laugh which is sometimes accompanied by a very adorable squint and tilt of the head when you go silent.  I love it.  You are so amazing.

Happy Birthday, little man!

A perfectly quiet July 4

Our holiday celebrations were pretty quiet this year.  Brian injured his back on Saturday and Sloan somehow came down with croup, so we kept it on the down low.

Our day included a splash park, some pop-it's fireworks (that's all I bought...sad, right?) and some utterly delicious grub.  Late night city fireworks by the river rounded out a pretty spectacular day.

I am so thankful for my freedom and those that protect it.

(What a horrible picture. If I ever try to start a food blog, I'll have to invest in a nicer camera....even though this was only taken with Brian's iphone.)

On the menu: grilled onion, swiss, bacon & bbq burgers on flax buns, smoked corn on the cob, grilled potato salad with cherry tomatoes & green onions from my salsa pot, spinach, olives, roasted red peppers, feta and a red wine vinegarette, and super sweet watermelon. And of course ice cream waffle cones for dessert.

A perfect night for eating outdoors.

Sweet Sloan trying to look like she's having fun.  She was pretty miserable, but still managed to have fun.

The ever-exciting pop-its that lasted all of about 3 minutes.  Boy do I know how to throw a party. ;)  But I figured since we were going to go watch the city fireworks, we didn't need a lot of pomp.

And we were SO thankful for the amazing weather we had all weekend. Last year my brother and his family, as well as my mom came up for a visit.  We had been told that 4th of July's here are pretty fantastic.  It was freezing & rained ALL weekend.  Glad this year was a different story.

A much needed ROADTRIP!!!

The kids and I drove down to Boise last month for a much needed road trip.  We were able to spend time with nearly all of our very close friends & family, which I am so thankful for.  I ache for these people.  ;)

Here are some pictures from our amazing trip.  And for those of you who took pictures, please pass them on...(Q). :)

Park lunch & playtime with the Allens. Pictured here is the adorable Claire swinging with the equally adorable Sloan.  These girls share a birthday, but Claire is 1 year older. I love watching her and thinking that Sloan is going to be just like that in 1 year.

Zoo Boise and Butterfly Garden with Aunt Helen & cousins, Julia and the Rockwoods.  Isn't it sad that Zoo Boise is one of the things we look forward to?  It isn't that fantastic of a zoo, but it is infinetly better than NOT having one.

Lunch @ the Bistro with Grammie (yummmmmmm) and playtime in the fountian.  A MUST. :)

Annual Ivywild cousin swim 2011

I've decided we're going to make this a tradition with the Waddell cousins.  Pictured from L-R/youngest-oldest: Sloan, Noah, Otto (Theadore), Kimball & Catherine.

 Especially adorable and special because we have the same picture from last year.  I plan on retaking this picture every year to see if their ages still line up with their height.

And you'll notice (or maybe only I would) that my boys are in the exact same swim trunks in both pictures.  Lucky for my wallet my kids fit their clothes for long periods of time. ;)

And here's my gang.  Oh, how I miss these ladies.  It's painful.

From L: Ali, me, Amber, Lola, Jen, Katie & Helen

These women have been my friends for over 11 years. (except the exhuberant and amazing Amber who was adopted in several years ago. If you knew her, you'd adopt her in too.)

And while we were waiting to leave the restaurant, there was an insane storm that of course made a perfect photo op.  We were SOAKED after only a minute.

And of course, one get together with these ladies is NEVER enough.  The plan was for games & tropical drinks @ Amber's house.  No games actually were played.  We took ridiculous & goofy pics instead and laughed until our tummies hurt.

If you can peel your eyes away from our hotness, take a moment and look at those drinks.  Amber is a perfect-themed-party-thrower and talented virgin-mixologist.  They were amazingly delicious.

We are NERDS.

Thanks for the memories, everyone.  I feel so blessed to have so many amazing friends & family to spend time with when we head to B-town.  I miss you all soooooo much!!!

She's a genius.

My amazing, genius and talented little Sloan is....wait for it....POTTY TRAINED, people!!

And while thousands of kids are trained every day, this event is particularly exciting because:

it means no more DIAPERS for the Waddell family....EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(can you tell I'm pretty excited about this?)

Only 1 week into training we had an almost-2-week long trip to Boise!  I was dreading all our hard work going down the tank.  She was amazing!!  Even for our 7 hour drive home...a DRY pull-up!!! No problem for this girl!  Booyah!!! :)

And I seriously can't resist that little squishy bum in panties.  ADORABLE! ;)

Mommy & daddy are so proud of you Sloan!!!

MEAT

This post is not for the Vegetarians out there. Beware!

When we were in Boise a few weeks ago, we invested a small fortune and picked up one of these bad boys:

A smoker.

We've had lots of fun experimenting with smoked food.  And even more fun eating our creations.

Our maiden voyage:

Slow smoked pork shoulder.  Uh-huh!!!  It was SOOOOOO tasty!  Especially with the Goodwood BBQ sauce we slathered it with.  This guy cooked for about 10 hours but was slightly difficult to shred.  We learned afterwards that it should have cooked for 12+ hours.  Good thing we'll get another go at this one on Saturday.

Our 2nd food cooked on the smoker were these:

Oh...wait. There is no picture because we ATE IT ALL UP so fast!!!  We made homemade pizzas and grilled them in the big boy.  OH MY FREAKING HECK.  I have never experienced a pizza like this.  It was only Hawaiian, nothing exciting, but Holy Canoli, people.  You have NO idea.  BETTER than any pizza I've EVER had in a restaurant. Period.  Are you seeing all these capital letters? That is how good it was. I can't keep my keyboard on lowercase to get you to capture the sheer awesomeness that was this perfectly grilled crispy-on-the-bottom-soft-and-chewy-insided crusty Hawaiian pizza.  I promise to get pictures next time.  Or, better yet, come for a visit and I'll make you a free pizza.  My treat. ;)

Our 3rd cooking adventure was the twins:

Here is their after shot.  One rubbed in a homemade rub that gave the skin an amazing smokey bark and then slathered again in our favorite Goodwood sauce.  The other only S&P'd to use for meals later in the week.  The skins on these purdy ladies was so crispy. And the meat inside was insanely juicy.  It was my first time ever buying and making a whole chicken, and while the prep wasn't my favorite experience of all time (I even made Brian reach into the cavity & pull out all the gizzards...I couldn't do it), the end result speaks for itself.

We've also smoked some incredibly tasty corn-on-the-cob and some yummy America's Test Kitchen chili.  No pics on those either.  And notice that there is no pictures of the shredded/prepared finished product for any of our yummy creations?  The food never made it that far.  And the smell??!!!  Don't get me started.  Don't you wish you were our neighbors right about now?? :)

Kid magnet

Since I've been called to Primary president in my ward I've noticed a strange phenomenon.

And before I tell you what it is, I'll explain a little about my beginning in this calling.  During my setting apart, I was blessed that I would REALLY love the kids and know them.  And I really, really have. It's amazing how quickly I was able to learn and retain all of their names.  I was having a really hard time with it before when I was a counselor in the Primary. There are SO many kids in our ward.  But since the setting apart, no problem-o.

So, this strange phenomenon is that I seem to "attract" kids.  Even kids I don't know.  Kids at the park, kids at Kimball's school, even today at Silverwood.  They really seem to WANT to talk to me...and even hug me.  I help make the popcorn at Kimball's school every Thursday morning and it's like I'm famous.  I feel slightly like Scott Calvin in the movie "The Santa Claus" when he is at his son's soccer game and the kids line up to sit on his lap.

And I'm not saying this to brag or make it sound like I think I'm so freaking awesome that kids just flock to me.  I'm just sharing an interesting experience.  It's cool, but really weird.  Not bad weird...just weird.  And with the whole name-remembering thing, it's expanded.  At the school, I can tell you SOOO many names of kids that I hardly know, just because they seem to WANT to tell me.  It's amazing how many kids really NEED someone to make them feel special.  I hope I do that for some.

I might not understand the reason for this phenomenon or these feelings, but I feel incredibly blessed that I get to spend so much of my time with kids from all walks of life.  Sometimes the kids annoy me.  Other times they blow me away with their talents and their words.  And most of the time they really make me thankful for the three little ones of my very own that I get to be with each day.