Lordy, Lordy, Look Who's...

...60!
Happy 60th Birthday Grandpa Ken!

Turning our tradition up a NOTCH!

On Saturday we had our annual trip to the North Pole (I italicized annual because I think it's cool we've done something 3 years in a row and I want to brag about it and also because in the grand scheme of things 3 years is not a long time and hardly makes something a tradition by doing it 3 times so I want to make sure it's known that I know I'm lame).

We stepped it way up this year by going over early and spending the day at Raptor Reef Water Park. Some friends of ours, who were also going to the North Pole on Saturday, had some extra Holiday Inn Express points that were set to expire at the end of the year. We said Yes Please and they hooked us up with a room that was in the hotel attached to the water park. Such a fun (read: exhausted by noon) day!

On to the North Pole trip: There were 99 kids on our boat so Santa, coincidentally, had 99 names on his Nice List this year. Charlie listened so intently that when it was over he told us that 'Santa said Samee and Samantha and isn't that funny?' Our friend's daughter is Samee and he noticed that her full name was read and her nickname. I'm going to repeat myself to really drive home the point...there were 99 names. He listened to all of them and picked up on that.

.

It was like 12 degrees out there on the deck of the boat where we had to stand so I was quite busy focusing on my fingers not freezing and breaking free from my hands and Charlie was busy memorizing all the names on the Nice List. What a crazy little dude?

all set

On Friday we made our annual trek to GreenBluff to cut down our tree. Unfortunately for some (i.e. Charlie) we could only cut down one. Poor kid was set on picking out the tree all by himself.

We have tall ceilings and like to get our $45 worth so we always go for the biggest tree we can find that's symmetrical and really green. The tree he picked out was nice, but I was eye level with the top of it and that would never fly with Matt.

I got stuck being the one to break the news that at the end of the day his vote just doesn't matter. Hopefully it came out nicer than that. On the way home he was pretty much the maddest I've ever seen him. He even said 'I hope next year we can get a tree I like'. It's got to be so hard being 3 sometimes...

Andafest

On Saturday my side of the family held a little pre-Christmas Christmas party. My brother Pete and his wife Vanessa are expecting their first baby basically on Christmas so we thought that if we wanted them involved we should just do it while they were in town for Thanksgiving.

Super confusing for Charlie, but fun for the rest of us. Matt of course got Charlie all hyped up for opening presents so I was forced into Grinch mode earlier than usual this year so I could explain that he would only be getting a couple of presents. And that they probably would not be the Batcave because that's really big and something that Santa has to bring.

Thankfully he got some awesome stuff and he forgot all about the Batcave (for now). Oh and by awesome I mean my parents got him a little band set so he can learn to play the drums (they're paying me back early for my middle school and early high school career) and Caden got him Yatzee Jr. (which I think I got the pleasure of playing roughly 30 times yesterday).

Now if the Cougs could have pulled it together for once it would have been a really cool day.

Disney on Ice

Luxury box with lots of room for a monkey with no interest in ice skating Disney characters: check
Popcorn with Cars hats attached: check
An aunt willing to buy the adults wine and beer all night: check

Basically that's my way of saying 'thanks for a great night Aunt Janeen!'

The devil ran a race yesterday.

Matt and I did the Jingle Bell Run yesterday. We went early to pick up our numbers and they handed us 666 and 667 - to which Matt immediately says 'sweet, one of us is the devil'. I quickly hand it to him, he looks at it, notices my name is attached to it, smirks, and hands it to me. Great. Now instead of running for Arthritis I'm running for the devil. When we got home my mom was like 'no one knows that's the devils number'. I think she's wrong. I think everyone but her knows that's the devil's number. Oh well. Good news is we both finished the 5k in about 38 minutes. And yes, I said both of us. I finished about 5 seconds behind Matt. Which to me means maybe I'm not that out of shape after all. To Matt it meant: wow, I must be really out of shape if my wife almost beat me. It's all about perspective folks. I guess he used to run a 6 minute mile in high school so running a 12 1/2 minute mile did something to his ego. My standards were much much lower so I was actually pleased with my time. Again, perspective.
.
Here's a random picture of the little family in the hot tub this morning. Thankfully the snow held off until today so we didn't have to run in it.

Tonight is Disney on Ice so stay tuned for more pictures. Matt's aunt hooked us up with the luxury box so we're pretty jacked for that!

Our sweet little Santa photo.

We would go back for retakes if it wasn't such a production to get them both looking nice. We really should have though because the last 3 years we've had the same Santa and this guy broke our streak. Maybe that's why she was crying?