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.

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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?