What happened to 2010?!?

I can't believe it's 2011!! Life is so crazy! We had a super-wonderful 2010. As much as I would totally LOVE to catch up and blog about the whole year, it's a fantabulous idea, but not realistic in my world. I do hope to keep up this year. (I even updated the pictures to our latest and greatest, that we took for our Christmas cards.) Wadman 2010-in bullet points:

*Took our annual ski trip in February and we AMAZED at how well the kids are doing!

*Brian and Jaimee ran their 4th Half Marathon

*J played his second season of baseball on the Angels. Loved it.

*B finished up her year of dance and although she loved it, decided it was not her "thing".

*Both B and J had an amazing year of school with WONDERFUL teachers.

*S and Jaimee made it through 3 year old Preschool unscathed :)

*We played hard over the summer. Lots of swimming. Friends. Did I mention swimming?

*Went to Utah for the Heaps/Tolman Family Reunion. It was so nice to see everyone!

*Started another year of school. Excited for a year of hard work and great accomplishments!

*J played a season of flag football and has decided that FOOTBALL is the best thing EVER!

*B started playing the clarinet in the school band and loves it!

*S and Jaimee began the 4 year old class of preschool. Totally excited. (just in case your wondering, Jaimee is an assistant/teacher at Sophie's preschool- a really GREAT preschool!!)

*Found out S had 8 cavities!!!!!$$$$!!!!

*We went to Disneyland for 4 days in October and had an incredible amount of fun. SO.MUCH. FUN.

*B got her braces off. She's sooooo happy.

*Brian and Jaimee got to go back to Utah in December for Kaitlin's wedding. It was a quick trip but a really great trip.

That sums up our 2010. Hope your year was amazing. Can't wait to blog about 2011!

Dancing Queen...

B had her Christmas Dance Performance on Saturday December 19th. She had decided a few weeks before the recital that she was going to stop taking dance after the performance was over. She had so much fun during the performance that she decided it was worth all the work and is continuing on (much to my absolute delight!!). Due to other people having their cameras and taking great photos, we have a few to share. Both Brian and I and the kids came to the 3p performance along with Grandma and Grandpa and Mike and Amy. Mike totally embarrassed B at the beginning of one of her dances and yelled her name really, really loud. We did bring our camera to that performance, but only shot video. Our camera does not take good pictures in the dark. I am kicking myself for not getting a group photo of all who came to support B. She felt the love, that's what is most important!

Here we are with Julianne and L after the evening performance.
This is my favorite dance that they did to "Feliz Navidad". It was so cute!

They had a great time dancing and singing. I think that is what we love most about this particular dance studio. They do singing AND dancing and incorporate it all for the performance. We can't wait til June!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

Every year, day after Thanksgiving you can find our family up in the mountains searching for that perfect Christmas tree. Its a fun thing we've made into a family tradition.
The kids look forward to it. A lot.

For the past 4 years, (I think?), we've been going with Brad and Julianne and their family. I actually remembered my camera (I know- miracles STILL happen!). Here's a few pictures we captured on our tree cutting adventure:

We've narrowed it down to a science...or maybe have just ran out of patience in our old age! Here's our plan of attack:If we don't find "the one" in the first 30 minutes, we settle for whatever looks some-what decent! Fortunately, this year we lucked out, and found a great one in a short period of time. It was about 30 feet tall, but we only have 9 feet of space in our house. You do the math!!!

Here's Julianne with her little one, aka Bruiser! (I say that with complete love and adoration for the little guy!)

This picture is TOTALLY out of order. But, oh well! On the way home, we ran into this crazy hail storm driving through Citrus Heights. So, we thought we'd document it. It looked like it had just snowed!

J hanging out with his cousins. Not doing too much of the looking...

B and L - they are sooo cute together. Good buddies from the start!

Here is Julianne with the kids. Brad and Brian are off cutting trees down. In fact, our tree fell on that exact spot about 3 minutes after we took the picture. Phew! It was a close one!

We love our little Christmas adventure into the mountains. It starts the season out just perfectly! Thanks to Brad and Julianne for enduring with us in our craziness. I personally LOVE a fresh cut tree in the house. So beautiful. Its beginning to smell a lot like Christmas!

Good family. Good food. Good times.

Now that we survived the holiday craziness (but very good-ness), I feel like I can finish blogging 2009!
So, here we are at Thanksgiving. We hosted Thanksgiving dinner with the Wadman side of the family. It was our first attempt at cooking the bird. And, I can officially say I feel like a grown up now. Cooking a turkey will do that to you, you know...

Here I am in all of my glory- early in the A.M. Thanksgiving morning. Just me, Brian and the bird. All went well. Thanks to Brian for taking such wonderful pictures!

B had fun helping me set the tables and do some minor decorating. We had about 20 people over in our little family room/kitchen area. Who says you can't feed the masses in small spaces. This is how we fit everyone in! It was cozy, but very nice.

In our family, every November we do a "Gratitude" tree. Each week during family night, we add things we are grateful for to our tree by writing on paper leaves. It was really great to sit as a family and have discussions about what we are so blessed with in life. I write out exactly what each person says and put their names on the leaves so that we can each see what everyone is grateful for. We are so blessed in our life. We have so many things we are grateful for. But here are a few we were especially grateful for this year.

This is what half of our dessert table looked like. We were still missing about 5 more pies. Amazing, I know. I always over plan for dessert. We had enough food to feed at least 50 people!

You can't tell with this pillow in front of her, but Amy has a baby growing in her tummy (as my kids would say). S was OBSESSED with little Garrett. She kept rubbing Amy's tummy and asking all sorts of questions about the baby growing in there. Well, as time is rapidly approaching for his arrival, we are all very anxious to meet baby Garrett!

Here we are grubbing on all of our yummy food. It was a great day to spend together. We all really enjoyed it. We even had a visit from the Manners Police, if you can believe that! (Thanks to Dave for that!)

We are so grateful for all of our family and friends who love and support us so much. It was so much fun to host Thanksgiving! Now that I feel like a grown up, we'll have to do it again...in a few years! It was a really great motivator to get my house cleaned up too. A win-win situation. Good family. Good food. Good times.

Goodness Gracious...

Well, I totally forgot to blog about the braces. Yes. B has braces. She got them on in October. Crazy, huh? I loved this picture. So, here she is in all of her glory!!!

It was really rough for the first few months. But FINALLY I think her mouth has sufficiently adjusted, i.e. gotten over the foreign objects that have taken over. I swear with her appliance thing in there, she totally had to re-learn to even swallow. Although, it came close to driving us all mad, she has now taken to eating decently normal again (she hasn't quite jumped back into eating chewy meats...we'll give her a break for what she's dealing with!!).

A funny...

I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off for the past week...for many reasons we won't go into.
Late this afternoon, as I was enjoying a freshly baked sugar cookie, I remembered I needed to move our dog, Sadie into the garage before it got too cold. With cookie in hand, I got my coat and grabbed a doggy biscuit out of the cupboard (we use it to bribe Sadie into listening to us) and headed out the back door. As I walked out the door, I instinctively took another bite of my cookie. But, to my surprise, it wasn't the cookie that I put in my mouth. Yeah. I ate the dog biscuit!! It was hard not to fall on the ground laughing as I spit it out on to the grass.

It was funny.

I've never been so distracted with life-stuff, that I've eaten my dog's treats before. I guess there's a first time for everything.

13.1 miles of the pain you crave...

This is the group of us that did the Run the River Half Marathon on November 14th. Starting from the left- Brian and Robin Gibson, Julianne (my SIL) and me, and Becky and Terry Weaver. Notice the medals. We all wore them very proudly while we ate our victory lunch at In and Out Burger.

It was fun, but actually my most painful half marathon. I think I pushed myself way harder this time. It paid off. I was hoping just to cross the finish line, and we (Becky and I) actually ended up beating our old time by 4 minutes- YEAH!!

It was really great running and training with you guys. Can't wait for the next one. Hopefully I'll be able to walk normally by then. Seriously. Even after a 20 pound bag of ice in an ice bath, I was still in pain and it took a good week to feel human again. OUCH! But, its like the logo for the marathon my brother Todd ran in June- "26.2 miles of the pain that you crave". Crazy, but very true..

mine should read- 13.1 miles of the pain you crave.