Last Tidbits of '09

This morning a few of us girls got together for some much anticipated
PLAYTIME!
Casey Evenhus, Liz Larsen, Danielle and the boys, Jeannine Johnson, Marissa and I met
here at 9:30. Then we piled into cars and took off to score a few deals at Goodwill. :)
We had two more join us for lunch at Marie Callenders- Cheryl Carstens and Laurie Hopper.
After lunch, Casey, Liz, Marissa and I went to see "New Moon".
(I may have already seen it before, but I felt it was my duty to be supportive of the group.
(hehe)
We had a blast by the way!!!!

Marissa and Garth enjoying a game of Jenga this afternoon.
I avoid this one when possible. It drives me nuts. ;)

It's been a good year. We have so much to be thankful for.
Here's looking to a new year and hoping for good thngs to come.
Below, one last look at 2009:

(picture taken early one morning by our neighbor across the street- Robin Bruner)

Snow Surprise

This storm caught us by surprise on the 29th of December.
Accumulating quickly, I think we ended up with about 4 or 5 inches-
MORE than enough to make us happy.

Marissa wasted no time hurrying over to pick up Nando for a
"winter wonderland" walk.

On their way back, they ran into Nando's family. Myrian and the girls
were out for a bit of fun too.

Vanessa showed us how to make a snow angel.

Jazmin "taste testing" the snow.

Short lived but greatly enjoyed. =)

Cannon Beach

On the morning after Christmas Garth, Marissa, and I decided to drive down to the beach.
It was fun getting to see the snow as we crossed over the mountains.

We stopped for breakfast at Camp 18. Check out the car next to us.
A Nissan CUBE.
(and people say OUR car is ugly)
This one is definitely competition, wouldn't you say?

Marissa and Garth.

Garth and I.
We were glad we bundled up. There was a stiff wind and it was C-O-L-D.

Marissa was determined to enjoy the water "up close".
I think she misses it being at school in Utah.

A few pictures to remember how beautiful it was that day....













These last two were taken back in town before we left.
I never cease to be amazed at the beauty of God's handiwork.

Christmas, Hadley Style

"Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree...
How lovely are your branches".
Facing the prospect of another year building our tree branch by branch, we decided to bring home a real one.
Charlie Brown top and all, we L-O-V-E you!!!!

Christmas Eve signals the start of our family festivities.
After enjoying lots of yummy food...
shrimp
sausage
cheese
crackers
spinach and feta puff pastries
pigs in the blankets
lots of sweets received from friends + a few we prepared
and sherbet floats..............

we gather in the living room for Christmas stories.
These bells are passed around for the first story of the night:
"The Polar Express", read by Garth.

Having our little grandsons, Ethan and Bennett, to share it with made it all the more fun.
Ethan totally got into the story, though he did have to help Grandpa with some of the words.
Apparently, Garth wasn't using the word "bus" often enough.
Easy enough to fix- each page now ended with
"on a bus".



Wouldn't you know....
As sure as you veer off the subject a bit, SOME people have trouble staying with the story.
(You two, there's going to be a QUIZ when this is over!)



Further distraction courtesy of Danielle.

Let's see, where were we?
After Garth's story, I sang "Frosty the Snowman" and now we are enjoying
"Twas the Night Before Christmas", being read by Marcy.





Precious Bennett, so perfectly content in his daddy's arms.




Since Brandon and Marcy planned to go snowboarding on Christmas Day,
we decided to have our "pickle hunt" (a German tradition where you hide the pickle ornament on the tree and whoever finds it first gets a prize) and sibling gift exchange that night.
Danielle scored the pickle prize- a $5.00 gift card to Jack in the Box.
Here Brandon is opening a gift from Garth and I.
The perplexed look?
We gave him "wipes" for after his bike racing (since he gets so muddy) and he's thinking we're trying to subtly suggest he needs to "freshen up" a bit.
We were cracking up over this one.



Christmas morning.
With only Marissa at home, we enjoyed a few extra hours of sleep.
Danielle and Matt joined us for breakfast and then Garth decided to start cooking his prime rib roast before we opened gifts.




Ethan and Marissa decided to take a stroll while they waited to open presents.
Don't you just love the "Thomas" slippers?




Little ones first.
SO much paper to pull off!!

Yo Gabba Gabba.
His expression says it all.

Marissa and Bennett.

THE BEST GIFT
A new cell phone from Mom and Dad.
Looks a little large, you say?
That's because she's holding a couple of blocks of wood taped together with a picture of her new phone on it. The real ones on its way in the mail.
Yippeee Yea!!!!!

Ahhh. The roast is ready and the table is set.

Matt and Garth enjoying the Christmas feast.

Our granddaughter Rebecca joined us in the afternoon for a couple of hours.
She wanted to talk to her Uncle Jason so we planned her visit so she would be with us when he called from Arizona. She was SO excited to talk to him.
It's sure rewarding to see the table manners our children have learned so well.

"A little "Sparkly" for you, Rebecca......

...and the rest for me"!!!
(another of many Table Moments with Danielle)

Rebecca opening her favorite present, a doll that you can style and switch her hair.
Sweet Rebecca, I love your toothless smile.

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Seagull Adventures

On Tuesday night we were invited to come watch Rebecca (our granddaughter) in her school play. Her 2nd grade class and the kindergarten class combined their talents for a musical revue called "Seagull Adventures". Rebecca played the part of Mother Goose.
She is on the front row in the brown costume with yellow legs and feet.

Rebecca's character had a lot of lines to speak, however this is still probably my favorite part. The play has just started and she sees all of her family in the crowd.
So SWEET! :)






If you turn the volume up on this one, you should be able to hear her talking.






Afterwards.
Rebecca, you did a GREAT job!!!




Rebecca asked for a picture with her Dad and her Grandpa.
Three generations of Hadleys.

Thanksgiving Surprise

chuckle,chuckle*
It's a lot of fun to pull surprises on unsuspecting people, especially people that you love.
Marissa thinks we're at home with no definite plans for Thanksgiving. SO not true. ;D
As you can plainly see in the following four pictures, we are traveling somewhere far from home.
Hey! As a matter of fact, that kinda looks like Idaho.
Good guess!


One of our favorite rest stops just inside the Idaho border.
(notice the moon high above the Toaster?....probably because we didn't get away from home till midday). No worries since you're not expecting us anyway.

A beautiful view of the Snake River from the same rest stop.

Historical info about the river. I love this kind of stuff but rarely remember what it said.
This time I will. ;)


The Boise Temple
(looking out the car window on the freeway)



Woops! Seeing that Garth's up at the door getting ready to play a trick on our daughter, let's pause and rewind for a minute.......




You see- Marissa was invited to spend Thanksgiving with Garth's sister Andrea and her family in Utah since we hadn't planned to fly her home from college. Which was great. We were invited too but for those of you who live where we do, you know the odds are never good for crossing the Blue Mountains when there's snow and ice. Knowing this, we never seriously considered coming. Well, that is until it got closer to Thanksgiving and we realized the forecast was "phenomenal".
Should we do it?!! YES!!!!!!!!!
After a quick phone call to Andrea, it's a done deal.

Funniest thing was, Marissa kept calling Garth on the cell phone to chat as we were driving. Garth refuses to lie, so he was very careful in how he responded to her comments and questions.
Thank GOODNESS she didn't point blank ask him if we were coming down. He would have admitted it for sure.




Anywho, that about gets us back to the scene at the door.....

We noisily (as quiet as we could) crunched up through the snow to the front door.
Plan A
Garth was going to take a picture of the front room through the window and send it to Marissa's phone. Then he was going to ask her if she recognized it.
However, Andrea stepped out the door right about then, so we switched to
Plan B
Garth took a picture of the three of us standing on the front porch together and sent that to her.
We waited


and we waited




and then we waited some more.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. It's really getting cold and with no response on Garth's cell phone, it is time for
Plan C
We slipped into the living room and Andrea called her out of her room to "help with something".
When she looked over and saw us, she had the funniest look on her face. Like, "What are YOU doing here?!!"

As for the picture Garth sent?
Marissa said she couldn't figure out why her dad sent her an "old" picture of the three of us.
Well, at least she was surprised to see us. And we were thrilled to see her! :)



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~




Thanksgiving Day.
Hanging out before dinner and trying to figure out the answers to some crazy list of clues.
Either we're dumb or some of these make NO sense at ALL.
We'll assume it's the latter.



Garth's youngest sister DaNae playing around in the craft room.







Rick and Garth "shootin the breeze" while they cook the potatoes.




Marissa working her magic on the cooked potatoes.


Andrea preparing to carve the turkey. Mmmmmm.
It was delicious and so was the cranberry salad in the corner of this picture.




The "children's" table




The "adults" table

The HOST and HOSTESS of this shindig....
Rick and Andrea

Neil, Garth's younger brother.

Brett and Britt

Ayeisha and Thomas

Rick ( just home from his mission) and Zach

McKenzie

Mother (Garth's Mom)

Marissa

A fast and FUN trip! (we had to start home the next morning). We had a great time and loved getting to see everyone.