New Year's at the Lake House

So, our friends Danny & Jessica have repeatedly invited us to Jessica's parent's lake house in Sandpoint Idaho, and we haven't been able to go, so when Matt decided that work wouldn't allow him to go over New Year's, Sawyer & I just decided to bite the bullet & go anyway. As much as I hated being without Matt for not only New Year's Eve, but also BOTH of our anniversaries (wedding & sealing), it was totally worth it. And, as Matt said, we kinda do a good job of celebrating our marriage every day, so anniversaries are kinda just a formality. It was fine.
Let me just say that this is kinda the place that you see in movies & it never happens in real life. The house reminded me of that unbelievable house in Somethings Gotta Give. It is right on Lake Pend Oreille, about 40 miles south of the Canadian border. You can either fly into Spokane & drive an hour or drive 10 delightful hours on icy mountain passes through parts of Montana where we experienced lovely -21 degrees cold. Actually, it's 10 beautiful summery hours; 12-14 icy wintery hours. Other than that icky drive everything was deeevine! Sandpoint is an adorable little town with fun antique stores, ridiculous Mexican food and great people. The Rands, Jessica's parents, are some of the most kind & loving people you will ever have the pleasure of meeting. They are crazy generous and super fun to be around, as evidenced by the fact that they had nearly 30 of their friends & family stay the week with them. There's the main house with room to sleep 18 people minimum, the 3 bedroom cottage, and the 3 story tree house with a king sized bed. This tree house is unbelievable, it was featured on one of those "crazy houses" shows on the travel channel. This is the middle floor bedroom with Sawyer and Becky enjoying the bed.This is Sawyer and her newest boyfriend, Sam, up in the top floor lookout of the treehouse.This is the bathroom in the tree house, nearly completely covered in copper. The guy who built this said that his concept for the bathroom was "a place where you could shower, shave & shit without moving your feet." Pretty spot-on, the whole place is waterproof because it's all part of the shower. This is my new best friend Wilson. I love dogs and he is one of the better ones.After some fantastic New Year's advice from Jessica's darling autistic brother, Tyler, we were ready to rock. (p.s. his advice was that it would be disgraceful and a waste of our precious time to just have a party, and that we would be better served by watching all of his 56 Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs.) New Year's Eve was wonderful. Without my wonderful husband there to bug me, I was able to go to bed with Sawyer at like eight, sleep for a few hours, then wake up to party when the dance party became un-sleep-throughable. The food was super good, I seriously gained five pounds in four days. Not even kidding. There were a whole bunch of teenage girls there, so we had a huge dance party all night & it was super fun. And yes, I did let my daughter sleep through the entire party. Apparently Sawyer has the rare talent to sleep through an atom bomb. I hope it serves her well. At some point we decided that dancing from a prone position would be best. Jessica's sister, MacKenzie hands-down won the cutest socks contest. I totally want those & I HATE socks. Thanks so much Jess & Danny & Becky & Jon!!!! We love you & hope to come to the lake house again, maybe with less snow, more jet skiing.

Speaking of jet skiing, here is a little new year's gift for those of you who have read this entire long, blabbling, not-particularly-well-written post....

The amount of love I feel for Daniel Tosh is a little insane.