Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving morning we woke up and drove down to the Hoogle Zoo and met Dave and Tiffany and their boys and Tyler and Tori and their kids. The zoo keepers served all the animals a Thanksgiving dinner (which we discovered basically meant their normal meals, in a pumpkin shell). It was cute though getting to watch them eat and the zoo has always been a favorite outing for our family, so it was fun.





Then we went to the Grandma Lloyd's house for dinner. Lots of yummy food and a kid table, makes for a great meal.



After we ate we all gathered around for the Lloyd family's traditional BINGO game. This year we decided to transition into the next generation and just got prizes for the kids. We sort of over did it though because someone got blackout before we even ran out of prizes so no one had a chance to steal, which Corbin was a little disappointed about. But it probably worked out for the better with little kids involved and Corbin found some money in his mystery prize, so he was happy.

Bean's Birthday

Corbin turned 5. Wow. His two best friends also happen to have birthdays the same week as his. So we all got together and took them to the Kangaroo Zoo during the week to celebrate. One kid is named Corbin and the other is Ethan (Bean's middle name)... they almost have too much in common, I guess they were meant to end up as friends :)


They had lots of fun running around together and I felt a little less guilty for not letting him invite friends to his party, like we have been promising him he could do starting on his 5th birthday. But we are still in the small condo and the weather is too cold to take them outside and I just didn't have the energy to host a gaggle of small children indoors in a tight space. Instead we ended up having a family dinner at Grandma Lloyd's house on Sunday with the Lloyd and Miller cousins. We let him choose whatever he wanted for dinner, which meant we once again had breakfast for dinner.


Bacon, fruit, hash browns and pancakes. Then we opened far too many presents... he got A LOT of cool stuff.






And finally, cake and ice cream.




He probably changed his mind about a dozen times in the weeks leading up to his birthday, but in the end decided on a Toad cake from Mario. We own nothing Mario related, but he LOVES to play the video game at his friends' house, and for some reason especially likes the Toad character. He came out a little pink, because it turns out all natural beet extract coloring doesn't make a vibrant red. But he didn't seem to mind. He also selected the flavor of the cake, and settled on banana. So we really made frosted, whole wheat banana bread and the kids thought it was so cool that I let them eat "cake" for breakfast the next morning... little do they know :)

Angry Halloween!

For Halloween this year our family dressed up as characters from the Angry Birds video game. At first it was looking like I might have to let go of my control issues and give up the whole family theme idea because Makelle was dead set on being Princess Pink (her favorite character from Daddy’s make-believe bedtime stories) and Corbin was dead set on not being anything related to a princess—certainly not Prince Charming, but we couldn’t even talk him into a knight or dragon or anything. So I was already to give in and let them each pick their own costume when one Saturday afternoon as I was getting ready to head to the fabric store to buy lots of pink they were playing “angry birds on dad’s phone” and one of them commented that they wished they could be an angry bird and the other one chimed in that yea that would be cool and mom and dad can be the pigs and we can “get them!” So I jumped on that one and ran off to buy the supplies before they could change their minds, thereby securing one more year of family themed costumes. They actually ended up loving their costumes and running around the house like little summon wrestlers the rest of the month, bouncing off of each other.


Like always, Halloween seemed to last all week as we attended scary story time at the library went to a neighborhood kid party, attended the ward party, went to a family dinner in costume and then of course went trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Living in condos without many kids around we decided to let them go around with their cousins, who also happened to own a golf cart, which made for a pretty fun and efficient night gathering treats. We now have about enough candy to last until next Halloween, minus all the chocolate pieces that I may or may not have already eaten :)