Thanksgiving

As with most people, Thanksgiving for us is about family. What greater thing do we have to be grateful for than the association we have with family. Aside from the mission, I don't think I've ever been away from family on Thanksgiving. I know Sarah hasn't. Which is why it was sad for us this year when we decided we wouldn't make the trek back west for the Hulme family Thanksgiving in Saratoga, California; particularly sad when we knew that we would be the only ones in Sarah's extended family who wouldn't be there. It's was just hard for us to justify the $1500 and two days of travel for 2 1/2 days with family (sometimes you can put a price on family).

So Sarah was naturally excited when a few weeks ago her mom offered her Southwest Rapid Reward tickets to fly us out for Thanksgiving. She looked into it, but there were no more seats available over the weekend to fly with rapid rewards. She has always been good spirited about our first Thanksgiving alone, but I knew, especially as we would get closer to the holiday, that she would seriously miss being away from her family. So I decided to call Southwest again today and check if there were any new availabilities to fly to the Bay Area next week. Sure enough, Thursday morning at 10:20 there was room for the four of us to fly out to Oakland, arriving at 3:30 pm. With the hour drive back to her Grandparents house, we should make Thanksgiving dinner before the blessing on the food. I will fly back on Sunday, and Sarah will stick around with the girls for a few more days and fly back later in the week.

The fun part is, Sarah has no clue and won't until she reads this post (but given how many times she checks our blog everyday, that will most likely be before I get home to see her reaction.) So Sarah, Happy Thanksgiving (from your parents, mostly). Someday we will have to grow up and start our own Thanksgiving traditions, but not this year.

Newport Aquarium

Dan had the day off of school yesterday for Veterans Day so we drove down to Newport, Kentucky and went to the aquarium. Newport is just right across the Ohio river from Cincinnati, so it's only a 2 hr. drive. And we've been wanting to check out Cincinnati as well, so it was a fun little day trip. Anyway, here are a few pictures from the day.This guy was my favorite of the day . . . . a snapping turtle that weighs the same as me, but still hasn't grown to even half his full size. I've never seen one in real life, so it was pretty cool. The sharks are always a hit!Dan touching a shark.And Cincinnati in the back ground!

Murder Mystery Party

We had the pleasure of attending a murder mystery dinner party on Friday night. I've always wanted to go to one, so I was really excited when we got the invite! We had a fun time dressing up and acting the parts. Dan is just hilarious at these type of things . . . . everybody was actually. We definitely had lots of good laughs! The group: the Whipples, Hagbergs, us and the Collins.
The awesome hosts - Ben and Renee. They are moving in less than a month, and I'm seriously going to be so sad. Thanks for the fun night you guys! My character was a young debutante and Dan was a financial wizard. Dan's mustache is sure coming in handy! haha.

Annie's 4th Birthday!

Our little princess Annie is getting older!! I can't believe she is already 4 years old! She had a great birthday. We started the day off by opening presents. Lisa, your card was a huge hit . . . . especially with Leah! She kept opening it to hear the song, and would just laugh and act so excited. We have a Sleeping Beauty musical card that my mom sent Annie for her birthday last year, but it broke about 8 months ago, and now just plays the same few notes over and over. So, it's nice to have a new one they can play with:) Then we headed over to the OSU campus because they were showing the movie WALL-E for free (graduate student family day). We hadn't seen it yet, and Annie really wanted to go. I wasn't too impressed by the movie, but it was fun. We walked around the campus for a little while and enjoyed the absolutely gorgeous weather!!
We wanted to take David and Mary out to dinner so we decided to go to California Pizza Kitchen. They had never been there before, and it's one of our favorites (and not just because of the word California:). We got the spinach artichoke dip, the greek pizza, and the Santa Fe chicken pizza. So good. The girls were so tired from the day, they actually both fell asleep and slept in the stroller the whole time at the restaurant. Kind of nice to have a quiet dinner with just the adults.

We made it home just in time to welcome some friends coming over to watch the BYU game. And wow, what an exciting game it was! I know these pictures are blurry, but I still wanted to post them anyway. I want to remember how fun these BYU moments are! After the other team scored a touchdown to take the lead with like 1:44 left on the clock, BYU came back and scored a touchdown with 22 seconds left in the game. So fun! And David was ready with his camera . . . .

And of course we ended the day by singing to Annie on her birthday. She wanted a pink cake with pink frosting and sprinkles . . . . the exact same thing she wanted last year. Sounds good to me. It was a great day!
Happy Birthday Annie! We love you so much. We hope all your 4 year old wishes come true!

German Village

On Friday, Dan had a conference in Cleveland he was supposed to attend, but in light of his parents being in town, he decided no to go . . . .yeah! Perfect timing. It was great that he could spend the day with us! We decided to take his parents to a cool area of Columbus called German Village. We went to The Book Loft, the craziest bookstore I've ever been too! It was so fun winding our way through the small rooms and hallways that never ended. It's a serious maze in there . . . . very cool place. Then we went over to Schiller Park to feed the ducks. These ducks must have been pretty hungry, because right when we got out of the car they all started coming towards us! And they headed straight for Annie and Leah. They must know, little kids = bread. So we headed towards the lake with the ducks in quick pursuit and took refuge on a rock. Good thing ducks can't climb up rocks! We explored the neighborhoods for a little while and came upon this spooky house all decked out for the big night (most areas of the city still had trick-or-treating on Halloween night). It also had this parked in the driveway:Leah had finally found her dream car! She was so excited when she saw it . . . . she ran right over to it and was pointing and saying, "Wow!" She probably wishes her mom would ditch the mini van for this much cooler and hipper roadster! What do you think? Should I go for it?

Halloween

Our city had trick-or-treating or "Begger's Night" on Thursday, October 30th this year. I'm not really sure why, and at first I didn't like the idea (I mean, Halloween on a Friday night is perfect, right?), but I actually really liked it. This way we still had our Friday night to do something else fun, and it gave us a day inbetween "Halloween" and Annie's birthday. Anyway, we had a great night. The girls were BYU cheerleaders this year. I really wanted these outfits for the girls for the BYU football season this year . . . and the only way I could justify myself in buying them was to use them for their Halloween costumes as well. They looked cute, although they wore their blue hoodies over top because it was a little cold, and so everyone thought they were Michigan cheerleaders, which of course doesn't go over very well here:) Oh well.
This was the only picture of me from the night, so I thought I would post it. I was being silly and showing the girls what to do for the camera. And yes, I was a cheerleader in high school . . . . and no, I never posed like this:)

Annie's attempt:Mary went trick-or-treating with us and David stayed back at the house and handed out candy. It was so fun having grandparents visiting over Halloween!
Leah caught on to the whole candy thing real quick. She was so fun to watch!
Our neighbor does this every year . . . . He dresses up and scares kids when they come up to get the candy. He didn't do anything to scare our girls, but Leah was VERY hesitant to even get close to him!
So excited and running back after getting candy! What a fun age this is.

They wasted no time in digging into their loot after we got home!
I love this: She has two suckers already in her mouth and she's working on opening up another one! Silly girl!

Happy Halloween!

Surprise Dan!

David and Mary showed up on our doorstep last Wednesday night to surprise Dan for his 30th birthday! Dan was in complete shock. It was so fun. It was a few months ago when I proposed the idea to Dan's parents that they come out for a visit the week after Dan's birthday. Not only would it be a fun gift to Dan, but they would be here for Halloween and Annie's birthday as well. Well, I was so happy when they called me and said they had boughten tickets! So then I just had to keep it a secret from Dan . . . . Everything worked out perfectly. Brandon switched seminary days with Dan for the next morning and Phil Bastian agreed to pick David and Mary up at the airport at 10:45 pm. Thanks again Brandon and Phil!! You guys are awesome.

Dan had already been completely asleep for about 10 minutes when the doorbell rang. "Dan wake up!" I said. "The doorbell just rang!" "What?" he groggily asked, not really waking up. The doorbell rang again. "Dan! Someone is ringing the doorbell! Go see who it is!" "The doorbell? What? Who the heck . . . . .," he said as he got up, threw on some clothes, and ran downstairs. He said he heard some giggling outside and his first thought was that someone was going to play a joke on him like throw a pie in his face or something. haha...... So, he looked out the window, and when he saw Phil and his Dad standing there, he was so confused. He thought, "Am I dreaming? How the heck does Phil know my Dad?" He went to the door, could hear more laughing outside, and he just stood there, trying to process in his mind what he had just seen outside. The doorbell rang AGAIN. "Dan, open the door," I said from the top of the stairs. He looked up at me and when he saw me holding the camera, he got a huge smile on his face, finally figuring out what was going on. He finally opened the door, and his parents yelled "SURPRISE!" and then they just laughed. And laughed. And Dan just stood there staring. And then his mom asked, "Can we come in?" We stayed up late talking, and he would just look at them and say, "I can't believe you're really here! This is so fun!"

Thank you David and Mary for taking time out of your buys lives to come visit us. I honestly couldn't think of anything Dan would have wanted more for his birthday. We know it was hard for you guys to get here (David's having some problems with his back) and we just want you to know how much we appreciate you . . . . we love you so much!