For Thanksgiving we joined Gina and her family.  Spencer was able to come down the day before and hang out before he headed back down to his in-laws.  It was fun to get all those kids together.

Ellie, Shydon, Jace, Austin, Emmett, Laina

Here they all are having Spencer's famous McScribbie Sandwiches.  I have to admit, they are pretty tasty.  Like a McMuffin but so much better.... (I didn't realize until later that Ethan's face was covered by a star.  Or is that just his shining personality coming through?)

Although this isn't our best pictures ever, it does show our little girl's night out.  We all got a mani or pedi and then we stayed out for some good ol' fashion girl talk.

Aren't we festive?

We decided on Thanksgiving day that instead of finding some Mexican restaurant, we were going to try and do an entire Thanksgiving dinner.  We rushed to the store and back and before you knew it we were all chopping, stirring, baking and cooking up the most delicious meal.  It was back to the basics but really terrific.  I'm glad we did it.

Now...Gina got a ton more pictures on a really nice camera, so I wanted to wait to post this until I got them.  However, I realized that if I didn't get a start on this now, it would be Christmas already.  That won't do.  We'll just have to update later.

That Monday, we were able to meet up with Mom and Dad at the Academy of Science in San Francisco.  I had never been there before and I really loved it.  Mom and Dad had brought the kids to see it last summer and so they were able to help show us around.

I never understand why the kids think that Robert is the fun parent...

Oh dear.

The tropical conservatory was pretty cool.  And warm.  :)

Emmett and Robert loved pointing out all of the butterflies.

Here are a few more that Alaina found.

Me and my guy.

Ethan loved the white alligator.  (crocodile?  I can never tell which is which.)

resting by the fish.

We had a little fun, and I'm sure we annoyed a few people, by the huge aquarium.  It's just a cool place to take silly pictures.

love.

We had a great day with Mom and Dad and I was personally really happy to have the chance to check out the academy.  I wish we had something like this closer to our house.

Thanksgiving

At the last minute, we decided to spend Thanksgiving in California.  We threw everyone in the car late in the afternoon on the Saturday before and drove through the night so that we could spend a day with Ron and his family.  We knew that we wouldn't get a chance later to see Ron since he had to work all week.  So, on Sunday we hung out for the afternoon and went for a walk.  Since we had our camera, we took some family photos for them.  This was my favorite one.

  We also go a ton of great individual pictures and fun pictures of the kids.  I'll let them share all those, but I did like this one.

In return, they snapped a couple pics for us.  We weren't planning on a picture, but we got one with everyone mostly smiling and it was good enough for our Christmas card...so...that was pretty awesome.

I wish that I hadn't been distracted in this other picture...cause look at sweet Jason's smile!  But, alas, something cute caught my eye...

While we were taking pictures of their family, the little boys were running around in the rain.  It was pretty darn cute.  We could hardly even see little Emmett in that giant umbrella.

Later that evening, Jonathan and Jennifer and their kids came over as well as Mom and Dad.  We had a great dinner and the kids spent the evening singing karaoke and dancing like maniacs to their favorite songs.  It was very amusing.  We barely got them to sit still for one second to get a picture of them. 

It was a race to get there, but I think everyone was happy that we were able to do it.

The first half of November came and went in a blur of carpooling, scouts, basketball practices and homework.  We had a few colds and Robert travelled a bit.  I'm trying really, really hard to remember anything significant, funny, sad or just, well, interesting.  And I got nothin'.  I did manage a few phone pictures that proved that time did, indeed, pass.  Here's what I found.

Emmett and I made an apple pie.  It was pretty awesome.  And tasty.

Here is a picture of Ethan with his basketball coach, Scott Mitchell.  He once played for the Golden State Warriors.  The kids loved him, however, he was commuting from San Diego for practices and it got to be too much.  They just hired a new coach who got malaria before the first practice.  Now there is a substitute coach who is still pretty great with the kids, so we'll see how that goes.

Here he is with the whole team.

Jason.  What a clown.

The big kids performed in a Fall Festival which included dancing and singing.  It was a clever production, especially considering the fact they were bringing in kids from k-12.

Emmett had a hard night.  Which meant that Robert also had a hard night.  Doesn't Emmett look like he owns that man?

And so it was that November passed us by.