Thanksgiving in San Antonio

We spent Thanksgiving in San Antonio, which is only about 1 1/2 hours south of Austin. We had a really nice weekend, with just our own little family (do we qualify as little anymore?), and it was fun to have kind of a non-traditional Thanksgiving for a change.

PART ONE: THE ZOO

We drove down on Thursday morning and spent most of the day at the San Antonio zoo. Henry had never been to a zoo, so it was really fun to see his excitement when he saw all the big animals (he loves animals, but mostly thinks they exist only in books).

We were all impressed by the big grizzly bear:

It kept walking around and doing little poses for us:

While we were walking through the zoo, an older gentleman stopped me and offered to take a picture of our family.  I gladly said yes (we rarely get pictures of us all together), but got a little worried when I went to hand over my camera and noticed how badly his hands were shaking.  I felt bad, because as I looped the camera strap around his hand (there is no way he could have held on otherwise), he told me he used to be a professional photographer.  He tried his best to keep the camera still, and this is what we ended up with:

Henry's yelling "ella! ella! ella!" in this picture:

Chillin' on the komodo dragon:

My five little kiddos. I'm so thankful for these guys!

More fun at the zoo:

One of the highlights of the zoo was the little petting area where they had goats for the kids to pet and brush.  Henry was so funny - it turns out that he is terrified of goats.  He loved the idea of them, and walked around growling and flexing (he flexes every muscle in his body when he gets super excited), but he would freak out if any of them got close to him, and he refused to brush them.

Here's Oliver, Rachel, and Lizza calmly brushing their goats:

And Henry freaking out:

PART TWO: THE HOTEL

After the zoo, we headed straight to our hotel.  We ate an early Thanksgiving dinner, right in our hotel restaurant.  It was so nice to not have to do any cooking or cleaning!  They even had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner on the menu (turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, etc.), although Oliver was the only one who chose to order it. 

The kids absolutely loved our hotel.  We spent a lot of time just hanging out, swimming, and playing "the hotel game".  This was a game that involved Daniel and the kids dividing up into teams and then trying to find/catch the other team (but with no running or yelling, of course).  The hotel was set up perfectly for it - there was a huge open atrium in the middle with 4 glass elevators, so you could see people going up and down on the elevators.  I think the hotel game might have been the highlight of the trip for the kids.  That and the breakfast - there was a big continental breakfast that they also loved.  The first morning they were slightly overwhelmed by all the choices, but by Saturday morning they were pros, and knew exactly what they wanted. 

PART THREE:  DOWNTOWN SAN ANTONIO

On Friday we drove into downtown to see the Alamo and the Riverwalk.  The weather was great, and we had a good time just walking around. 

The four oldest at the Alamo:

Our family in front of the Alamo:

Enjoying all the "day after Thanksgiving" festivities.  They couldn't believe it was already being decorated for Christmas:

Posing along the Riverwalk:

We stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant along the river:

Daniel entertaining the kids as we walked along.  He always comes up with awesome stories to tell them:

PART FOUR:  FOOTBALL

One of the reasons why we stayed in San Antonio is that Oliver's flag football team (which Daniel coaches) made it to the State Quarter-finals, and their game was in San Antonio on Saturday.

We brought along all our football game stuff, and after we checked out of our hotel, we headed over to the game. 

Henry has been to enough football games this year to know how the system works - he just sits in his stroller the whole time and entertains himself with books and toys so I can watch/video-tape the games.  He stays happy as long as I keep a steady supply of snacks/treats coming. 

Rachel and Elizabeth had a great time playing and occasionally cheering for Ollie.

They didn't win, but Oliver had a great season, and we're so proud of him.  Next year he'll be in tackle football, like Tristan.  Yikes!

After his game was over we headed back to Austin, and got home just in time for the BYU/Utah game. 

It was a great Thanksgiving weekend. 

History in the making/Disrespecting Houston: Funny Ollie Quotes

Last week we mentioned to the kids that Daniel was going to be speaking in church on Sunday.  They were pretty excited when they heard the news, but I didn't realize just how big of a deal it was to them until Saturday night.  We were sitting around eating dinner, and out of the blue Oliver said, "You know, I think tomorrow is going to be a really historic day for Dad!" 

Daniel and I were laughing so hard.  I don't even know how my 7-year old knows how to say things like "really historic day".  The funniest part was that Ollie was kind of right - Daniel's never given a talk in our ward, and he even wore a tie, which he never does.  It was a historic day, indeed. 

I found some other quotes from Ollie that I had written down on a little scrap of paper during the summer, but never got around to posting:

1)  Oliver loves maps and anything to do with geography.  He is always studying the map of the United States that we have on our kitchen table and looking for cities with funny names (his favorite is Truth or Consequences, in New Mexico).  Anyway, once after looking at the map for awhile, he asked me, "Is Houston a big city?"  I told him that it is, and he gave me a really surprised look and exclaimed, "Oh!  I did not realize that; I'll treat it with a little more respect from now on." 

Haha!  I honestly had no idea he had been disrespecting Houston in his mind. 

2)  Once when we were walking to the pool to go swimming, Oliver had taken off his shoes (they were hurting his feet) and was walking barefoot.  The ground was pretty hot, and he complained to me that his feet were getting burned.  He then paused, gave me a funny look, and said, "Well, I guess that's just what life is all about - getting burned!" 

Where does he hear this stuff? 

3) "Wouldn't life just be sooo much better if you had the force?"

October pictures

I always like to post some of the extra pictures from each month that weren't really worthy of a post all by themselves.

Here are Rachel, Lizza, and Henry at Crowe's Nest farm (a fun place to go and see farm animals).  We got to see a cow being milked, and Henry about died with excitement.  I guess this outing could have qualified for its own blog post, except most of my pictures turned out like this (I have awesome photography skills!):

They also had some wild and exotic animals there, like ostriches!  We went on a little hayride behind a tractor, and stopped to check them out.  There was a little baby ostrich that was so cute.  I guess the dad ostriches are the responsible caretakers of the bunch - at one point all the grown-up ostriches took off running really fast across the field, and the baby was trying hard to follow them, but got a little lost and was left way behind.  The dad noticed and went back to find the little guy, and then we all cheered as they came running up together.  It was very funny to watch:

Henry is really lucky to have a lot of high-end toys.  Here he is with one of his favorites, called, "Try to stick the little popsicle sticks through the slot in the cashew can lid!"   What fun!

Oliver catches some sort of creature pretty much every day as he walks home from school.  Here he is with a little teeny frog (on top of a penny, which he also found on the way home):

He wanted a picture of both the frog and the penny, so we could see just how little it really was:

Pancakes - a Saturday morning favorite:

Lizza loves breaking hers up into little tiny pieces:

Henry noticed that none of the other kids were having plain pancakes, so I let him try dipping his in grape syrup.  He was thrilled with the idea, and started out with such careful little dips, I really thought he'd make it through with no mess:

Haha!:

Tristan and Oliver always have grand after-school projects that they come up with.  One of Tristan's was to make Rachel a "Super-girl" costume, completely out of cardstock:

She even had a jet-pack on back:

Henry loves helping me vacuum.  He feels he works better with a toilet seat around his neck:

What is it with my kids and toilet seats? (flashback picture, July 2007):

Me and the kids on my 29th birthday.  I decided to skip the cake, and made myself a key lime pie:

King Henry with his two loves - a book and a dog:

He is all about books these days:

Rachel and Lizza playing the Memory game.  I've started playing it with them in the evenings when the boys are gone with Daniel at football practice, and it's become something they really look forward to.  Lizza caught on a little too quickly, and can now beat all of us (seriously):

Rachel's Motivation to Have Kids

Rachel always tells me she wants to be four things when she grows up: "an artist (very likely), a ballerina (doubtful), a bike rider (she still has training wheels), and, of course, a mom."

She loves pretending to be a mom. She and Lizza are always playing what they call "the family game", in which they pretend to be all sorts of different people in different families. Rachel usually ends up getting to be the mom.

Anyway, yesterday they were having a discussion about kids. Elizabeth had gotten the wild idea that when she's a mom, she's not going to have any kids, and Rachel was getting all annoyed ("Lizza, that's not even possible! Tell her, Mom!") Rachel then assured me that she definitely wants to have kids when she's a mom. I asked her why. I'm not really sure how I expected her to answer, but it was not this:

Rachel: Well, I want to have kids for two reasons. One, if I don't have any kids, there won't be any reason to stay home all day. And two, I don't want holidays to just be dumb.

Me: What?! What do you mean? Why would holidays be dumb without kids? (Yes, I was ignoring her first reason. And also ignoring that she said "dumb", a word not usually allowed.)

Rachel (rolling her eyes at me as she pointed out the obvious): Are you serious, Mom? Think about it - Halloween would be sooo dumb! Do you think I just want to walk around all by myself? How will I go trick-or-treating?! I need kids for that!

Silly me - I guess I have been taking my kids for granted. And Elizabeth better start re-thinking her mom-with-no-kids plan, or she won't be getting much candy when Halloween comes around.

I really do think Rachel will be a good mom, though. She is very good at taking care of people. She always helps me with Henry, and when Elizabeth got her shots and her legs were really sore, Rachel carried her around the whole day.



Awhile ago she got some hand-me-down shoes that were way too big for her, but she absolutely adored them because 1) they had high heels, and 2) they passed the "click, click, click" test on the tile floor. I put them in her dress-up box instead of out in the garage with the too-big clothes.

Somehow they became her go-to "mom" shoes, and she wore them whenever she was playing the "family game":

I love the hand on hip in this one:


Only a real mom can pull off that whole swimsuit/high heels look so well:


In her mind, the mom shoes make any outfit better:


Whispering some sort of mom advice to her "little one":


??


She does okay without the shoes, too:

The proud mother of triplets:


And my personal favorites - just some busy moms talking on their cell-phones while pushing their babies around (and wearing dishcloths for aprons):

I doubt these poor moms even have time for trick-or-treating!