Our Pre-Christmas life

 cute picture taken by our neighbor of the little peanut

 Zanna receiving her soccer trophy and medal at our end-of-season party...her teammate's house was a Gorgeous historical home in Palo Alto

 We joined the Monterey Bay Aquarium and went to a "members only" night where we had the place to ourselves and loved learning more about the abalone, sea otters, starfish, penguins etc.

 we love this place!

 This is Mia's favorite sleeping friend, snail (very original, I know).  

At bedtime we cuddle with snail, say "night-night", sing a song and put her in bed.

We all LOVE snail.

 The Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day we went down to a local church to help prepare dinner for the homeless people in the area.  The kids and Dave snapped the beans and I chopped a million potatoes.    It was great to work together as a family.  The kids really wanted to see the homeless people in person--I guess I never realized that would be so intriguing to them 

James helping make a graham cracker crust for Thanksgiving dessert

Zanna painting "face cookies". Our traditional place setters for Turkey Day dinner

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Friday this year because Dave had to work on Thursday.  We had the Asay family and Joanne over to paint the cookies Thursday morning and it was great to see these artists at work

Adam and Mia are just 3 days apart and both sooooo delicious!

the kid table with the fun face cookies

these boys can eat!

the babes in bumbos

We had such a great time with these families and the food was AMAZING!  We had a dance party after dinner and the kids loved playing together. We are lucky to have great friends here to celebrate with!

Dave is such a sweet dad to this little girl and loves feeding her and really taking care of her in every way he can. I just love how cute and relaxed he looks here hangin' out with Mims and I am thankful for him!

Janet is a great friend and I am really sad that we will only get to play for another 6 months :(

This was probably one of the best nights of our lives so far! No, not because we got our own dipped cones at Dairy Queen, but because this was our celebration after Dave accepted the position in Pocatello and we now have a REAL job!  (We also went to dinner, but couldn't pass up the DQ afterwards :) 

I need to write more about Pokey and our plans, but for now we are just so happy and are looking forward to putting down some roots in Idaho!

James kept begging me to make a gingerbread house so we bought the Costco kit and had a great time putting it together Sunday morning before church

kind of a goofy picture of 3 goofy kids

Zanna making a mud-brick well at "Town of Bethlehem" celebration with a live nativity, live animals, scary Roman soldiers, wood whittling, grape mashing and all sorts of games and activities representative of the time of the birth of the savior...

it was an awesome night!

These were a couple of houses with a TON of lights and a show set to music thru the radio.  It was beautiful and they even had a "snow machine" that showered the kid in bubbles

Mia- 7 months

She says "Ha" (Hi) to people to get their attention or as just a friendly greeting and she LOVES to eat anything that isn't baby food. She gives kisses and hugs and is no where close to crawling.  She laughs at James the most and loves to pull Zanna's hair.  

We love her so much and that sweet face just  makes me smile and feel so thankful for her and our family.