Thanksgiving

The Monday before Thanksgiving, Annie and I took a cookie decorating class at MCC.

While we were there we learned all about using frosting bags and tips to make the cutest decorated sugar cookies.

Annie did such a good job on her cookies. They all looked adorable and delicious!

She was really proud of her work and learned all about the best frosting and cookie recipes.

Later that week a few days before Thanksgiving, we took some 3 month pictures of Calvin. 

Here he is loving on his elephant.

Gabe's about 4 months in this picture but it was a pretty close comparison. 

I don't think they look much alike but are both pretty cute. 

Around this time, Gabe slept every night with his robot backpack full of his rescue bots. This boy was in love with rescue bots. He slept with them so they would "protect him" at night from scary things.

We went to Austin to spend Thanksgiving with Amanda and her family. As we packed our bags, Gabe made sure his rescue bots made it inside. 

Annie had so much fun decorating cookies, we decided to take some to the Porters so all the kids could take turns decorating.

Gabe helped cut out the cookies and baked them with me and was very proud of his work. 

We decided to make turkeys, leaves, pilgrim hats, pumpkins and acorns for our cookie choices.

  

The parents helped the kids do some decorating. Notice the boys with their rescue bots. Like I said, OBSESSED. 

Each kid got several cookies and Annie showed them all the best decorating tips and tricks so they could do a good job.

Sprinkles are essentially for decorating sugar cookies.

The next morning we had some yummy breakfast before prepping our big Thanksgiving dinner and also before going to see Big Hero 6 with our family at the movie. We didn't know what to expect but it was a great movie. 

Rachelle, Brandon and Pierce came to have dinner with us too! It was so nice to have friends there. It made dinner extra fun and made our house feel full.

Cal and I unintentionally matched for Thanksgiving dinner. That night we went to one of Amanda's friend's house for dessert. I made pecan bars that were a little over done but AMAZINGLY good.

The next morning Annie had her traditional turkey leg for breakfast and then we headed to a parade in downtown Austin. The weather was absolutely perfect. 

Gabe sat right by the ribbon keeping people off the streets and loved all of the floats.

There were star wars characters, a pretty good assembly of them.

Gabe's favorite was curious George.

The weather was perfect that day! It was so much fun to be together as a family and enjoy the parade.

Gabe thought the big polar bear was pretty cool.

Annie helped with Calvin who was a dream the whole time. Easiest baby. He loves being outside and with his family. 

It was such a fun weekend. We are so lucky to have family that lives near by!!

San Antonio Zoo 11.7.14

After finals we decided to take a little day trip so we could all spend some time together. Annie also had been begging to see the San Antonio temple and do baptisms there so we decided to go for the day down there. First stop was the San Antonio Zoo.

With our Waco membership we get 50% off at several zoos around the U.S. and San Antonio was one of them. As soon as we walked in there was a huge flamingo cage.

There were also lemurs and bears. When we were standing next to the lemur exhibit a mom told her kid, "Look at the monkeys" and we literally had to cover Gabe's mouth as he tried to correct her, "Those aren't monkeys, those are LEMURS!"

Then we headed over to the Komodo Drangons. The zoo was super nice and well manicured. All of the exhibits were fun to see. 

The zoo had several special exhibits that you could pay a little extra to see. One of them is a butterfly  green house full of butterflies you can touch and watch. Annie loved it inside but Gabe was a little weirded out by them flying around.

There was a huge monkey exhibit and we watched them for a good amount of time. Gabe was rather intrigued. They were fed while we were there so that was fun to watch them eat their lettuce and kale. 

Probably the coolest animal we saw all day were these huge hippos. They were SO cool. There were two of them and they kept doing circles in the cage through the water. We watched them for a really long time and took lots of pictures. 

Devin and I got a picture together. Devin was busy calling the temple to make sure we got a spot for baptisms and checking on initiatory times for himself. Calvin needed a little snack break too.

 Gabe was so enamored with the hippo it was what he wanted to ride on the carousel as well. 

Towards the back of the zoo was a petting zoo with pigs and goats. It was so fun to play in there. All of the animals loved Annie and Gabe had a great time brushing them. 

Here's Annie with goat Riley. We had to get a picture. 

Finally the last place we went was the Lorikeet enclosure. It was AMAZING. We bought some nectar and they just lined up for Gabe to feed them. He was a little trepedatious at first but then saw Devin wooing the birds so he took a turn for himself too. Annie was terrified. Annie does NOT like birds. 

Finally here is Annie and I at the San Antonio temple post zoo. We had a randome guy take our picture and got this emailed to us the next day. 

We also took a night picture of the temple.

On the way home we stopped at Buc-ees. Biggest gas station in Texas. It was pretty cool. We didn't get to spend too much time there but now we can say that we've been!

Remember the random guy who took our picture? He also sent us these! I was dying of laughter. He specializes in photo shop and wanted to show me his skill in case I ever needed "some work done".