Good food. Great friends.

This Thanksgiving was definitely a new experience for us. For the first time, we didn't have family to share it with, or our adoptive family, aka Little Dude's Godparents. But thanks to missing a Church breakfast our Marriage Encounter community was running, and getting some sympathy for the back I had just wrenched, other friends called and offered for us to join them.

We're not talking close friends. My wife and I went to the same school as B. We shared similar careers with him as well, except we quit about 1/4 of the way through. OK, we decided our family was more important. (Very few regrets there) At one point, B cost my company a significant amount of lost work (Gotta love government contracting). Oh, and their daughter has been our babysitter a couple of times. So really not a lot in common. :)

It was great. We got to try Thanksgiving brined turkey as well as smoked turkey for the first time. And, we got to try some of Pioneer Woman's incredible sweet potatoes. They really can be dessert as well as a side dish. I'm seriously considering making an entire Costco bag of sweet potatoes, instead of just a third, for Christmas with my family.

Is it a sin to enjoy sweet potatoes like this? Now if only our kids would eat them. Then again, that just means more for us!

Life moves pretty fast....

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
- Ferris Bueller

The last few weeks have been pretty busy, and full of new stuff for the family.

1. Disneyland. Our kids had never been. We got there about 10am, and left just shy of midnight. Everybody had a blast! Favorite ride? Splash mountain!



2. Teeth. Muscle Man lost two teeth in short order. One of them came out while he was sleeping and Monkey Boy found it for him on the carpet. Thank goodness the Lizard Wife was able to make a Tooth Fairy Pillow in time!

3. Bicycles. I convinced Muscle Man to try his bike without training wheels. He did OK the handful of times we did it during a picnic/BBQ. The next day I took all four kids to a local school with a nice open area. I pushed MM once to get him started and he took off.






I really have to figure out how to get better quality of the cell phone. The good news is the Lizard Wife got some better video with her camera in our back yard.

Oh...MM also upgraded to a 16" bike. It's a reach, but I'm guessing the growth spurt he started this week will make it easier!