Saying Goodbye

We've had a fun week--doing some of the things we love, trying some new things, spending lots of time with cousins, and saying goodbye.

We toured a candy factory with Lauren and her sister-in-law. That's a lot of kids for 3 moms!

They gave us all free Tiffany's candy canes!

Ashley brought cupcakes to class and Paige and Michael got to come to the party, too!

Ashley and her sweet teacher.

I had the great idea of letting the kids play with our expired food storage before I threw it out. Well, maybe it wasn't such a great idea...

One Last Trip to the Zoo

Since we're moving 2 weeks from tomorrow, we've been trying to do all the fun things that we've loved doing here at least one more time. The weather was great earlier in the week, so we took one last zoo trip. We love the zoo and got to see some new things this time.

The giraffe eating my shirt while the nice British man took our picture (Heather, I thought about calling you--you could have seen us on the giraffe cam from here, but then I realized you'll be seeing a whole lot more of us really soon!):
Puppy and Pengie really enjoyed their first trip to the zoo, too.
There's quite a view!

We hadn't ever seen the tiger so close before--pretty amazing! (Also pretty amazing is Paige's favorite outfit with her favorite hot pink princess socks and her sneakers!) Grizzly bear feeding. He wasn't very ferocious, but he was pretty big.

"I'm supposed to touch this goat, mom?" "I don't care...you can if you want. It is the petting zoo area."

"Ok..fine."

New Years

We started the new year off with a bang! All of James' brothers and sisters and spouses (except Annie, Quinn, and Baby Belle, who were here for Christmas) and his parents stayed at our house! It was great to see everyone and really fun for all the cousins to play together. Here they all are-minus 6 month old Belle. Ashley at 6 1/2 is the oldest. In case you're wondering, they did not stay up until midnight. We celebrated New Years Eve at 7:00, with a wonderful fireworks show by Papa, put the kiddos to bed, had fondue and played games all night. Thanks, everyone, for coming! (and thanks to Em for the picture!)