Thanksgiving

So I took a gazillion pictures over Thanksgiving and meant to do a really cool post about all the fun things we did (as we always have gobs of fun), but by now I've forgotten most of it, I'm sure. Oh well.

Amie drove down with us...and actually drove some of the way! I think we decided to do it in one long haul and not stop for anything more than pitstops. Pretty sure we went for the whole week, from Saturday to Saturday. We did, however, go to this great sandwich shop in Bend. Man was it tasty!

Paul, the ever young at heart, decided to build Zachary a house. It even had a moving door. they also made a paint brush and saw from a few scraps of cardboard. And then there was "oudio." We have no idea what oudio was, but Zach kept trying to tell us about it. We still have no idea, months later. We thought maybe it was a tool, maybe it was gutters or shingles on the roof. Jason at one point took Z outside so he could show him oudio on the neighbor's house, but when we asked Z if it was whatever we thought, he always said no. No idea. But for Christmas, when we sent Paul and Maggie their gifts, Z wanted to put a piece of oudio in there for them :).

Z working on the house. Not sure if that was oudio or not.

We decided to go bowling one night (minus Luke and Tiffany), and of course Z got to have some fun, too. We took turns going up with him and helping him roll the ball. I think he enjoyed doing the same this as us.

If one actually managed to push it straight, several pins would fall! Which is pretty surprising considering the speed (or lack thereof) that the ball had upon impact.



Paul being...Paul :).

I think this is actually a pretty good pic of some of our crew :).

Most people like poker. I don't, really, because I get to competitive and start getting upset when I start sucking (which inevitably happens). But they had a good time.

Okay, so I forget what this stuff is called, but it's an Asian paste that basically just tastes like salt and soy sauce, with a little more salt. Luke is always into some new random thing. But he knows how much I love salt (ha!) so he kept coaxing me to try it. So I finally took a bite. He wanted the camera to take a picture of my "this is so nasty" face, but he didn't get it. The stuff wasn't super awful, just really salty. This is my getting ready face.

And this is all the funky face Luke got for his effort.

But then, of course, we all had to try it as our curiosity was peaked. Amie didn't think it was great at all...

But it was Maggie who delivered on the nasty face picture! She said it was so awful. Had to have a chaser, if I remember correctly :).

So while Zach had been afraid of the helicopter in the past, he remembered it and got a big kick out of it. He especially liked it when it landed not so delicately and bounced a little. Which happened more often than not when he was actually piloting it :).

Amie doesn't look quite as amused :).

More balloon animals!! We had gobs and gobs of them. They are so much fun! And I guess Maggie had then forever (literally months) after we left. Z doesn't help so much with making them...not sure what his goal was here with the cup.

When one takes a nap in the middle of the floor, one subjects themself to the rest of the crowd that's awake. Including the two year old. Z wanted to cover him up :).

Okay, so when we get together for Thanksgiving (or any time, really), we have lots of good food. We always have chex mix, fresh fruit, pancakes, and this year Luke and Tiffany brought some of their yummy jam (really yummy on the pancakes). We have pies and this year I made cookies and a really yummy pumpkin roll. But for Paul, there was just something missing. And that something was cake. Cheap cake. Must be cheap cake, with the cheap frosting. For Paul, there is no other kind of cake worth desiring. So one day they all went to the store to get main meal fixings and he came home with a piece of cake. I guess he wanted to get a bigger one, but Maggie talked him out of it - we really were going to have lots of desserts. He also bought two tubes of icing, because the piece itself didn't have enough (I believe it was even a corner). Anyway, here are some pictures of Paul with his cake.

Here's Paul in the decorating phase. I really thought we had a finished product picture, but I guess not. He even let Zach and I have a bite or two!! I think it was a big sacrifice :).

So Paul worked on his cake and Tiffany got to play with the Tag. Though it hadn't been explained to her how it works, so she was pretty impressed.

And then tried using it on the strawberry :). Luke finally told her that it reads the code on the special paper, nothing else.

Tiffany and Maggie in the kitchen. Good thing their kitchen is big, because we have a lot of cooking that we do. Everybody usually has a job or two to do.

Luke doing...I don't know - checking something out?

So we made a different type of stuffing (most of us don't like it from the bird), and here we are trying to see if it's actually done or not.

We had to taste it to be sure :).

I don't know who managed to take these pictures, but here are our pondering faces...


We must have been thinking really hard - I don't think any of those were posed. And our heap of bananas in the background. Yeah for bananas! We went through so many.

I call this Paul's monkey face. I always start laughing when I go through these pics :).

Lobster Paul getting ready to mash the potatoes.

I have no idea, but it cracks me up!

As does this - after Paul saw this he said something to the effect that our faces couldn't be more different.

Jason holding down the chair that is next to what remains of the chex mix. Yum!

Here's Paul and I with Dad. So Dad had been having some problems and had finally gone into the doctor, I dunno, beginning of November? After running some tests, they decided that he needed to have surgery on his digestive system. But it needed to be done ASAP so he was actually in the hospital when we left to come down to California. The doctor had been straight with Dad, and after quite a bit of pressure from Dad (more test results weren't back yet), had said that everything he saw and knew pointed to cancer in somewhat of a more developed stage. Dad had insisted that we go down to CA without him, so we visited before we left and talked to him routinely. Thankfully, several days after left, the test results came back that it was not, in fact, cancer. The doctor (and from what Dad said the support staff, as well) was pretty surprised at the results. So Dad felt much better and I think was home by Thanksgiving Day. A bummer he wasn't able to be with us, but life doesn't always go as we plan.

Paul's duty of cutting up the bird.

Amie being diligent to take more pictures :).

Food time!

And most of us at the table.

I believe Zachary's exact word was "good!!" after tasting the sparkling cider.

So he got a little more :).

And after a nice, relaxing meal, one must always play something stressful...well, to some people :). Jason actually hates pictionary, and as cranium has a pictionary-esk element, he sat that one out. Paul and Maggie, for some reason, kept landing on the acting/singing category. It was just hilarious because...they just weren't very good at it :).

We got our fair share of club craniums, and Amie and I had our fair share of setbacks, too :).

But it was pretty fun.

I was explaining that if I had the clue Luke did (Rocky or Bullwinkle, whichever is the moose) I would have done moose antlers.

We had one club cranium that was acting that Jason took a video of. I can't even remember what it was right now, but I believe it was Maggie that started undoing her pants as part of the clue. We had a pretty good laugh when we found out it was on video :)

Here's Z eating his breakfast. He really is a very good boy.

One day we went to go feed the ducks at Paul and Maggie's old apartment complex (aparently you really aren't supposed to do that, but everyone does). They weren't very timid at all!


The boys kept trying to see if one would take bread from their hand. Sure enough, there were a few ducks who were willing.

'Course there was bird poo everywhere. Paul was playing defense for me :).

And what trip would be complete without a visit to the zoo? I just love the zoo, and it really is a shame there's not one closer. I know this is Ocean's 11-esk, but for some reason I like shots like these from behind.

Ye-gads, people, there's a reason we have digital cameras! We can instantaneously look and decide if another picture is necessary. I guess we forgot, and this is the only one of the three of us in front of the giraffes. They had a whole heard there - I think eight or nine. The baby had gotten much bigger. While we were standing there, a child fell though a bench and smacked their head on the concrete curb. Scared the crap out of me (the sound did), and though we all looked I'm not sure we saw blood or anything. But we heard some serious screaming. Poor kid! It sounded like it could have been very serious.


Looking at the alligator/crocodile (I know there's a difference, but I don't try very hard to remember). Though the water was murky, he was actually just a few feet from the wall.



Checking out the bunnies.

I love this pic! They were watching the monkeys (again, I know there's a difference, but I don't really care. Some sort of monkey creature). They had little guys that were jumping all over; that was pretty fun to watch. The big guys were pretty agitated, for some reason. Loud, obnoxious people don't really help.


The gibbon. It's always fun to watch him swing around.

Train ride! They were setting up lights everywhere for Christmas, which would have been really cool to see.




This would have been a really cool pic if I hadn't cut Amie out of it :(. But Paul kept looking back and surprising Zach - he would just scream and laugh. He loved it.

And then, as we're ready to go, the boy wants to go on the carousel. And the other boy is talked into it easily :) So Amie joined them. I think they actually went for two rides.

That way!

Screw weight limits (or age limits). Paul's not afraid to act like a kid. It's pretty refreshing, actually.

And a decent posed shot.

So those are the highlights to our trip. I'm sure we did way more that I'm forgetting as we always have a blast. We usually always roast marshmallows and go for hikes, spy wildlife, and of course hit In-N-Out. Just a really fun time. We did a fair amount of playing DDR, I'm sure, as Maggie got a big bad hard pad to play with. We stayed up one night fairly late trying to burn some of the calories off :). All that to say I really like my family, and we have a pretty good time together. Not too often people can say that :).