Happy Thanksgiving!

Before

After

We had 5 guests over for dinner. (The women and children are pictured here.)

Heidi's Birthday

The birthday girl, off to school:

She got her birthday pencil in the office and the birthday bear sang to her:

Every Friday morning before school they have a dance party in the gym. Heidi really gets into it. Can you spot her in the black top / pink skirt?

Birthday lunch with friends:

We spent several hours at Mount Playmore (a big indoor playground) after school:

 When we got home Heidi found presents from our home teacher and another friend from the ward:

(She told our home teacher that she wanted an electric guitar.
I thought this one was pretty impressive; it's even got her name inscribed.)

Cake and ice cream:

Our Week (Nov 12-18)

The weather was really nice this week, so we spent a lot of time outside. We visited 5 different parks, including this one--that was expanded and reopened yesterday. This park is huge:

 Playing in the backyard:

Wobble Wednesday at school. (The kids walk/run on the track for about 20 minutes before school on Wednesdays. This week was turkey-themed because of Thanksgiving, and one of the teachers dressed up in a turkey costume):

 Friendship Feast at preschool (for Thanksgiving):

 At another park; they buried Heidi in the rocks:

(If you look really hard you can see Heidi's nose sticking out)

2nd Grade Sound Parade at school. The kids all had to create their own instruments.
Lizzie's is made out of PVC pipe and a funnel.

Our Week (Nov 5-11)

Preschool at a friend's house:

The Pfoundation Pfling at the school district's new football stadium:

The fiftieth day of school was this week. The teachers at school all dressed up like they were in the 50s, and Heidi's class had root beer floats:

The girls had a veterans' recognition at school for Veterans' Day, so we dug these up:

Halloween

(We went spur of the moment. The girls had worn their costumes to school that day, but the boys weren't in costume. Liz was Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter, and Heidi was the Wicked Witch of the West from Wizard of Oz.)

Owen and his preschool pals.

Heidi helped make our Halloween-themed dinner. (You can kind of see one of the monster smiles on the plate there.)

Trick or Treating.

School Pictures

Elizabeth, 2nd Grade

Heidi, 1st Grade

9th Anniversary

Yesterday we celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary. After we dropped the girls off at school, we went out to breakfast with the boys. Then we got a babysitter and spent a few hours downtown:

We checked out the newly reopened, six-story Faulkner Library (opened on October 28 after a $125 million renovation),

split a doughnut from the food truck Gourdough's, 

and shared a San Francisco Egg Cream Soda at Big Top Candy Shop.

Pinterest Fail

Earlier this week I tried to make these "easy" spider web cookies:

This is how they turned out:

 

I can't help but laugh every time I look at them. #PinterestFail