Houston Zoo

Marielle and I took a trip with our friends to the zoo while Ryan slaved the day away in the office. This is one of the major perks of being a stay-at-home mom, I can go to the zoo and I'm still doing my job. We went with Marielle's friends Reed and Lucy. Reed is three and was our party's most excited participant. Marielle and Lucy mainly just liked being out and about. We had perfect weather (yes, Houston can have pleasant weather!) and spent most of the day there. Here are some pictures of our fun outing.

Reed outside the reptile house looking scary!

Who knew babies could crawl right through fish tanks??

I think she liked her undersea adventure!

Marielle would only pet the goat with a brush in hand.

Bored already??



















Rocking out on the drum



















Here's Marielle leaving with her "other" family....

Llamas from Peru

My mom, dad and brother just went on a trip to Peru. As you might expect, they saw a lot of llamas. One picture turned out so great it honestly looks like something you would see in a email/spam/mass forward of cutesy animal pictures. So I thought I'd share the llama fun since not all of us get to go to Peru. :)

Sometimes even annoying habits can become endearing

When I was a kid I liked to carve hearts into the tops of freshly opened peanut butter jars. I got this great idea from a TV commercial where a kind and loving mother makes a heart in the peanut butter to show her children that even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich can say "I love you!" Perhaps some of you out there in blog-world remember the commercials too. Now, since my mom only bought the extra-extra-jumbo peanut butter canister at Costco (to be exact it would have been Price Club back then), this occasion did not happen often. My brothers thought my "quirk" was ridiculous would slash through my little heart with a butter knife upon discovery. But they could not discourage me. I started carving hearts into margarine tubs too, which by the way happened a lot more frequently since we went through butter a lot faster than peanut butter. I think I kept up my heart carving all the way through high school. I don't even really remember when I stopped. Now why I am telling this story? Because the funniest thing happened a week or so ago. I got a call from one of my brothers saying he just carved a heart into his peanut butter jar in my honor. I got a good laugh out of it and then that same afternoon I checked my email and found this picture:

It was from another brother and had the title, "GOOD MEMORIES." I thought it was kinda of amazing to have two brothers remember my funny little habit on the same day. So just as I titled this post I would like to say here's proof that sometimes even annoying habits can become endearing!

Happy Halloween from the cutest little butterfly you ever did see!

We had a great Halloween this year. Dressing up Marielle was the highlight for mom, and I think dad liked it too. We toyed with the idea of dressing in khakis and sporting butterfly nets to be butterfly catchers, but alas we couldn't find a butterfly net and gave up. Halloween is for the kids anyway right? Maybe next year we'll pull off the family theme costume.

We had four occasions to dress Marielle up: our neighborhood carnival, a ward trick-or-trunk, story time and Halloween night to say hello to our neighbors. She looked adorable in her little costume and we got a kick out of watching her walk around in her costume. By some streak of fate I had bought sandals at a garage sale over a year ago that matched her costume exactly. What luck! The other Halloween Miracle happened when the costume I sold on Craig's List finally arrived at it's destination across town six weeks after I shipped it. (Beware of US Mail I think they've got a few real life Newman's working for them!) Enjoy the pictures!

Can we go trick-or-treating yet??
At the Halloween Carnival with twin butterfly Annalee

At the trunk-or-treat

Happy Halloween!