November 2011

My mom graciously called me a "blog loser" so I'm making myself sit down at my computer and post what we did this last month. The first couple of weeks were same old, same old, but the last two weeks Adam had school off for Thanksgiving. It was nice to have him home for so long, even though he started having studying withdrawals since he had been doing school stuff pretty much non-stop for 10 weeks. We had a pretty laid back break, though. We bought season passes to the Phoenix Zoo- it was only $90 for our family, and we only have to use it 2 times for it to be worth what we spent because of the admission prices. It's kind of nice to have something like that so we will always have something to do, at least for the next year! So we spent a day at the zoo. We were really impressed with how well kept the living areas were for the animals, as well as how clean the animals were themselves. You know how the animals, especially the Safari animals, always look dusty and dirty? Well, they looked freshly bathed. The boys really enjoyed seeing all the different animals, especially the monkeys. They had an orangutan exhibit where one of them was trying to get a collapsed cardboard box through a small door. Nathan laughed and squealed with joy the whole time and just thought it was fun to watch. Then they also had a special exhibit that you walk through where the monkeys are free roaming. The monkeys were small, but they were not afraid of us at all. One walked right up to me and Nathan, and then there were several that used the railings along the path as monkey bars. It was really neat. The only complaint I had about the zoo is that there wasn't a ton of aquatic life and there were no seals, penguins, or polar bears, but then again, we are in Arizona. I guess it would be asking a little much for those exhibits, but they could build a large air conditioned indoor exhibit, right? Hahaha. One other thing that was cool is that while we were going through the amphibian exhibit, it was feeding time, so we got to see a gigantic, lazy toad eat his crickets. He just sat there and shot his tongue out at the bugs. Nathan thought that was pretty cool, too.

Do you like the random kid in the back?

Other than that, we went to the library several times and checked out movies to watch and just hung out and made treats and delicious food. Here the boys are sampling the homemade brownie batter of our new favorite brownie recipe:

We did go hiking at the White Tank Mountains on waterfall trail the Saturday before school started again. It was just under 2 miles round trip, and the boys loved being outside and picking up rocks. I thought it was really funny because right as we started our hike Nathan said, "I need a stick," so we found him one and he insisted on bending over as he was walking and dragging it on the path. Funny boy. At the end of the trail, there is a small cliff that is home to a waterfall during wetter seasons (hence the name of the trail), but when there is no running water, there are a lot of rocks to climb on. The boys were in heaven- finally they could climb without being told "No! Get down from there!"

Now Adam is back in school, Nathan keeps begging us to go trick-or-treating at Daddy's school, Caleb keeps throwing ornaments from the Christmas tree onto the floor, and I'm trying to keep up with housework, Christmas shopping, and everything else that comes with being a mom.