A Mollie Shower and A Jolly Shower

My good friend Mollie is having a baby girl early next year so we got to shower her with love! It was good catching up with my Wilshire youth buddies. Our daughters have fun together too...and were a big help with opening presents!

My cousin Tracey is getting married in January and since most of us couldn't go on her Cancun Bachelorette Trip, we decided to have a Jolly Cousin bachelorette party of our own! We ate a delicious dinner at Taverna, heard live music at Rustic, then headed to Uptown for a very unique show...it was anything but a drag :) The next day was her bridal shower so we got to see Aunt Marsha and Baby Gwen (and we met my cousin Cole's new wife Jen):

The night of Tracey's bachelorette party coincided with Daniel's office party which he had to go to alone. I never got to see him in his tux but he took a picture for me. So dashing!!

It's Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas

We put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving, as per our tradition. It was fun decorating the new house, and we watched Elf, one of our favorite family Christmas movies, which really put us into the Christmas spirit! We even had lights put up this year (green and white, Go Bears!).

Also, Otto the Elf made his first appearance! He's been creative this year :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hosted our very first Thanksgiving at our new house and it was so much fun! My parents came from Florida, Jason and Kelly came from Colorado, and all the McCaslins came as well! It was a Jolly meal with all the trimmings. Kelly took some amazing professional-looking pictures that I stole from her camera :)

A few days after Thanksgiving we drove with Papi and Grammy to Hodges to see Great-Pa and Gamma!

Zoo Sleepover!

Kimberly and I got very brave and decided to take our Brownie troop to a sleepover at the zoo! With the help of three chaperone moms, we arrived at the zoo and took a nighttime tour where we saw a koala bear (actually awake which is super rare...our tour guide had worked there 7 years and had only seen him awake twice!), a bobcat, went to the reptile house, and the bug house. We had some other hands-on adventures and then after playing in the play area and eating s'mores it was time for bed! We slept in a habitat viewing center with no bathroom (we had to walk in the dark to one) but luckily no one had to go in the middle of the night. That morning after a little more fun we were ready to go home!