We have been doing some short bike rides on Sunday mornings to help the kids expend some energy before church at 1 pm. We go to 9 am church in January, which will be nice and challenging at the same time. :)
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Ben and I took some rides together too, but this picture is from one of his rides along the coast near San Diego. It looks like these guys are riding into heaven.
Jilly turned 8, and she wanted to have a party with some close friends. We did a treasure hunt for the ingredients to their brownie ice cream sundaes. It was probably the shortest treasure hunt ever, they ran full bore from one treasure site to another. I was hoping no one tripped, and no one did
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Jillian is a ravenous sundae beastie. They all enjoyed their party.
We decided to baptize Jilly the weekend before Thanksgiving and were lucky enough to have both sets of grandparents travel to California for the occasion. We had Grandma and Grandpa Gibbons in town for most of the week before Jilly's baptism at our house, and Grandma and Grandpa Cluff were in the area too, staying at a local hotel while Grandpa Cluff had had a work conference to attend.
We took one Friday off of the kid's school and visited the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum here in Orange County with the grandparents. It was pretty cool, and we all agreed it was a part of history that we weren't too familiar with and learned a lot. These statues of prominent world leaders during President Nixon's term were fun to pose with.
Family shot!
Jillian's baptismal service was a wonderful and spiritual event. It also happened to be Grandpa Gibbons' birthday, so we ate at In n Out for dinner, and hit Bruxie (dessert waffles!) for dessert. The kids opted for ice cream from Wisconsin, which was the creamiest ice cream I have ever tasted.
My cousin Kira and her little boy came from the south bay to party with us.
The next day Grandma and Grandpa Gibbons took off to finish their road tour of the western US, and we spent the rest of the week with Grandma and Grandpa Cluff. Grandma and I went to Beverly Hills one day, Ben went to have some bike fun with Uncle Dan and Grandpa, and we all went and saw Big Hero 6 at the movie theater. Thanksgiving dinner was at Uncle Dan's house and it was yummy as usual, with more pie than needed.
The day after Thanksgiving we skipped Black Friday shopping and hit the beach instead. It was a beautiful day for it, and just in time too, because the next week "winter" (or fall?) finally arrived in SoCal and it started raining.
