Call of the Wild

On Thursday we headed to the Dallas Zoo and took MacKenzie along for extra fun. The weather was perfect, at about 70 degrees. We saw a load of animals, learned some facts, appeased children with snacks, took a monorail tour, rode the carousel, and just had fun! They have a great Savanna habitat where we saw elephants, giraffes, hogs, zebra, ostrich (yummy), lion and cheetah, among others. One of the highlights of the day was watching the kids feed the giraffes. We have never paid that much money for romaine lettuce in our lives until this day and we must say, it was totally worth it!

They actually had this elephant rump and poop next to the family restrooms! Peeee-U! After some lunch we went on the monorail tour and saw an okapi and some animals we would not have otherwise seen. One of the not-so-useful facts we learned about the rare okapi is that it's tongue can get up to 14 inches long and it can clean it's own ears with it. That little tidbit will be handy for dinner table conversation.

Taking the Gorilla Trail led us to some entertaining chimpanzees right at their feeding time.

We finished our adventure with a ride on a beautifully crafted carousel. Besides horses there was a myriad of animals from around the world and beautifully painted scenes of different animals in their habitats.

We all felt like this when we got to the car but only a few of us actually napped on the way home.

Checking Out the New Children's Aquarium

With Neal taking the week off, we decided to get out of the house and discover a little with the kids. We headed to the Dallas Children's Aquarium at Fair Park that has just been redone (it needed it, too). Lest we forget where we live, our state is always happy to remind us... Inside there were pools to touch creatures and plenty of, well, fish.

It was well done and the employees were great with the kids. We learned that an electric eel is not actually an eel but a knifefish and that a moray eel isn't an eel either but some other variety of fish. Rhys loved running around and splashing the water in the touching pools. When asked what she liked best about the aquarium, Sophie replied that she liked Dory (a Finding Nemo character) and the water.

Outside on Fair Park grounds we found this cool sculpture to walk on. That is Neal and Sophie on the bridge. You can almost see them!

And for something completely unrelated...our kids are enjoying their new towels they got for Christmas!

A Bit of a Medical Mess

On the 20th of Dec. Keri and Neal found out that her body scans came back with something questionable in the spine. That was a bit unnerving. We scheduled a biopsy for the 23rd and prayed that we would be comforted and have peace during our Christmas. Our Heavenly Father generously granted that. We knew despite the results, we were enjoying Christmastime with family and were not emotionally upset during that time.

The biopsy involved sedation while they scanned a targeted area of my spine (T4 vertebrae), carefully placed a needle into the marrow and sucked out some cells for study. It was a painless procedure. Keri only felt pressure. And we luckily had a great supply of pain killers from this crazy year to use after the surgery. The surgeon said there was approximately a 50/50 chance of fracture doing this type of biopsy but we ended up on the safe side.

After waiting through Christmas, we finally went in for the results on Dec. 27th and found out that it was not cancer! Yippee! It was some sort of abnormality from possible trauma to that area. Keri could not remember any specific problems with that area of her back so we are glad we played it safe and got the information we needed.

If you are family or close friends reading this and wondering why we did not tell you, it is because we did not have all the information we needed, we did not want to upset anyone over Christmas, and we did not want to think too much about it ourselves. Instead we had a great Christmas, our family and friends did too, and we found out later that it was nothing.

Although we don't enjoy going through things like this, we know it will probably not be the last time, and we had the amazing experience of feeling our Heavenly Father's love for us and His peace as we went through it. It was sort of neat that way. However, if Christmas 2011 doesn't have medical events in store, we will not be bummed about that at all.

Christmas Eve and Day

Christmas Eve was pretty great. Neal came home at lunch and "worked from home" until 3:00. Keri got and Rhys got an afternoon nap. And Opa and Oma showed up at dinner with a Honey-Baked ham and yummy sides.

After dinner, we started making cookies for the family and Santa. It was a half homemade/half store bought undertaking. All the girls helped.

The boys talked cameras and techy language.

After the cookies were set out on racks to cool, we opened a few presents and played with toys.

Then we finished up the melted snowman cookies (got the idea here). We set one out for Santa and some carrots on the back porch for his reindeer.

It was starting to get late for the kids so we used The Nativity, a short 5-minute video and our nativity set to tell the story of Jesus' birth. We love this because it's short, hands on, and visual and shares the true spirit of Christmas. With the kids in bed, Neal and Keri got to chat a little more with Rudy and Becky before calling it a night.

Cute couples!

Christmas morning started later than we expected which was perfectly fine with Neal and Keri. The kids got up at 7:45 instead of the usual 7:00. Despite the increase of presents under the tree, Sophie was not satisfied that Santa had come until she saw that the reindeer had eaten their carrots and Santa had eaten his cookie.

Cheesy pose with gift pictures! We take them every year!

Following gift opening, we prepared and ate a yummy breakfast of cinnamon french toast, sausage, and fruit salad with a dollop of natural yogurt--which Rhys sported as a Santa beard and mustache!We spent the day watching movies and playing with toys. When evening came, we didn't feel like making dinner so we hit the drive thru at Jack in the Box and then headed to see the Christmas lights in a particular neighborhood.

We had a great Christmas and hope you did too! Merry Christmas!