So Thankful

My Picasa album is officially full; I am therefore importing photos into my blog from a Picasa album I created with another Google account. It's much more time consuming, but I'm a cheapo and don't want to purchase extra space. Formatting may be weird, so bear with me. Anyway.....THANKSGIVING! We had so much fun spending time with our family down in SoCal. One of the first things we did was visit the Wildlife Learning Center in Sylmar. My parents have lived in the San Fernando Valley for years, and somehow none of us seemed to know that this mini zoo existed until recently. It was fun for the kids, especially since there was a parrot at the entrance who greeted us with a "hello" (you can imagine how thrilled Rose was). BTW, I mentioned this on Facebook, but within the past month or so we've seen two parrots just chillin' with their owners out in public. There was a woman at Sprouts who had a cockatoo on her shoulder and a guy near Trader Joe's with a macaw. What the heck? Rose was pretty much speechless. Another interesting thing about this Wildlife Learning Center: it was surrounded by olive trees. Olives were EVERYWHERE. I don't even think I had seen an olive tree before. I wanted to partake, but was informed that olives are basically inedible until cured. Silly me.

Then we went to this tortilleria that my foodie dad raved about. It was indeed yummy:

Closer shot of the yumminess:

P.S. That handsome young man in the first pic is Jeff, Megan's new FIANCE!

Yes, he proposed! Not at the tortilleria, even though that would have been awesome and romantic. One night they went on a date and stopped at the L.A. temple...that's where the proposal took place.

So that was another highlight of Thanksgiving: meeting Jeff and learning that he will soon become a part of our family.

Now here are some images from Thanksgiving Day:

Grandpa Craig making his traditional clam dip

I got the drumstick!

Jasmine and Grandma Ellery couldn't keep their eyes off each other.

Aunt Ana has the magic touch for getting babies to sleep.

Simon jammed on Grandpa's keyboard.

On Friday we went to Santa Monica pier.

Instead of riding on the legit carousel, the kids chose to ride this mini coin-operated thing. My wallet was okay with that:

Sevak even snuck in a little go-around before some man pointed to the "For Kids Only" sign:

Okay, I'm tired of trying to get fonts and font sizes to display properly, so here are some more beachy pics without captions:

And here's Jasmine eating some lahmajun. A true Armenian:

P.S. She is starting to get her two top teeth, and she is crawling, army style. She also pulled herself up to a standing position on the couch! BIG GIRL.

Here's a shot of Rose trimming the tree:

At the end there was a preponderance of ornaments and garland on the bottom of the tree. Precious.

IKEA:

Rose and Simon got to go to "Smaland," the babysitting area. Sevak and I took advantage of that by doing a little Christmas shopping. Then we had meatballs at the restaurant. Good times.

Some family shots:

Paige was there in spirit, as evidenced by her hovering head.

We also saw my soul sister Swati, who came up for a visit. Why oh why did we not take a picture, Swati?? 

Anyway, it was just a grand time. I'm so thankful for friends and family, and so grateful that we get to make these memories.