Mele Kalikimaka!

I can't believe how fast November has gone!

We celebrated my birthday a few weeks ago. My cute family was so much fun! One of the more unique presents I got was food--Dole Whip Mix (Warning! Disneyland tangent coming!). For those of you who don't know what this is, I'm very sorry. I know two places in the world where you can find this fantastic substance: Hawaii and Disney Parks. Seriously, it's the best. It's pineapple ice cream, but it's not really ice cream. It's so much better. The best way to have it is at the Tiki Room at Disneyland, drenched in pineapple juice to make a float. Mmmmm!

So, in an effort to enjoy our Dole Whip authentically we used some wedding gift cards we still had to get our own little soft serve at home machine. It's pretty dang cute. Being an engineer I'm not one to jump on the instructions to put something together, so I missed the part in the book where it said to chill the liquid before putting it in the ice cream maker. Alright, fine. So we had Dole Whip slushies the first time. They still tasted amazing!

The second time around we did better--I'm grudgingly giving the instructions the credit here. Oh well. See for yourself!


Needless to say, I was a pretty happy camper. The best part is that the bag of mix is huge! :)

B and I spent the weekend house/babysitting for his brother's three cute girls. We had a great time going to the zoo, although the night was a little rougher than we would have hoped for! I'm sure the people at the zoo thought we were crazy with three kids, but it was fun. Abby really wanted to see the penguins.


Kate and Ella enjoyed the crazy ride that is their Uncle B behind the wheel of a stroller! Ella pointed and waved at all the animals, it was so cute!

The downside of that weekend was that I got sick afterwards and missed out on a wine-and-dine trip to California for a job interview. But boy was I glad I got sick before I got on an airplane! So after about three days in bed I finally caught up on the sleep I'd missed when the girls had been left without their mom the first night. A blessing in disguise!

As November brought Christmas music to the radio and movies on tv I promised myself that I'd wait till after Thanksgiving to put our tree up. But, when I couldn't think of a reason for such a promise, I broke it out. Yesterday we finally got some more decorations for it so it isn't so naked. We also decided we'd try out LED lights for our windows, which we're liking a lot. Here's our sweet little tree!


Brian has been very tolerant of the lights, sparkles, and Mickey-shaped ornaments. He's the best! We're excited for our month off of school that is in just a couple weeks, as well as our next Disneyland adventure! I can wait a couple more weeks though--I have enough Dole Whip mix to last that long!