friends, fun and free food

Honestly, we have had the best couple of weeks. I had one day of exhaustion in the middle of this week, so sweet hubby told me to go out with Meredith, and that definitely revived me. :)

Yesterday was so much fun. I had a chance to meet up with my friend, Mary. She is absolutely wonderful. I always go away from getting together with her completely encouraged in the Lord. She is such a blessing!

While Mary and I were having coffee, the kids played with their cousins. Around noon, we all headed over to the cousin's house for sweet Abie's birthday party. Isn't she precious?!

The girls had such a good time.

Grace is looking for every opportunity to wear her Christmas dress, and a tea party was just the occasion.

After the party, we went to Zoo Lights. My parents bought us tickets for Christmas (thank you, thank you, thank you!), and it's the first time that we've done this. What fun!

It was really beautiful.

There weren't tons of animals out, but these penguins were sure cute.

And the sealife in Tropical Discovery amazed us all.

I kept thinking about our sweet R. all evening...wondering if she'd be rushing ahead with the big kids, or tentative and close to me (like Grace) while around all of those animals. My guess is the latter, and that's fine with me. I've already missed out on so many years, I'm going to want her to stay close to me all the time!

So silly...

After the zoo, we went to Chipotles because some friends gave us bogo gift cards for Christmas. The cash register at Chipotles was having problems, so the manager gave us all of our burritos for free. So that made our entire day totally free and a complete gift! We were so grateful!

Thank you, Jesus (and precious friends and family), for such a wonderful day!