A Strangely Good Day

Today started off with Mattie taking the girls in their jammies to go get donuts. Most of our good family days start with donuts! The girls have been cracking us up with their new donut eating technique of eating all the icing and sprinkle part of the donut off of the top and leaving the cake donut bottom. Looking at their plate you see perfectly round donuts with bite marks all around the top where the good stuff used to be! We then ventured out as a family to the zoo. Mattie hadn't been in a very long time and since we have a membership, we don't mind trekking out their for a little family time of walking around and enjoying seeing the animals. We knew it would be hot and crowded, but we set our expectations low and just went with the flow. The girls had a pretty good time for about an hour and a half and loved showing their daddy some of their favorite animals. We only saw about half the animals, recognized that the girls were getting hot and hungry, and decided to go get some lunch.

 Hanging upside down like a fruit bat

The best family picture we got...

We had a very good lunch at The Corner Bakery Cafe. MacKenzie had been insatiable this past week and we could barely keep her full. Apparently that growth spurt has switched over to Keegan who ate a fruit cup, a whole serving of noodles and meatball, and half of her sister's macaroni and cheese! The kids all acted great and seemed to have a good lunch as a family. Those simple times are so good. Notice in the picture below how Keegan is holding Matt's hand as she eats. 

Afterwords, we dropped by a Toyota dealership to see if we thought the Sequoia might work for our family. We are in the market for our own SUV and really love Matt's Toyota Tundra and my mom's 4-Runner. As much as we would love to buy another Toyota it became painfully obvious as soon as the dealer opened the back hatch that the SUV won't work for our family. Way too small behind the third row. We want something with captain's chairs in the second row so we need that third row regardless. But that limits are searching a lot so we have some direction now. I am just grateful that we didn't get the whole family out of our car just to be disappointed!

In addition to upgrading our car, we would eventually (next year, two, three) like to upgrade our home. This house is amazing, but not where we would like to live forever. So we checked out a neighborhood further out in Cypress because there was an open house. We liked the idea of the neighborhood (1/2 acre lots, a ton of green space), but we aren't crazy about the homes/builder out there. However, we love looking at houses without the commitment of calling our realtor. In fact, it is one of my favorite things to do right now as a family. Matt and I can see what we do and don't like about certain floor plans or homes to help us better plan our next move, whenever that may be.

The evening was pretty low key, a movie here for Matt and the girls, a nap for Johnny, organizing time for me, and leftovers for dinner. So we could look at things as being disappointing (not a lot of time at the zoo, funky weather, not getting as much done as we wanted, no go on the car we wanted, no go on the house we thought we might like), but Matt and I keep commenting about how good of a time we had as a family today and how great of a day it was. Cup half empty? Or half full? I think our cup overfloweth!

Their version of the kissy face...it's pretty cute!