Giving Thanks

This year, Luke and I were able to travel to Luke's brother's house in Nebraska for Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful time with them and it really reminded us how thankful we are to have such wonderful families in our lives. As we've traveled and lived throughout the country we've met so many people who don't have good relationships with their families, or simply don't take the time out of their busy schedules to talk or visit regularly. I really can't imagine what kind of void I would feel if I didn't have such great people in my life -- and people who will always be there, no matter where we live, or what our circumstances are.

Thanks for your wonderful hospitality! We had a great time!

A, showing us her Thanksgiving turkey made out of Gumdrops:


E, a.k.a, Cinderella, super excited about the Thanksgiving dinner about to commence:


During the weekend, we were able to visit the Temple Visitor's Center. It is a very small one, but very touching. What a reminder on Thanksgiving of all the sacrifices the saints made during their exodus to the West. I'm constantly amazed at the strength they all had.



In the basement of the visitor's center, they had their annual Gingerbread Display, and it was pretty amazing! One ward did "Noah's Ark" out of gingerbread and it was so cool. They sculpted all the animals out of tootsie rolls and starbursts and whoever did them was very talented. There was also one that did "The Night Before Christmas" and they did a scene every few lines of the book. Very impressive.

We also went to the city Zoo for one of the days. I've been to quite a few zoo's around the country, but this was by far the best. Instead of dividing all the animals into different areas according to the type of animal, they organized it by habitat: so there was a "desert" habitat, a "jungle", etc. For example, in the "jungle", they had paths going through a real jungle that you could walk through and see all the birds, monkeys, etc. The more dangerous animals were kept in cages or behind glass, but for the most part, they were out in the open. There was one tiny little monkey that came so close to us, we could almost touch it. It was pretty amazing. There was an incident in the "Gorilla house" that the two girls and Luke will probably never forget, but other than that, it was a pretty cool experience.

We forgot our camera, but I wanted to try to find some pics of the Zoo:

This is the "desert habitat" that you walk into:


The jungle was the coolest:




This was the rope bridge that we got to walk across:


Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!