Family night: Bowling.

Saturday night we decided to take the kiddos to go bowling for the first time. They had so much fun throwing the ball down the lane, and the adults had a good time being competitive. The good news: The Merrills won!! The bad news? I lost to Ryan. Oh well.

Dad won the prize for best moves.

Ryan was pretty hard core.

Mom helping Caidence.

Action Shot.

My 2nd strike!

Brandon busting his moves.

Caidence watching her ball move slowly down the lane.

Charlotte couldn't bowl but she had fun anyway.

Mom actually lost to Nic and Caidence...

Marc looking back at that one pin left.

Ryan wanted to bowl with two balls to get his last pins.

Final Score.

Cute pic of Caidence.

  After bowling we went to Dewars for our favorite treat. Black and Whites and George's specials. YUM!

Family pic at our Favorite Bakersfield Spot.

And while I am posting family pics at our favorite places... here's a family shot at El Pueblo, our favorite Bakersfield (actually its in Lamont) family restaurant. We've been going here for 20 years!!

Classic El Pueblo.

Happy Thanksgiving. 

We have so much to be grateful for, and this year is no different. We are surrounded by incredible family and friends, we have great jobs, live in a beautiful home and are blissfully happy as husband and wife. :)

This year we are in California celebrating Thanksgiving with my family. My older sister, Tarin, is 9 months pregnant and we are waiting for baby Sawyer to come. She was due yesterday, and we thought she would deliver last night but after an hour at the hospital they sent her home :(

We had a fabulous day. We started our morning with the Hunt Tradition of Pumpkin Pancakes with an Apple Cinnamon syrup. So good!

Then we started cooking.

Fresh Turkey from a farm in Sonoma.
Ham.
Sweet Potato Casserole.
Stuffing.
Home-made Green Bean Casserole.
Mashed Potatos and Gravy.
Mom's home-made rolls.
Wassail.
Blueberry Pie.
Pumpkin Pie.
Apple Pie.

Needless to say we were busy. And despite our thorough store run on Tuesday, we seemed to need all sorts of little things on Thursday. Tarin ended up running to the store twice, and then Ryan and Marc went to the store twice for us. Oops.

The kids were so fun and the food and friends and family were perfect. This was one of my favorite Thanksgivings because we were all together all day baking and cooking.

Look at those yummy rolls.

Busy working.

Yummy Turkey.

Love these kids.

The Hansen Family.

Our Thanksgiving pose.

The whole Fam.

Our creations.

Dad carving the turkey.

yummy desserts. minus the pumpkin pies.

  

After dinner Nicolas found my camera (anyone remember his photos from the wedding??) he had a great time documenting every detail of Thanksgiving. Including shoes, backs of heads, etc. Here are a few of his best shots.

Ryan also learned what its like to be a good uncle. He had such a great time playing with the kiddos, they definitely gave him a workout! Pretty soon he had a line waiting for their turn to "fly"-- and they came to our room first thing this morning looking for uncle Ryan to play.

"Fly me, fly me"

Us and the Kids.

Such a great day. Hope you all enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families.

Chicago: Where we try to get our culture on. 

So November began with our first trip to the Shakespeare theater on Navy Pier. We scored the "young professionals" discount and were excited to see Romeo and Juliet. I was SO EXCITED when we got into the theater-- it is designed like The Globe in London!! So cool! Well, ok, so it's not outdoors, but it's like an indoor version of the globe. The acting was great and it was fun to see a classic Shakespeare Play. We will definitely be going back!! (sorry for the bad photos, my camera was still with my mom, so these were taken with my phone). I'll take more pictures next time.

Awkward photo taken by yours truly. No one would take our picture that night. Crazy, right?

From our seats.

Our next cultural experience was Lion King on Broadway. Ryan had never seen it, and I loved it when I saw it at age 15, so naturally I was excited to go. Unfortunately, we didn't buy tickets early so when we wanted to go, it was 2 weeks before it was leaving and every show was sold out. Tickets on craigslist were going for $180 each, and that was just way too much.

So what did we do? We decided to walk down to the theater, and see if anyone had extra tickets. It was a long shot, but what else were we going to do on a Friday night?

So, to make a long story short, we got lucky. A choir director from Toronto had 1 extra ticket, and this sweet cute kid I ran into had an extra ticket (I felt so bad for him, he didn't have a date to the show!) He had 2 tickets, and traded us our 1 from the Band director and gave us his seats --two $100 tickets!! We had amazing seats and got to see some of the characters up close. It was SO MUCH FUN.

If you haven't seen Lion King on Broadway-- GO. It's amazing. We had a blast and were counting our blessings for our sweet seats.

I love the decor of these old theaters.

They were collecting money after the show and I didn't know I couldn't take a picture... probably should have known better. oops.