Hope everyone had a save New Years Eve. For the first time, we went to a New Years Party. Our friends the Carbones invited us over to their house. We initially turned them down because we don’t really have a regular babysitter. We didn’t know there were actually going to be other families at the party with kids the girls’ age, but when Tom informed us as such, we accepted.

We had fun visiting and playing games. We played Apples to Apples, which neither Jennifer nor I had played before. It’s a word game where an adjective and read aloud and then each player gives a noun card from their hand to the player who is playing the judge. The judge then determines which adjective best describes the noun cards which was submitted. Low-and-behold, Jennifer and Emily were experts. They killed the rest of us taking 6 of the 12 rounds we played.

We were surprised all the girls were able to stay up until midnight. They looked beat and we left the party soon after midnight. Izzy fell asleep immediately when we got into the car. We had a great time and are grateful to the Carbones for the invite.

We did something unique this Thanksgiving. A few weeks ago we received an e-mail from Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse inviting us to Thanksgiving. They had a special 3-course meal and special pricing for kids. So, we decided instead of cooking Thanksgiving dinner ourselves, we would let them do the cooking for us. If we did it ourselves, we figured by the time we bought the bird and the sides, it wouldn’t be that much more expensive (we were wrong by the way).

Jennifer got everyone dressed up for dinner (including myself) and we took some pictures before heading over to the steak house. We arrived at Ruth’s Chris to find no parking spaces available that weren’t valet, so I reluctantly did valet parking. I hate valet parking, mainly because I hate tipping someone to just park my car.

This is the fanciest dinner we’ve ever taken the girls to, so there was a lot of “training” going on. The hardest part was keeping their napkins in their laps and not on the floor. It was also hard to keep their attention between courses, so thank goodness for Fruit Ninja on the iPhone.

I got steak and Jennifer and the girls got turkey. The food was good, but not up to Ruth’s Chris’s normal quality level. The steak was a little over done and Jennifer said her turkey wasn’t hot. Still, all-in-all, it was a good meal that we were all thankful for.

We were sad that we couldn’t make it back to Texas, but we are all thankful for our family and each other this holiday. We are thankful for the smooth transition moving back to Florida (we’ve now been back longer than we were away). Hope everyone out there had a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving, hopefully with the people you love.