November 12, 2023 - Sunday

Happy birthday to dad! It was fun having him here over his birthday this year. We had CT this morning and it ended up being a much longer morning than usual because of the chili cook-off. My parents handled the long morning well and dad, of course, chit chatted with a bunch of people. The chili was all eaten, which I was so thankful for. There's always a part of me that worries that people will hate my food. It's a very validating feeling when every bite of it gets eaten! Even if not a single person from our HC thanks us for taking on the burden of buying all of the supplies and prepping all of the food. Like, nobody. Thankfully, I didn't do it for them. 

After HC, we came home and started sorting through toys to donate/sell/throw away. We do this every November and this is the first year that Ruby was actually willing to get rid of stuff! She let things go like an absolute champ. I was so proud of her. And I'm excited to have some things cleaned out that the kids don't play with anymore. 

After all of that, Ben and I started prepping dad's birthday dinner. Ben grilled steaks and tilapia and I made roasted potatoes and broccoli. It was a yummy meal! Sadly, my pecan pie bars turned out really runny. I was so bummed. I ended up cooking them for like 55 minutes and they never did set. We just ate them runny, which was a little sad. They're yummy, but ridiculous. 

And then we ran out of the house to get to Wild Lights at the zoo! Ashley got free tickets and free drink vouchers for our whole family. So cool! We haven't gone in a couple of years because of the crowds and I was really excited that it was Chase night, so there would be less crowds. It was still incredibly crowded. Like, a million people everywhere we went. But we made it through the evening, the hot chocolate was delicious, and the company was fantastic.