The white beard must have traumatized Hal because a day or two after meeting Santa Claus Halle walked into the bathroom, started screaming, ran away and found Mom... 
The Boise Zoo opened up a new African Safari and Halle's cousins Robbie-Kate and Ronnie loved it so when all the cousins were in town around Thanksgiving we decided to go check it out. After a warm lunch we bundled up tight and headed out to the zoo. As we were finishing up taking some pictures at our favorite tree we heard the biggest roar ever, it was like we were right next to the lion....but we weren't. So we got all excited about seeing the lion and hoped that he would roar again once we were by him. About ten minutes into being in the Safari sure enough he did it again, I couldn't believe how loud it was, it was awesome, and how beautiful they were. We also got to see the new giraffe, there is only one now because the other got sick and passed away. Halle had a great time checking out all the cool animals, hanging with her cousins and sliding down the big giraffe slide.
uncle dave and uncle "nark" invited us to go fishing before the boys' flag football game a while back and we hadn't ever been fishing together so we gladly accepted, and there was no doubt that Hal would love it. Dan had received a new fishing pole for his birthday and had to try it out, it was a new kind of reel that he had never used before so it was an adventure, a tangled adventure. Halle had a great time with uncle nark and splish splashing in the water. it is definitely something we will have to do more together as a family.
so Dano and I went on a date the other night and since we are obsessed with those paint your own pottery places we decided to try a new one downtown that we have never been to called Ceramica. it took a while, be we (Dan) eventually picked out what we wanted to paint and sat down at the cutest little mismatched tables. they lady that worked there brought us our paint and i sponged away as Dan plotted out his lines. we painted coat after coat all the while not really saying two words to each other. i discovered a while ago that Dan doesn't converse when painting his pottery, he is just concentrating too darn hard (he does usually do a lot of wonderful detail). so i found myself listening to the other painters conversations as they drank their 6-8 glasses of wine and discussed religion, children and how they planned on getting home. as we finished up our paint jobs and headed up to the check out desk the worker asked us if we were paying seperately, we quickly looked at each other funny and said no, together please. she rang up our ticket and proceeded to ask if we were going to pick them up seperatly. again, we looked at each funny and said no, together please. we got our ticket walked out the door and Dan said, "She must have thought that was the worst first date ever."
