Not your typical Thanksgiving

But a good one anyway. We ended up staying in San Diego with no guests to host, so we took advantage of the freedom to spend Thanksgiving morning at a playground by the beach:





There are few places in the US where the weather is good enough in late November to go to the beach (and a good beach five minutes away), so we decided to enjoy it while we can. After the afternoon nap (for Daniel) and quiet time (for Joshua), we had Thanksgiving dinner. Daniel continued his recent trend of devouring lots of food; after lots of turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and carrots he gobbled an entire slice of pumpkin pie. Joshua, also as usual, decided he didn't want to eat any of what was offered for dinner. Fortunately the standard backup method, negotiating a number of bites after which he receives dessert, resulted in a better-than-usual agreement of ten bites, with at least one bite of each kind of food. Normally I'm satisfied with five. I was surprised when Joshua didn't like the sweet potatoes so much, and less surprised when he didn't like the stuffing. I didn't either at his age. But sweet potatoes with brown sugar and melted marshmallows on top? How can a kid not like that?

On Friday, we made a trip to the zoo. We thought Daniel and Joshua might enjoy the petting zoo, but after we arrived we found out it was closed for remodeling. This marks the second time this has happened to us: last time, we went to the Wild Animal Park to feed the giraffes and found out that was closed for remodeling.

Instead, we decided to take the Sky Ride across the zoo. The boys behaved well in the longer than usual line, enjoying a close view of a duck pond and waterfall. Daniel also watched the Sky Ride cars coming in and out of the station and was silent in wonder when it finally became our turn and we lurched up into the sky. On the other side of the zoo we looked at a few desert animals and the polar bears, and when I suggested we could take the Sky Ride back Daniel began yelling "Sky! Sky!" and pointing back up the hill towards the ride. The boys seemed to enjoy the ride back just as much, and I'm not sure we'll ever be able to go to the zoo again without taking the Sky Ride.

There were a few other things the boys enjoyed. Here's a stone lion they climbed around:





They also liked looking at meerkats, parrots, an otter, and a collection of insects that included millipedes, hissing cockroaches, and a large tarantula.