Fancy Food, Recitals, Zoo Animals and The State Fair!

 One of our favorite nights of the year is the Media Night for the Resort Food Tasting at the Biltmore. All of the valley resorts make their best dinner and dessert item, and we get to try all of them as many times as we want! It's beyond words exciting!

 This blurry photo is all I have to remember the tastiest scallop of my life, and our favorite Sheraton chef. He made, in our opinion, the tastiest food 3 years in a row! This year between Robert, Jose and I we probably ate 12 scallops and a whole banana tree's worth of bananas foster (my favorite dessert!)

 With such good food and good friends, it's no wonder we look forward to this event all year long!

 The next day we hit up Chuck E. Cheese in costume for more free tokens. This time we were army man, Elmo and Cinderella. We change up our costumes every time we go, so we can feel like we've really earned the tokens.

 That night Stanton had his Halloween piano recital, as an astronaut! His performance really was out of this world!

 

He played London Bridge (with both hands) and a fancy Mary Had a Little Lamb (both hands) duet with Mrs. Cathy. He did great!  

We were all really proud of him!

The next day Daddy got us and some friends in to the Wildlife Zoo. I love that place more than almost anywhere! I have so many happy memories there with the kids, and every time it's just as fun as the last time!

Feeding the giraffes is my favorite, and so is sneakily petting the zebras and shaking hands with the monkeys. It's like the one rebel-ish thing I do.

I love that you can touch the tortoises. They were actually chasing us this time. It was a very slow paced chase, but they followed us all around. That's much better than what they were doing last time..."it."

I love, love, love llamas! They're one of my most favorite animals. I just wanna pet them and snuggle them. This one was so friendly and cute!

Noelle was loving the baby goats, right up until I went to take a picture of her petting them, and the mischievous little brown one ate a huge chunk of her hair, right as I clicked the picture. I felt so bad! She was pretty traumatized to see so many of her blonde strands hanging out of his mouth.

Luckily Noelle had her preschool field trip to Mother Nature's Farm a few days later, so she could make amends with the barn yard animals. She made friends with some gentle goats and was even brave enough to let them eat out of her hand.

Winston got to come along. He loved the hayride and picking out his very own pumpkin to take home.

That day was pretty jam packed full of fun. We went to the park for a picnic with some friends afterwards.

Winston layed in a mud puddle, so he got to be a diaper baby for most of the time, which he loves!

We also got to go to the State Fair this week. We love Daddy's sweet hook-ups! It was so, so much fun! I have lots of great state fair memories when I was younger, petting all the animals, riding the giant yellow slide in a potato sack and eating greasy corn dogs. I relived all of those things with my kids, and they were ecstatic! Noelle almost cried once because she said, "Mommy, I think I might like the...forget it. I'm sorry." And she covered her mouth with both hands. She looked so distraught I had to get it out of her. Finally she told me." I think I might like the fair more than you. Actually I don't, but I'm just having so much fun I don't know how to explain it." I couldn't stop laughing. We really are a state fair kind of family!

Daddy's not the only one who got fair connections. Grandpa Dan came with and sweet talked his old fair friends into giving us a gajillion ride passes. We had so much fun with Grandma and Grandpa and our friends Landon and Cameron too!

Noelle and I were brave enough to ride the 187 ft ferris wheel with Daddy and Stanton. I am really scared of heights, but it felt good to face my fears. It was terrifying, but also a little fun.

Winston's favorite was the bee ride. He kept saying "Me, bee, ride, up, more weee, wooo."

Robert took the kids in the fun house and on the mini roller coasters and on the haunted ride (poor parenting choice on our part. The name alone, "The Creep Shack" should've made us think twice, but we for some reason thought it was for kids. Try explaining very immodest female mummies and salivating ghosts with fangs to Noelle, who unlike the rest of us made the mistake of opening her eyes for a second.) Anyway, we redeemed ourselves with all of the other happy rides, especially my favorite super fast spinning ride, which gives you whiplash, but in an awesome way! I have a picture of myself going on this very same ride at the fair when I was like 8, and I remember loving it just as much as they did! It was a really terrific night!