Parade of Cakes, Bones and Other Familial Happenings

This weekend we went to Edmond for the January Birthday Extravaganza. Elise, her dad and her brother all have birthdays in January, so we get together once each January to eat a nice meal, exchange birthday cards and a few gifts (there are also 3 birthdays in May, so we do it again that month). One of the funniest parts of the experience is what we call "The Parade Of Cakes." Essentially, each birthday boy/birthday girl gets to request their favorite cake and Elise's mom will make it. 3 birthdays, 3 cakes. This year is was Strawberry Cake (homemade icing made with strawberries... yum) for Jim (Elise's dad), Lemon Cream Cheese Cake for Elise and Chocolate Torte for Kane (Elise's brother).

After dinner and putting the kids to bed, I taught Elise, her dad and her youngest brother to play Texas Hold 'Em. Of course I made the assumption that since they had never played then I could play really loose and still win. Overconfidence was my downfall this time as I lost to my wife.

On Saturday, we took the family to the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum Of Natural History in Norman, OK. This museum is a part of OU and displays one of the best dinasour skeleton collections in the nation. The university had millions of artifacts in storage for years because they didn't have a proper museum to display them in. Finally, several years ago when David Boren became the president of OU, he made it a priority to raise the millions of dollars it would cost to open this world-class museum. Now they have room for MOST of their collection. They still have more in storage and several collections that travel, but the collection that was there on Saturday was really cool. We saw about 100 different dinasour skeletons (several of them very large). The kids had a really good time as well.