A third serving of Ketchup: My mom the rebel, a trip to the zoo & Cade's 3rd b-day

Kyle and I thought it would be nice to have Savannah blessed the day after Rebecca was married. My parent's bishop and our bishop here in Chicago were supportive of it, so that was really nice. Kyle's family came down from Boise and my Grandparents from Idaho stayed in town an extra day after the wedding to be there for it. My cousins living in Provo came up and my girlfriends Lindsey and Lindsay (not a typo!) also came up. It was great seeing so many people I hadn't seen in forever for this special occasion. I dressed Savannah in my old blessing dress, which is absolutely gorgeous. You will also note that it is purple. There has never been any clothing "dress code" for babies getting blessed, but it seems to be the tradition to dress them in all white. Well, back in the day my mom was feeling a little spunky and rebellious when she was picking out the fabric for my blessing dress and went with purple. Hiliarious! I myself opted out on traditional, springy seasonish attire and wore a black polka-dot dress. Oh we are so bad. We got to eat leftovers from Rebecca's reception (yummm) and used her flowers for centerpieces and such. It was fun having lots of pink Gerber daisies to play with.
Although we lived in Utah for 5 years (minus the summers), I'd never once been to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake. Sister-in-law Lesley and I packed up the chilluns and met cousin AnnMarie there during our stay. The boys had a blast:

Cade was hung up on seeing the elephants and tigers and was not satisfied until he saw them. He was also thrilled about seeing the crocodiles (he had just been introduced to the movie Peter Pan at gramma's) and the boa constrictor (he loves the book The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash). The outing was really fun and manning (or womaning) two children was easier that I anticipated. Savannah slept almost the entire time and my only struggle was Cade, who insisted on pushing her stroller without my help.

Also during our trip we celebrated Cade's 3rd birthday. We met Melody and Tyler at the Chuck E. Cheese's in Sandy and they had a ball. (so did I!) See details on Melody's blog. For the big birthday dinner, Cade chose to have-- PANCAKES! Yes, my sugarfreak son chose the sweetest meal possible. Gramma got Cade a fantastic CARS! ice cream cake, complete with a huge Lightning McQueen car on top.