It's been a great weekend for the Leach family. Friday night Ronnee joined us for latkes, and later in the evening (after Spencer was in bed) Jim and I went out to a holiday party. We had a family outing on Saturday afternoon to get Spencer's his first 'real' haircut at Cool Cuts for Kids. Before you have kids, you really have no idea these kinds of places exist - it was just too cool. In the evening, the three of us were invited to a 'kid-friendly' holiday party. Spencer enjoyed playing with other little kids - at least for the 45 minutes he was awake before we put him down for the night! The transition back to his crib at home didn't go super-smooth, but he did ok.

This morning I had (what I thought was) a great idea to take advantage of our gorgeous weather and go on a family outing to the Houston Zoo. But it was really not all that great. Maybe I'm a bit jaded having had a wonderful trip to the famous San Diego Zoo with mom and Spencer at the end of the summer. Right now, he's not really keen enough to know the difference between a stationary turtle and a rock. And many of the animals were just not moving around. We thought seeing lions would be the high point of the visit, as "lion" is currently Spencer's favorite sign to make. (It's too darn cute to watch him 'read' a book and make the sign for lion when he sees a picture on the page.) But, although Spencer did enjoy staring at the large, lazy lions, he chose that moment to make the sign for elephant for the first time. Hmmm. We cut our trip short, and bought Spencer over to the Children's Museum for about 45 minutes. (It's great being a member to run in like that for a short visit when we're nearby.) An early dinner at Niko Niko's rounded out the day for us, and Spencer promptly passed out in his car seat on the ride home. But not before thoroughly enjoying his feast of pita, gyro meat, tomato, feta cheese and Greek olives.

Here are some pics from our weekend.