Odds and Ends

Look! I used my brand new KitchenAid for the very first time last night - I made bread! I've never really made a loaf of yeasted bread before... I've done homemade rolls a few times and I've also made banana bread many times - but this was a first. I used a recipe for Honey Whole Wheat bread from my Martha Stewart Baking Handbook (a Christmas present from last year) - the bread loaves turned out lovely, thanks to a great recipe and great cooking equipment! Yippee for me!

Emma has been prancing around in her new princess dress as of late. Her Grandma Dangerfield made it for her as a Christmas present and it is so beautiful! When Emma wears it she tells us that she's going to the ball. She's such a girl!

Lastly (this post has been a little random!), here are some videos of Becca. In the first one you can see how her crawling is coming along - she's improved so much in the past few days! The second video is of Becca making a mess with her yogurt. She just loves sitting in her chair and eating snacks. Oh, and also - you may notice that the quality of the videos are much better than in the past... thanks to my new camera! Thanks mom and dad!

A Merry Christmas Post

Hooray! I'm putting up a new post! I've been soooo distracted these past couple of weeks (obviously!) with all the Christmas festivities and traveling. Here's what's gone down during the holidays for the Dangerfield fam:

• On the 18th we continued birthday celebrations for Adam and Carol (since this was their actual birthday) with a little gathering at Emily's house. She cooked us a yummy dinner and then we had cake (a little Adam sized cake), and opened presents. It was a fun evening!

• On the 20th we drove up to Utah to spend Christmas with my family in Sandy. Our driving day went smoothly with no bad weather to slow us down. We timed it just right - the minute we drove into my parents driveway it started snowing! And this was the beginning of quite the little blizzard! It filled up the yard in no time. Soon after getting our stuff in the house, Emma was anxious to go play... so Ben helped her bundle up and they went in the front yard to get a little playtime in the snow. Emma loved it!

• The day's leading up to Christmas were filled with lots of shopping, visiting the grandparents and extended family up in Salt Lake, playing games, and watching movies (we saw I Am Legend in the theaters and also rented The Simpson's Movie - and a note to those wanting to see I am Legend... it was super freaky!!! I hid in my jacket most of the time and was practically hyperventilating through the whole thing - and if that's what you're going for, then have fun!! It's quite the scary little thriller).

• For Christmas Eve breakfast we went to Market Street Grill in downtown Salt Lake. I had the Eggs Benedict, which are so yummy! After eating, we shopped at the Gateway for a bit (with dad taking a brisk little jaunt in the fountain) and then rode Trax to a fun bookstore for some browsing and hot chocolate. Later in the day we went on a marathon shopping trip (because this is dad's favorite thing!). He likes to take note of closing times for stores on the night before Christmas, so that he can cut it as close as he can. :) Within the span of about 2 hours we went to - Costco, IKEA, Home Depot, Seagull bookstore, Macey's grocery store, and picked up gift cards at Cafe Rio and the movie theater. It was crazy... and should have been a world record! Anyway, this little shopping trip was sooo much fun and the snow was coming down like crazy, making it even more memorable. :) Before going to bed that night Ben was very good about doing all the the traditional Christmas Eve traditions with Emma - they made pictures for Santa and wrote him a little note and put out cookies and milk for Mr. Clause and oatmeal and carrots for the reindeer. Emma was so fun this year for Christmas!

• Christmas day was just super! We were all so spoiled! Emma got some great presents from her grandparents and aunt and uncle. I'm super excited about my new camera from my family! Woohoo!! My blog readers will reap the benefits of my new toy as well! :) I'm also all ready to try out the KitchenAid I got from Ben. I went to the grocery store today and was sure to pick up stuff I need to make bread - I can use the handy dough hook attachment to mix up some yummy bread dough! Yippee! Hopefully it will turn out!

• We drove back to AZ on the 26th and spent the night at our house. The next morning we went over to Ben's family's house in Gilbert and had Christmas morning with them (hooray for 2 Christmas's!). Once again we were spoiled - Emma got a fun playhouse that we'll be putting on our back porch and Ben and I got a ton of wonderful new clothes. We stayed with Ben's parents for a couple of days and just came back to our house this morning. As in Utah, we also watched movies and played games with Ben's family. We watched National Treasure in the theater and watched Stardust at home (a gift from Peter). Stardust was awesome! You all need to see it! The closest movie I can think to compare it to would be Princess Bride - it was really fun, so everyone go rent it, or just buy it!

Okay- this post has been rather long winded. Did any of you actually read all of it? If so, good work! We really have had a great holiday season so far and are now looking forward to New Years!

Glendale Glitters

We had a little FHE activity at Glendale Glitters this evening. I have to admit it was little unimpressive compared to the temple lights, but we had a wonderful evening anyway. Emma kept saying, "It's so beautiful!", which was cute, and we also rode on a horse-drawn carriage. This was a lot of fun - while riding, Emma said, "I can hear the horses toes!" - we taught her that they were hooves clomping on the road... not really toes. She's so fun right now. She talks so well and just says the funniest things. While we were waiting in line to ride the carriage, Emma was talking about how strong she is (I don't know what brought this up)... but she says, "I'm so strong!" while flexing her bitty muscles. It's a real hoot. Ben asked her if Becca was strong too, and Emma said that she's "a little bit strong". Emma says that I'm just not strong at well, but daddy is. What a goof! Anyway, we enjoyed our evening and got some cute pictures of us - I thought Becca looked adorable in her hat and gloves. She's such a sweetie.

Santa Encounters

I have many random photos on my camera and I'm going to organize this post according to the pictures I recently took.

I hope this first picture doesn't make me look like a bad mother/babysitter, but I recently had Addy and Benjamin over at our house and I let them watch a little Sesame Street. I gave them a snack and a drink and I just thought that all three of them sucking on their sippy cups was an amusing sight. I hope Aubree and Melinda don't think poorly of me plopping their kids down on my couch to watch TV! I promise I don't do this much! :)

We've attended a number of Christmas parties lately, giving Emma and Becca a number of opportunities to sit on Santa's lap. Let me just say that Emma hates it! She doesn't throw a tantrum or anything (although Becca truly freaks out at the sight of Santa!... there's a great picture of her in a page done by Jess which you can see here), but she makes the saddest and most concerned faces and tells me afterwards that Santa is too scary. Poor thing... but she was happy to get a candy cane from him. In fact, when I ask her what she wants for Christmas she just tells me "candy canes!". So innocent and so easy to please... what a joy! :) At the Christmas party we had with friends, Craig and Aubree made us all dress up in the ugliest Christmas clothes we could put together. I'm bummed that we never got a picture of us all in our frightening Savers Christmas attire. Just use your imagination... it was lovely. :) And so great that we were required to run around in public doing a video scavenger hunt. How embarrassing! But so fun!

Emma's Grandma and cousin, Adam, both have a birthday on the same day (on a side note- Emma and her Uncle Peter also share a birthday... weird!). Anyway, b-day time is coming up for Carol and Adam in a couple of days, but for an early birthday outing we went to see A Winnie the Pooh Christmas Tail play at the Valley Youth Theater in downtown Phoenix. It was a lot of fun and Adam and Emma both really loved it, especially since we were all Winnie the Pooh characters on Halloween. After the play we ate lunch at Sam's Cafe and I had the best enchiladas! I also enjoyed sharing in the birthday ice cream. :) While on our outing I tried to get a good picture of the kids in their Christmas attire, but Emma was being rather silly... but they're cute anyway.

I never posted about Becca's follow up appointment to check her weight. At 8 months, she weighed in at 14 lbs 8 oz, which is still quite small, but she gained 1 1/4 lb in a month and that pleased the pediatrician... she said to just continue what I'm doing and she should catch up just fine. Phew! I've been nervous about the whole thing... I'm glad that little Rebecca is eating and growing well - thank goodness for formula! I just can't believe how expensive it is. The Similac stuff is like 25 dollars for the larger sized container, which doesn't even last a week. Goodness sakes! I'm glad she'll only be needing the formula for another 4 months and then we can switch her over to cow's milk - much cheaper! Outside of formula, Becca has been getting acquainted with a large variety of foods - yogurt, bread, bananas, raspberries, strawberries, mashed potatoes, and many other soft foods (she still doesn't have any teeth!). Becca loves eating!!

We are a Happy Family!

Look! More pictures by Heather! I am so excited to have some cute family photos. I love so many of the shots that she took... the ones below are just a few of my faves. The one with Emma and Becca together is hilarious to me with Becca's goofy face. ;)

Let the Christmas events begin!

We had our first Advent over at Ben's family's house this evening. Ben actually stayed home because he seemed to have caught the same flu bug that the rest of us had last week... ugh. Well, I took the girls to see their grandma, despite being Ben-less. We had a good time eating dinner and following it up with Advent. I described this tradition a bit in a post I wrote up last year at this time, which you can read here. Becca enjoyed wearing a Santa hat during the evening, which was a tad small for her biggish head, but I thought it was cute anyway. We watched the Christmas devotional as well and Emma made an odd misinterpretation. I told her a couple of times beforehand that the prophet would be speaking and she finally spits out, "I like puppets!" Apparently she thought I was saying puppet instead of prophet. What a goof. Well, this little outing to grandma's was the beginning of many, many, MANY more Christmas gatherings to come in the next few weeks. It's always busy during the holiday's and I absolutely LOVE the craziness!! Yesterday we conquered the mall out in Scottsdale and had an awesome time. This was the beginning of our Christmas shopping and I'm not sure how we pulled it off, but we were able to hang around the mall playing for about 6 hours without any whining children! I honestly don't know how this happened, particularly considering that the girls skipped their naps for the day. So, anyway, we didn't actually shop for all that time - some of the time was spent eating and we also watched the Bee Movie at the mall theater. We really liked it! It's been getting mixed reviews, but Ben and I laughed throughout the whole thing. Emma and Becca enjoyed the parts that they were awake for. I guess part of the movie ended up turning into nap time, which made for a very pleasant movie watching experience for us. :)

O Tannenbaum!

The Christmas tree finally got put up last night. Christmastime definitely can't be fully enjoyed until the tree is up and decorated! I like to turn off all the room lights and lie underneath the tree and look up through the twinkling Christmas lights. :) Happy Almost December!

Babbling Becca

Becca's "vocabulary" has been growing lately, with new sounds and noises. She's funny to have a conversation with.

Turkey and Disney Adventures

Well, we definitely had a very memorable Thanksgiving this year! On Thanksgiving morning we left early and drove to Ben's aunt's home in Upland, California. Upland is about a 45 minute drive from Disneyland. We had a very yummy Thanksgiving meal with them. My favorite, of course, was the mashed potatoes! The Tuttle home is very busy with 11 kids and a dog! Wow! Between their family, ours (including Ben's parents and his sister's family) and the missionaries, it was quite the little crowd. Emma and her cousin Adam looked so cute dressed up as a pilgrim and an indian. Ben's mom made the pilgrim dress and it turned out adorable! After dinner and visiting with them, we took off to our hotel across the street from Disneyland (my FAVORITE place!!). We played for two days in the two parks there and we were soooo exhausted after it all! We hit every big ride and most of everything else. I was a little disappointed that we didn't ever get to ride the new Nemo submarine ride. However, every time we walked by it was an hour and a half wait or more. We just didn't want to wait that long with all of our little ones. So, maybe next time. Hopefully they will someday decide to have some fast passes available for that one. Goodness sakes! On the first Disneyland day, we had some special passes that would allow us to get into Toontown an hour before it opened to meet Mickey and watch a little show with all his friends. Emma just loved this! When we got to see Mickey she went right up and hugged his legs. It was super cute. I was a little surprised at how scared Emma was on some of the rides... I was hoping she would be more brave! She did NOT like any of the 'dark' indoor rides... we couldn't get her to go on Peter Pan or anything. It was a real struggle to convince her to go on Winnie the Pooh or Small World, but she ended up enjoying both. She whimpered the whole time on Pirates and Monster's Inc. However, there were many rides that she wanted to ride over and over again, like the teacups, Dumbo, Astro Orbiters, all of the rides in the Bug's Life land and also the big Ferris Wheel in California Adventure. So, overall, she had a really good time. Of course, we weren't able to convince her to ride the Matterhorn. She said it was too scary because she could hear the "snow monkey". That's what she called the Abominable Snowman. What a funny girl. We also got away with hardly having to wait in any lines, because while part of our group was at Toontown on the first day, Ben's parents and sister were surprisingly given Dream Fast Passes (part of Disney's Year of a Million Dreams thing) that allow you to get on all the big rides without a wait. You just have to show them your special passes that wear around your neck. So, between those and baby swap passes, we hopped on a bunch of rides without a wait. How pleasant! I also enjoyed the little arrangement we made with Ben's sister, Emily and her hubby (also named Ben). The kids were exhausted after dinner on both days, so we swapped taking the kids back to the hotel to go to bed while the others continued to play. This worked out well. The second night was Ben and my turn to play late, so we went on California Screamin' and Tower of Terror. We also got some ice cream and shopped for some souvenirs for Emma and Becca. What a fun date! Happy Belated Thanksgiving everyone!

Disneyland... here we come!!

I mentioned in the previous post that my dear Rebecca has been much happier since starting up the formula. Well, I took these pictures of her this morning because she was sooo happy. I love it when my girls are giggly and in a good mood. Emma's happy today as well because we'll be leaving for Disneyland tomorrow!! We've been perusing the Disneyland site together and she is excited for the following: teacups, Dumbo,Mickey and Minnie's house, Bug's Life rides, and Matterhorn. Can you believe she is actually big enough to ride the Matterhorn? Of all the bigger thrill rides, the Matterhorn is the one that only requires a height of 35 inches to ride. For most of the other big rides you need to be 40 inches or taller. Well, Emma is now 36 inches tall! What a growing girl! Maybe next time she'll be even bigger like Addy and be able to ride Splash Mountain! :)

Hurry and lock up the cupboards mom!

Becca's almost crawling! 'Almost' means that she keeps pulling herself up onto her knees and rocking a little, but not quite going anywhere. However, even though she's not quite crawling, she still somehow ends up traveling across the room through other methods such as scooting, rolling, reaching, stretching and other creative means of getting somewhere. Also, to update on the formula feeding - she is happier and sleeps better, and I hope she is also gaining some weight. Do you think she looks a little fatter? I think her head is looking a little less bulbous, so maybe that means she is putting on some weight in her face and elsewhere. I hope so! Her next weight check will be in a couple of weeks, so I hope she passes the test! :)

I love Heather!!... and Becca too

Heather took these adorable pictures of Becca and I LOVE them! I'm having a hard time narrowing down which ones to print and frame... maybe I'll just have a whole wall devoted to cute Becca... but perhaps that would make Emma feel bad. ;)

Bring on the formula!

Greetings everyone! Another week is beginning and I was just looking at my blog and realizing it's about time I updated with something new. I took Becca to her weight check this morning. At her 6 month well-baby visit, the pediatrician wanted me to come back in one month to check her weight to see if my bitty little girl is making any progress. Well, at 7 months old she weighed in at a mere 13 lbs, 4 oz... so I was instructed to start supplementing three times each day with formula. Well, I fed her with formula right after nursing her at lunch and at dinner today and I was shocked at how much she ate! I feel sooooo sad that I've been short-changing her for so long with the nursing. Apparently I'm just not cutting it with my milk supply. Oh my! This was a surprise to me, because I never had to use formula with Emma.. she was never as small as Becca is. Well, anyway... I'm distressed at the fact that my little Rebecca has been needing more to eat, but I'm also relieved that she's finally getting the food she needs to start filling out and hopefully get a little chunkier. :)

On a lighter note, below I've posted a video of Emma dancing along during Dancing with the Stars last week. I mentioned in a previous post that this has been one of her favorite things to do recently. She loves dancing and I get a giggle at how serious she'll be about it. The video below is a little dark and she spends some of the time staring intently at the dancers on tv trying to think of how to imitate them. I like how at the end of all her dances she collapses on the floor for a dramatic and theatrical finish! :)

Soccer Girl!

Emma started her soccer class this morning. She was so excited. Last night we bought her shin guards (which hardly fit her skinny legs) and her very own pink soccer ball so that she can practice during the week. I was very impressed with her soccer skills! She did so well! We have a pro soccer player in the making. :) We'll be doing this every Saturday for the next six weeks, so I'm glad she liked it!

Yay for me!

Look I got a haircut! It's a miracle! Guess when the last time I had a haircut was? It's hard to believe, but it's been since last October! Phew... it feels good to finally break that streak. I put Becca in the picture because I feel weird taking a picture of just me. Becca's so cute. Anyway, if you ever actually read this Melanie, thanks for the great color and cut! Now go get going on your blog! :)

Cute costumes and... la cucaracha!

You're probably all getting bored with Halloween posts... but I'll try and aim to entertain! We spent the evening at Ben's parents home in Gilbert and enjoyed trick or treating throughout their neighborhood. Emma's cousin Adam was Christopher Robin... aren't they all so cute together?! My favorite is that Becca can't see... that's hilarious. Well, Emma had a lot of fun! Once again, she impressed me with her trick-or-treating skills. She'll do whatever it takes to get candy. This made me think of the following Jerry Seinfeld act about Halloween (which Ben was quoting and joking about last night as we went door to door getting candy).


Becca and Emma are having more and more fun together lately. Particularly at bathtime. Now that Becca can sit up in the tub, I can more easily give them baths at the same time. It's much more convenient for me, and a lot more fun for them! Becca is so cute and funny. I took a video during their tub time a couple days ago and you can view it here.

And now on a much more random note, here is a very amusing clip of Ben and I dancing (I really must have no shame!):

Halloween Festivities

The Halloween festivities continue! It's been a fun week with plenty of entertainment and goodies. Last night we visited Ben's parents for a wonderful Sunday dinner with yummy fall foods and a quick pumpkin carving. I'm thinking I will stick to tiny pumpkins from now on... they are so much easier to carve and not nearly as big of a mess and they make a lovely little decoration for my kitchen counter. :) To add to the growing list of festive events, we had a pleasant little Halloween gathering with friends this evening. Games, treats, and splendid conversation... there's nothing better... except maybe Disneyland. ;)