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. :)