Christmas and Mickey Mouse

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Happy Belated Christmas everyone!! We've been seriously busy with tons of Christmas activities and lots of jovial family time. :) Ben's mom and nephew share a birthday on the 18th and their birthday celebration always kicks off the family Christmas events. We went to see Despereaux (Emma and I read the book prior to seeing the movie and she was very into seeing it on the big screen!). After the movie we did the traditional dinner, presents, and cake. In the following days we went to see the Polar Express in 3D at the IMAX - this has become a tradition and this year Emma actually kept her 3D glasses on the whole time. :) On the night before Christmas Eve we went to Zoo Lights, which was chilly and fun. Christmas Eve we did our last Advent along with the kids dressing up as Mary and Joseph (and Samuel). It was especially fun to throw paper balls at Samuel (Emma's cousin, Adam). Christmas Day was an adventure - we started out early opening loads of gifts (we were combined with Ben's sister and brother and parents... so lots of gifts were exchanged!). After getting ourselves pulled together and eating a yummy lunch of turkey and mashed potatoes, we hopped in the car and headed to California to meet up with my side of the family. We spent the 2 days after Christmas at Disneyland! LOVE Disneyland!! We had a very successful time there this year with our kids. Last year Becca was too little to know what was going on and Emma was scared of all the rides (even Peter Pan!), but this year Becca giggled and excitedly rode all the kid rides with us and Emma was so much more brave than a year ago. We were so proud of her! She even rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and was tall enough to ride Soarin' Over California. I think her favorites were Dumbo, teacups, and Gadget's Go-coaster in ToonTown. The weather was very cold the first day we were there (it had been rainy the day before), but the sky was clear and blue both days and the 2nd Disneyland day was much warmer... I even wore short sleeves for a couple of hours in the afternoon. We were bummed to not get to ride the new Toy Story ride in California Adventure - we went over to get in line after eating lunch, but they were having technical difficulties with the ride and it was temporarily shut down for at the least the next couple hours... seeing as we were done riding everything else in that part of the park we decided to skip waiting around and headed back over to Disneyland. Our sadness was quickly compensated for, however, with a surprise turn of events on the Nemo Submarine ride. We never rode this one last year because the wait time was over 2 hours - this time, we decided to give it a try, even though the wait was supposed to be about 70 minutes. Well, we had only been waiting for about 10 minutes, when all of a sudden this Disneyland employee comes up to me and asks how big our party is - I told him we had 8 all together and he then proceeds to have us follow him, so we exited the line and followed him as he takes us the very front of the line! We immediately got put onto a submarine... no way!! He said that since his shift was over for the day they sometimes get to do "magical" things for people they pick out at the park. Yippee!! It must have been my massive prego belly that drew his attention and he probably thought to himself "that poor girl looks like she's about to explode or fall over... there's no way she'll make it through a 70 minute line". ;) See how it pays to be pregnant and pathetic looking?!

So, New Years celebrations are next up on the list. Today we are taking a short hiatus from family celebrations... yesterday we met up with Ben's family again - the boys went golfing and the girls got pedicures. The last time I had a "pedicure" was at a mutual activity when one of the Beehives did my toes. It was fun to be truly pampered and have nice shiny red toes again. :) Thanks Carol! Tomorrow we'll be heading back to Gilbert for New Years partying. Today we are playing catch up doing laundry, unpacking, and putting away new Christmas toys. Ben spent the morning doing a residency interview at the Mayo Clinic nearby. I've been eating lots of chocolate... Santa really spoiled me this year with a stocking full of chocolate. :) Mmmm...

8 more days?!!

Only 8 more days till Christmas! Holy cow! I love it! I'm particularly thrilled because Ben is soon to start up a 6 week break - he's currently at the hospital finishing up what should be his last call night of the school year... after his break, the rest of his rotations should be pretty easy without long hours. What a relief that will be - just a little relaxation before residency, right? I'm super happy this morning, too, because our good friends just successfully matched through the military into their number one pick for surgery! Merry Christmas to the Jones family who no longer have to fret over where they will be next year!! :) Seriously so awesome!

We've had a fun and relatively busy December so far. Emma finished up her dance class last week, which she really enjoyed. She also recently had her Preschool Christmas party and is now on Christmas break till January. What a wonderful preschool she goes to - I'm so impressed with her teachers and the time and attention they put towards teaching and having fun with the kids. It's a really great group of kids too and it's been fun to watch Emma do well in a school-like setting. I stuck around for the Christmas Party and Becca came along as well - Becca was a little hyper but also really enjoyed sitting down on the rug when they read Christmas stories and sang songs. I'm sure Becca will really enjoy preschool too, when it's her turn.

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Emma and Becca have both been really enjoying all the counting down to Christmas activities - we've got way too many advent things... a paper countdown chain (that Emma made at preschool), our advent tree that the kids take turns pinning felt pieces to, two chocolate countdowns (from Trader Joes... we bought them after the month had already begun, so they were selling them for only 49 cents...what a deal!). We also have our other countdown traditions such as our Advent activity we do each Sunday after Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve as well, lighting another candle on the advent wreath, singing Christmas hymns, reading scriptures, and eating desserts. Also, this will be the third year we've done 12 days of Christmas gifts. The idea came from an Ensign, where you wrap 12 little gifts and each includes a scripture you read about a gift we have received from Heavenly Father. So, all these things have been keeping the kids (and their mommy) rather excited about the upcoming celebrations.

And here's a random picture of Emma and Becca - lately Emma has often been plopping herself down on Becca as they're watching tv, with Emma wanting Becca to scratch her back - Becca willingly complies. What a nice little sister. :)

Oh no! Not Santa!

Well, we're one week into December and we've already done quite a bit of Christmas stuff. LOVE it! At the Ward Christmas Party the kids had the opportunity to sit on Santa's lap - and as in past years, our kids were not happy about it. Emma was nervous and didn't want to do it at first, but in the end did tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas (Hannah Montana makeup... what?! She's never even seen Hannah Montana... does that mean that we have to get it for her, since that's the one thing she told Santa she wants?). Becca screamed while on Santa's lap, but I insisted on a picture anyway, because everyone loves a good freaking out on Santa's lap pic right? :) After leaving Santa, however, Becca waved and said "bye". Weird.

Ben had the day off on Saturday so we had a lazy morning playing Rock Band and making/eating cinnamon rolls. The cinnamon rolls were really delicious, however, they didn't hardly rise the second time around. I rolled them with their filling and sliced them up and put them in the pan and they were supposed to double in size in about 45 minutes before baking them. However, they hardly did at all - so they ended up more dense in texture than they should have been. I've been having bad luck lately with yeasted products. I made some dinner rolls a few weeks back and they didn't hardly rise the second time around either (the first rise works great, though). Anyway- any suggestions or ideas? The yeast was new (and both from different store purchases), so I don't know what I'm doing wrong. ho hum. Well, around lunch time we headed to IKEA to do some preliminary Christmas shopping. We hadn't even started on the kids yet (Ben and I however are all done with each other - it was easy this year... we bought ourselves a new and very comfortable mattress!... so practical and yet so rewarding!). In the evening we made a gingerbread house (a graham cracker house, rather). Can you believe this was the first time I remember doing this? Mom, did we ever do a gingerbread house when we were little? It really felt like this was the first time and it was so fun! Do people actually eat the things when they are done? It sure doesn't look like something I'd want to eat... with all our fingers all touching it and after sitting out for the night it's all hard and crusty. But it looks cute! Word of advice: don't use Honey Graham brand crackers when doing this - they are too flaky and easily broken - I'd recommend using a store brand instead as they are usually much more firm. A lot of people must be making graham cracker houses because when I went to Walmart yesterday to buy some, the store brand was completely sold out. Annoying! Oh, and in the slideshow there's a random picture of my belly next to our creation - Ben thought we should take a picture of the baby with the house - so that he would know he was there too. :)

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Lastly, I have to post a couple of these pictures I took recently. Emma and Becca have been really teaming up together lately and being mischievous and silly. See below... :)

Virtue

So - super cool! I've just learned that the Young Women's program is adding an 8th value to their theme and personal progress goals - Virtue. As a YW leader, I think this is pretty exciting, but even if I wasn't a YW leader, I think I would find this quite interesting. The color associated with this new value is gold - how fun! :) Now I'm really going to be bumbling over the theme each Sunday when we recite it together - I still haven't gotten the hang of the "strengthen home and family" part which was added years ago, but after I left YW.

And since I'm discussing Church news, I wouldn't want to neglect the passing of Elder Wirthlin. This makes me sad, but also I'm happy that he'll be moving on to see his wife who died a couple years ago. I hope that someday when I die, it won't be too long before or after my cute hubby. I'd miss him a little too much. :)

In other news (but not nearly as important), we got our tree decorated. It stood undecorated in our living room for about 3 days, but finally Emma went on strike and insisted that we put the ornaments on the thing. Ben and I were both rather surprised and impressed that she so capably hung probably half of the ornaments. She even spaced them around the tree quite well, and stood on a chair to reach the top half of the tree. She's actually getting to be quite useful! Who would have thought. We used the same tree and decor as last year (and many other previous years), so it looks like this.

Pilgrims and Indians

Cutest Pilgrims and Indian ever!

Christmas time! Christmas time! Christmas time is here! :) I can't believe that it's almost December - woohoo! This is my favorite time of the year. Parties, desserts, family time, traditions, presents... etc, etc.... there's just so much I love about the holidays. Thanksgiving is definitely one of them and we had a great one. I was sooo happy because Ben ended up getting Thanksgiving Day off (hooray!). I was bummed at first because he was supposed to go in on Friday to work, so he headed off Friday morning around 6:30 and much to my surprise was home shortly after 9am. I guess they got through with their patients and Ben got to have a super short day! And he had Saturday and Sunday off as well, so easy peasy. :) I was just so relieved and happy to have Ben home with us for Thanksgiving. What a blessing! We headed to Gilbert on Wednesday evening to spend a couple nights at Ben's parents house. We spent that night making my mother-in-law's famous potato rolls (love them!). On Thursday we cooked most of the day and somehow it wasn't chaotic and was actually relaxing. It was probably due to the fact that we were a small group and we weren't having tons of extended family come visit, so there wasn't much pressure to have stuff done at a certain time or anything. The menu was yummy and Ben and I did lots of our favorite Thanksgiving recipes: chestnut apple stuffing (THE best!!), cranberry sauce, green beans with tomatoes, maple glazed turkey, cider gravy, sweet potatoes with marshmallows and of course mashed potatoes, pie, and all the yummy potato rolls (you'll notice from the links that we're a little obsessed with martha recipes). It was quite the feast and we enjoyed plenty of leftovers later. That evening Ben's parents were super nice and sent us off to the movies to see Bond while they stayed with the kids and cleaned up dinner. Awesome! Aren't they the coolest?! :) I love this new James Bond, btw... way cooler than Pierce Brosnan! On Friday some of the family did Black Friday shopping - I avoided that this year, but Ben did go run a quick errand to Walmart during all the craziness and happened to get Kung Fu Panda for 9 dollars. Good deal! :) The girls started up work on a new sewing project - we're making Happy Birthday banners - we got a good chunk of the work done over the weekend and they're going to be super cute when they're all done! We also all went and saw Bolt - cute movie... the hamster is hillarious! Friday evening we went to the Mesa Temple to see them turn on the Christmas lights - it was a lovely evening - just cold enough to need a sweater but we weren't freezing our hiney's off (not that I don't LOVE seeing the temple lights in Salt Lake, but that's always part of the experience... watching the lights while feeling like your appendages are going to fall off... but it's a great excuse for hot chocolate!). Saturday morning we went to the zoo and once again, the weather was great! The kids really loved the carousel and we even got to pet the sting rays. We also did some shopping and ate out for dinner and soon we headed back to our neglected house. Today we got started decorating for Christmas, but we still need to hang the ornaments on the tree. It's a lot of work to decorate for Christmas! But I sure to love the end result. Hooray for the holidays!

Pre-Thanksgiving Fun!

Is everyone excited for turkey and mashed potatoes?!! I am!! This morning Emma had her Thanksgiving Feast at preschool. She was VERY excited for her ride to come this morning! I'm kind of wishing I would have gone too, because I'm sure all the kids in their pilgrim and Indian attire were very cute. Emma wore her pilgrim outfit (the one her Grandma Dangerfield made for her last Thanksgiving). She was very happy when she got home and told me she ate lots of yummy food! I'll be sure to post pictures of Emma in her pilgrim dress in a future Thanksgiving post - the plan is to have Becca dress up as an Indian, so that should be fun! :)

While Emma was celebrating Thanksgiving at preschool, Becca and I had fun too! I signed her up to take a FREE class (amazing! it was actually free!!) at the Gymboree Play and Music center. Becca was seriously in heaven - they have tons of fun indoor play equipment, squishy mats, balls, slides, climbers, etc to play on. It's a 45 minute class with an instructor who bases the activities on a theme (the theme for our class today was "up and down") - they play and sing songs and Becca was just so happy. Becca's favorite part was the parachute activities. Anyway - it was a fun morning. After the class, they told me about what you get when you enroll in a monthly membership. I'm considering it for a Christmas present for Becca, but I was glad that they didn't harass me into enrolling just because I took advantage of their free class. :) The best part for Becca was it was a fun activity for just me and mommy, while Emma was at school. She definitely liked the attention! :)

Saturdays should be for playing...

I was so happy to have Ben home this past weekend! His rotation this month has been pretty busy and he hasn't had weekends off, but since he was between rotations over the weekend, we had him home to play! We spent Saturday morning hiking, eating lunch, and doing a little shopping. We hiked at Thunderbird Park and the weather was lovely! Becca wanted to walk the entire thing without holding hands, but we made her hold hands through a few places so she wouldn't collide into jagged rocks. She's such an independent little girl. :) Emma toted around her little backpack for most of the hike - it held snacks and her fisher-price camera... it wasn't until she started adding "rock treasures" to her pack that she decided it was too heavy and handed it over to mommy and daddy to carry. We later ate lunch at Whole Foods and then browsed through the Container Store (it just opened over the summer) - they had a lot of unique stocking stuffers, btw. In the next store, Ben was so kind as to watch the kids while I tried on some maternity clothes. Somehow I got out of there with just a much-needed pair of pants. :) Later in the afternoon we left the kiddos with a sitter and we went to see Twilight! Ben and I both really enjoyed it... it's definitely been getting relatively poor reviews, but it was worth seeing in our opinion. We ended our night going out to dinner at the Elephant Bar. Mmmmm... I recommend the chocolate lava cake. Here's to fun weekends with our hubby's! :)

Look what I did!

Look Jodi! I did it! And it wasn't even hard. Becca's hair took a lot longer to do though - it's just so short and fine and I needed to use 8 bands instead of 6. But I'm so proud of myself. :)

Number 200

Hey cool! This is my 200th post! Too bad the only thing this post will be about is in response to getting tagged.

8 Favorite TV Shows


1. Office

2. Jon and Kate plus 8 (does anyone else watch that show? I love it!)

3. Dancing shows! (Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance)

4. Medium (I'm sad they're not showing episodes right now)

5. Iron Chef America

6. Good Eats

7. Top Chef

8. I can't think of an 8th


8 Favorite Restaurants


1. Macaroni Grill

2. Oreganos

3. P.F. Changs (LOVE the lettuce wraps and the Great Wall of Chocolate!)

4. Charleston's (especially their bread pudding - we say that it tastes like Christmas)

5. Lon's (only been there once, but LOVED it!)

6. Cheesecake Factory (never actually eaten any cheesecake there, but love their orange chicken) :)

7. Z Tejas

8. the Tree Room at Sundance


8 Books You'd Recommend
(I'm pretty sure I'm the last person someone would come to for book recommendations, because I have a reputation for never finishing books I start... but nonetheless, the following are my favorites)

1. Harry Potter series

2. Narnia series

3. Twilight series

4. The Hobbit

5. Holes

6. The Book of Three (and the other books in that series)

7. Angels and Demons

8. The Book of Mormon :)


8 Things that happened yesterday


1. Saw Emma off to preschool (and was happy I didn't have to do the driving)

2. Went grocery shopping with Becca

3. Took a detour into the Walmart McDonald's for a mid-morning snack. :)

4. Talked with my mom on the phone

5. Put away the laundry (that was a big accomplishment for me!)

6. Enjoyed having Ben home early from work

7. Baked rolls all afternoon just to have them not turn out well... :(

8. Took Emma to Dance class


8 Things to look forward to


1. Thanksgiving! I'm actually looking forward to cooking - and I'm just crossing my fingers that Ben doesn't have to work that day.

2. Disneyland with my family at Christmas - can't wait!!

3. Going to Tucson with Ben this weekend

4. Being 20 weeks along this Friday! Half way!!

5. Having Ben be done with interviews and hopefully successfully matching with a residency we want come March

6. Getting a van (I can't believe I'm actually excited about that!)

7. Buying our first home (have NO IDEA when that day will finally come, but I'm definitely looking forward to it!)

8. April 10th - the due date for our little boy


8 Things on my wish list


1. A new mattress

2. Double jogging stroller

3. A getaway vacation with Ben (and without the kids)

4. More energy

5. A shopping spree at Target to get more clothes for myself and the kids

6. To see Emma and Becca both get hugs from Mickey at Disneyland

7. Cooler weather (it has cooled down a bit, but I would love it to be a little more brisk)

8. A Wii


8 Things I love about Fall

1. Cooler weather! (See above)

2. Changing leaves (I'm glad I got to go to Utah in September and see some of that)

3. Wearing sweaters (oh! look at how cute 7 month old Becca is in a sweater!)

4. Having the kids play outside without getting all sweaty

5. Halloween and Thanksgiving

6. Lower electricity bills (I'm with you on that Amanda!)

7. Starting to think about Christmas

8. Pie!


8 People I tag


1. Mom

2. Dad

3. Sarah

4. Jodi

5. Lacy

6. Katie

7. Leah

8. Aaron

The verdict is in...

I had my ultrasound today!!! Ben had to be at a residency interview during the appointment, but he gave me the go-ahead to find out without him. I tried to make it fun for him with a little treasure hunt when he got home (thank goodness he got done early today - I couldn't have waited any longer to tell him!!)













I almost fooled Ben with the pink envelope. :) We're soooo excited to be having a boy - I was honestly surprised! I don't know why, but I went into that ultrasound thinking "well, this has got to be another girl". I was wrong and I'm so happy to be having a boy - I'm also a little freaked out - never had a boy before... I don't know what to do with a boy!!

Ready or not... it's holiday time!

Can you believe that it's Thanksgiving time?! So fun! With Halloween over, I'm already getting hungry for turkey and mashed potatoes! :) Even though I'm ready to move on to the next holiday, Halloween was a lot of fun. Emma had her preschool Halloween party in the morning - it was great to be able to go and see her cute class and help out a little. She has the greatest teachers and she sure loves it! In the evening we went to Ben's parents neighborhood to trick-or-treat. Emma and Becca both got so much candy, and Becca in particular loved going door to door.

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At one point Becca was literally dragging her pumpkin of candy behind her because it was getting so heavy. We all tried helping to carry it, but she outright refused any assistance - maybe because she was afraid we would take all her candy and never give it back. Anyway, we were getting a kick out of watching her devotedly carry that load of candy around. This girl loves her sweets!

Mmm... hot dogs, cookies, and paint

Well, to start out - bummer news - the doctor tried really hard to figure out the gender of the baby for me today. But that darn umbilical cord was draped carefully over the area in question and he was unable to tell. Sigh. My actual ultrasound appt isn't for 2 more weeks, so patience will have to be required as I anxiously wait FOREVER to find out.

We had a little Halloween gathering yesterday - one of many, it seems. Emma has her preschool Halloween party on Friday. I'm really excited for that one because I volunteered myself to go and help. It should be fun! Anyway, Emma's favorite part of the party yesterday was painting her pumpkin. She worked diligently painting hers purple for a good 30 minutes. She hardly wanted to leave it to go decorate her sugar cookie. Becca's favorite part was her mummy dog (hot dog wrapped cleverly in bread like a mummy - very cute Liora!). She ate the whole thing - I don't know where it all goes, but she eats a lot - She even tried eating the paint for her pumpkin but quickly realized that it was gross and started crying. Poor silly thing.

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Pumpkins and Candy

Well, I'm super bummed because we went to a corn maze last Saturday, but when I went to get out my camera and take a picture, my battery was dead - bummer! I was so sad because I had got the kids dressed in Halloween attire with orange ribbons in their hair just so I could get some good fall pictures with them in the pumpkin patch and such. Phooey! Nevertheless, it was a good morning - hot, but fun (a healthy 95 degrees... not exactly fall weather). They had lots of fun stuff to do other than the corn maze, like a bounce house, train, petting zoo, corn box and such. Ben wanted to do the tomato cannon, but we only had enough cash to do either that or the train. We figured Emma would like the train more. :) We topped off the outing by getting some kettle corn, apple cinnamon syrup, and jalapeno strawberry jam (Ben's choice - not mine). Afterwords we had lunch at Fuddruckers. It seems tradition that when I get around 15 weeks along in my pregnancy I have to go out for a celebratory hamburger. I hate hamburgers while I'm morning sick, but around this time I start to feel better and my appetite for a huge hamburger returns. Yummy!

Yesterday I tried to compensate for the fact that I was pictureless the weekend before. Since I didn't get pictures in the pumpkin patch, I figured I could take some outside the grocery store, since we were picking some out to take home. :) By zooming in you don't even realize that we were outside of the Fry's. :) In the afternoon we carved our first pumpkins of the Halloween season. We just did one big one and then a little one for Emma. Emma drew the face on and Ben carved it out exactly how she had drawn it - she was very proud! Becca joined in the fun by trying to eat the pumpkin goo - that's my Becca for you! She eats everything! She quickly discovered, however, that it wasn't so tasty. We used our newly carved jack-o-lanterns to help in decorating our trunk for Halloween. We're usually lame and don't put much effort into decorating our trunk for these events, but we decided to be cool and decorate with spiderwebs, pumpkins, a strobe light and sound effects. I feel like we don't really mean business though until we have a van to do trunk or treat out of. ;) But we did our best with our Altima trunk.

The kids absolutely loved the trick or treating. This was Becca's first time being old enough to really trick or treat and she was thrilled about it! She really took it seriously and insisted on carrying her pumpkin full of candy, even as it began to drag along the ground. She even did her own little version of saying "trick-or-treat", with the correct intonation, but not really saying the words - it was funny. Anyway, Emma was dressed as a beautiful princess and Becca as a jester (I craftily made her costume out of felt and hot glue - it probably won't last long, but I think she looks cute!). Ben and I have been enjoying eating their candy after they go to bed, but I'm already getting ill from it. I fear there is only more candy to come with several more parties this week and actual trick or treating on Halloween night. Bring on the goodies!

P.S. I hope to find out the gender of the baby on Wednesday. I have an appt with my doctor and I'm just hoping he'll take a sneak peak with the ultrasound for me. So, as is tradition, cast your votes on the side poll! Remember it seems to be boy season, however, we haven't had much luck getting boys in this family. :)

Home Sweet Kitchen

Since I've been feeling almost myself lately (other than the going to bed at 8pm thing), I've been getting back to my normal routines. It feels so good! I actually have missed running errands, cleaning my house, and cooking! Who would have thought? Well, the cooking in particular I've been glad to get back to. I've had some good luck lately with some new recipes. I feel like I'm kind of taking a chance when I try something new, because it's the worst when you spend time cooking something and it doesn't turn out great. My rule of thumb for recipes has been to not make a recipe card for something unless I've already made it and loved it. That way when I go back through my recipe box for meals for the week, I'm only choosing from stuff I know will turn out. However, once a week or so, I try making something new.. usually from an Everyday Food magazine. I've actually rarely made something from these magazines that we don't end up enjoying. So, I rarely post about recipes on my blog, but seeing as I've been so proud to be feeling well enough to be back in the kitchen, I think it's appropriate. Last week we tried out Chili Chicken Tacos. It's a slow cooker recipe that turned out great and is really made super yummy by adding the suggested toppers of sour cream, lime, cilantro, and cheese. Mmmmm. Last night we were also excited to find a great Thai meal - Spicy Coconut Chicken Casserole. I guess this is once again another chicken recipe, but way different. The curry and coconut flavors were really great. And squeezing on some lemon makes it extra tasty. I used boneless chicken breasts instead of legs (eww bone!). The recipe requires Thai red curry paste. They didn't have this at Fry's, so I later ran to AJ's and got it there. AJ's has everything exotic and yummy (but way too expensive to do all your grocery shopping there). Anyway, the recipe was worth the hassle, and I have lots of curry paste left for future cooking. :)

Hip hip hooray for Nursery!

I feel like I've really been Becca-focused in a lot of my recent posts, but she's been hitting many milestones in her growth and I have to document it! :) I really do love Emma too. ;) Anyway, Becca had her first day of nursery today. Hooray!! Having Ben and I both teaching most weeks in YM and YW, we have been most anxious for her to start nursery so we can cease the shuffling that always seems to happen each week during church. It was so lovely to sit in Gospel Doctrine and teach YW without worrying about little Becca. She screamed when I first left, but seems to have calmed down quickly and did well - she has her older sister Emma in nursery too right now (for a couple of months), so I'm sure that helped to have a familiar face to keep her happy. Emma said Becca had fun playing in nursery and liked eating crackers and marshmallows. :)

Lovely Conference Weekend

We had a pleasant General Conference weekend hanging out with Ben's family. On Saturday night while the boys were at Priesthood session, we took the kids to a play in Tempe, "Miss Nelson is Missing". The play, of course, is based on the children's picture book. We all really enjoyed it - even Becca, who I thought wouldn't be entertained longer than 10 minutes! Anyway, it was a fun evening. The picture above was taken after the play - they wanted to go outside and look at the lake. :) Sunday, we had a nice day of watching conference, eating, and going for a walk through the neighborhood. What pleasant weather we're finally having! It's cooling down just enough that I can finally go outside without melting!

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So, great news! Becca's paci-free! We had a little 'ceremony' on Sunday night and threw them all out. Becca waved good bye with the rest of us and clapped. She even threw one of them in the garbage for us. She may have seemed fine with it at the time, but when it was time for bed she had a little panic attack, signing for her pacifier and looking all over for one (on her end table, under the bed, in the garbage). She cried for a while before settling down to bed. Thankfully, though, she seems to be alright today - she took her nap without getting sad and seemed rather happy all day today, despite being pacifier-less. I just put her to bed and so far I haven't heard a peep. What a joy! I really hate pacifiers - they're gross and annoying to always feel like you have to have one on you in case they get fussy. But, despite how much she seemed to 'need' it, she seems to be getting over it pretty fast.

We've recently discovered an awesome show! I've heard great things about it for a while, but had never watched it - Planet Earth is amazing! They are playing it on Discovery Channel on Sunday evenings and now we want to buy the DVD's. Although, on our TV we can watch it in HD (which looks stunning!), but we can't play DVD's in HD (or BluRay for that matter), so for now maybe we'll just keep them saved to the DVR and watch them that way.

Musically Inclined

Becca spent her first night in her big girl bed on Saturday! Well, it's hard to call it a big girl bed because it's so tiny. When Emma was 18 months old, we switched her out of her crib, but we never got her a toddler bed and instead just got her a twin size one. But this time around, we thought it would be best to get the toddler size since we'll be wanting the two to share a room when the new baby comes and I think a toddler bed is the only thing that would fit in there. But Becca seems to be adjusting well. The first night she hopped out of her bed a few times to play with her toys before finally getting back in herself to fall asleep. What a clever girl! In the past few nights she's fallen out of the bed a few times and we've had to go in and get her and put her back in. It has little railings on the top half, so she must be flipping around a lot in her sleep and still falling off. I suspect she'll get better at staying put in the next few weeks. I just think she's so cute sleeping in a bed. :)

I took this video this morning of Becca playing the harmonica. Am I the only one that thinks this is funny? Well, it really shows her weird sense of humor... she's just so goofy and gives us those crooked toothy smiles all the time. I just love her.