Drumroll please...

I'm 18 weeks! And I had my ultrasound today! Baby is looking healthy... AND it's a.... GIRL! We were seriously, most definitely shocked. More so than any past pregnancy we thought for sure this was a boy... we just had that feeling, you know? Plus, I had a ultrasound around 12 weeks and the ultrasound tech said that it kind of looked to be a boy... he said it was really too early to see clearly enough for sure, but it looked like he saw possible boy parts. So, we let that very early call solidify what we thought we already knew. :) Anyway... we were very surprised to learn we'll be having another lady in the Dangerfield household. I'm oh so happy... and we're getting pretty close to having a name ready too. But we'll save that news till much later.

Hooray for girls! Good thing Jake has his daddy... and that daddy has Jake. :)

More December parties...

December always comes with plenty of parties! One of which was our ward Christmas party. Ben was on the Activities committee and in charge of the Santa portion of the activity... so he borrowed a Santa costume from his parents and then packed up our Christmas tree to decorate the space - I was apprehensive about him taking our tree, with all the hastle of un-decorating and redecorating... but it all went pretty smoothly and wasn't as big of a pain as I feared. Ben wasn't the one who played Santa, btw... some other nice fellow in our ward did that job. :) And Emma was the only one of our kids who was brave enough to happily sit on Santa's lap...


Emma and Becca both had school Christmas parties during the last week. I wasn't able to go to Emma's because I had a doctor's appt... but I did go to Becca's party. Emma had an early out day that day, so after I picked her up from the bus, we all went over to Becca's preschool to catch the end of it...



Red reindeer noses :)

On Saturday was Carol and Adam's birthday... we had a great day! We actually started out our day EARLY and dropped off our kids with the Lee's while we went to the temple. I'm always so thankful when someone is willing to watch our kids so we can go to the temple! Afterwards, we got changed and headed to lunch at California Pizza Kitchen... mmmm. Then Carol, Emily, the kids, and I went to see the Junie B. Jones Christmas play in Tempe. We had such a great time!


Our day was topped off with delicious ice cream cake made by Emily. Happy Birthday!


It's now 3 days till Christmas (holy cow!) and I'm finally feeling about ready for Christmas morning. Just one more store run tonight after the kids go to sleep and we should be set. I love Christmastime! And tomorrow we find out the gender of the squirmy baby in my tummy. Yay yay! I'll post tomorrow with the news. Tomorrow Ben also gets off early from work to come to the ultrasound with me and then he's officially off of work till January 3rd! We'll be heading to Utah shortly after Christmas to spend the remainder of the Christmas break and New Years with my family. I'm a happy lady.

Christmas Tea Party

A few weeks ago, the girls wanted to have a tea party... they had been asking for a couple days, so after dinner one evening, Ben decided that we better do it - we pulled out the tea cups and our menu was dictated by what was in our pantry... so we had apple cider and toasted English muffins. As we enjoyed our spontaneous tea party, I said to the girls that it would be so fun to have a Christmas themed tea party. We got excited about the idea and decided that they each could invite one friend and we would plan out a fun Christmas Tea Party. Our tea party day arrived yesterday and it was oh so great! The girls were all so good and fun- makes me think that the next time we have a birthday party we'll just invite 2 or 3 friends - it's just so much more manageable - and with a small group we were able to have all sorts of funny conversations together. Thanks to our special friends, Eden and Sarah, for making our tea party so fun (and to Jake for napping so nicely during the whole thing)!

Our pretty peppermint tea table...






When our guests arrived we started by decorating some gingerbread cookies. The spinkles were everywhere...




Then we gathered at our tea table to eat our cookies and other little finger foods- holiday shaped pb&j sandwiches, grapes, and hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream.




I told the girls to use their candy canes to stir their hot chocolate. They were amazed when their candy canes disappeared into their hot drinks.... mmmm... minty hot chocolate...


Emma helped me make a Christmas conversation jar that morning... so while we ate our treats and sipped our drinks, we got to answer holiday questions of great importance - like "what color is the grinch?", and "how many reindeer can you name?", and "what do you think is Santa's favorite cookie?".


After tea time, we colored...


Then played Christmas Bingo...


And finally, what ended up being the girls favorite game- pin the carrot and buttons on the snowman...

Getting ready to play

We thought our snowman friend was so friendly looking :) The older girls were much too good at this game, and we all suspected they could see somehow through the blindfold... but Eden and Becca were all over the place trying to place the carrot and buttons on in the right place. At one point Becca was trying to put the carrot on the lamp - that's what was going on in one of the pics of her veering wildly off to the right. :)

Other Christmas happenings this month have included Advent each Sunday with Ben's family. This most recent time the kids were dressed in their Sunday best and so cute...




Becca continues to make progress on her reading skills, using the same family reading program that Emma used. She recently completed her first set of 5 books and she was rewarded with cupcakes (which I lazily bought from Walmart)...


This week we also visited the park... in December! Arizona is a crazy place! And notice that Jake climbs all over the place - he climbs up on the big kid playground and slides all by himself... he makes me nervous, but I love that he can enjoy the park so much now.

Sneaky gingerbread men

We've been having a great weekend and loving all the Christmas activities. December is crazy with lots of events and things to keep us busy, but I sure do enjoy it! We started up Advent with Ben's family this past Sunday, and then we had friends over on Monday for more Advent as our FHE. Throughout the week we've also been making Christmas lists and trying to make good choices regarding the gifts we want to get our kids. We got off to a good start on Black Friday and I'm happy to say I've already wrapped those gifts! Probably the most on top of things I've ever been. :) On Saturday we went out as a family to do some more shopping. I keep thinking I should just get a babysitter for an evening so Ben and I can go out Christmas shopping together without the kids... that would be great! But even though we had all the kids with us, we were still able to be a bit sneaky and get some great stuff without the kids knowing... and with Jake, we can shop right in front of his nose, and he has no idea what is going on. :)

On Friday, we went to our ward's Elder's Quorum Christmas party... spouses included :). It was a big turnout and a really fun night. There was delicious food, a hilarious white elephant gift exchange (we brought a big nerf gun and came home with a Smurf Snuggie! haha!), and a wonderful little mini concert from our very own ward celebrity, William Schwartz. I'm always in awe of how talented and fun our ward is!


We also made and decorated Gingerbread cookies this weekend. I'd never made gingerbread before, but it turned out yummy and wasn't very difficult. I used THIS recipe... and I liked that the cookies stayed soft. We really enjoyed this activity and laughed a lot as we tried to decorate little gingerbread men. We thought that one of Ben's ended up looking a lot like Colonel Sanders. So, before we decorated them, we had to let the cookies cool a bit after coming out of the oven... so while they rested on cooling racks, we read The Gingerbread Man story to the girls. Well, what a surprise we had when we came to the kitchen after reading our story to find that 2 of our gingerbread men were missing! Apparently they had teamed up and scampered off into the pantry to hide. We tried to convince the girls that they really had run away, but they were more than suspicious and immediately blamed daddy for moving them. Why would they think such a thing?! :)


I also wanted to add on here a picture I took of Becca and Jake hanging out on her bed. :) Emma is at school 5 days a week, while Becca only has school for 3, so on Becca's no-school days, her and Jake become cute little buddies. They also have started fighting a bit (which is hilarious, because it's usually because Jake takes something from Becca and she is incapable of getting it back because Jake is practically as big as her and apparently stronger... we laugh and laugh about this). But most of the time, they happily follow each other around and Becca tries to get Jake to be involved in her funny games. I love these two...

Thanksgiving 2010

I am SO glad that Thanksgiving finally came! I LOVE Thanksgiving. And this year I was seriously craving Thanksgiving food ALL month, so I was so happy to finally get to sit down to eat a plate full of turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. We spent most of Thanksgiving weekend with Ben's family in Gilbert. It was great to have so much family time and now that I'm well again, it's been relieving to start to feel myself again and be able to really enjoy the holiday.

To help kick off the Thanksgiving weekend, Emma and Becca both had Thanksgiving Feasts at their schools. They dressed up in their pilgrim dresses and were so adorable. :)


I got to go with Becca to her preschool...




Becca was so cute passing out her rolls to everyone at the table. She was like a little waitress

Look at all that food!

That evening we headed to Ben's parents home and we spent the evening making bunches of potato rolls for the next day. Mmmm. Thanksgiving Day was great... we cooked and ate and ate, and played games. But the best part of the day for me was watching Ben complete his very first 10K race that morning! He started running at the beginning of September and has been working his way up to being able to run 6.2 miles! I was oh so proud of him. And he's lost 25 lbs in the process... pretty awesome right? I'm amazed by him and how quickly he's turned into a real runner! He has plans now to do a half-marathon next... what a guy!




The weather has been so perfect lately... the highs have been in the high 50's/low 60's as of late and it's so refreshing to have it feel cold! We love to wear our sweaters and closed toed shoes! :) Ben played soccer with the kids in the backyard while we waited for Thanksgiving dinner to be ready...












The next day we actually did some Black Friday shopping! I haven't done that in years... it was fun! This year I planned ahead and had lists ready and had studied my Target ad. Ben, and Carol, and I got the Target around 5:30. I hoped this would be early enough to get the things I wanted.... they opened at 4! But I most definitely didn't want to get there that early. Anyway, they had everything I wanted! Plus when we first got there, ALL their shopping carts were being used... to give you an idea of the amount of people up super early to shop... we were able to snag one from the parking lot though, but when we walked in the store, there was a HUGE line of people waiting to check out. The line ran down the whole width of the store and wrapped about half way back. It was CRAZY. But Ben said that we should just take our time and shop and maybe by the time we are ready to check out, the line won't be so long. Well, we spent about an hour wandering the store and getting the items we wanted and browsing a bit too, and by the time we made it back to the front of the store to make our purchases, the line was completely GONE. We just walked right up to a register without a wait. It was pretty hilarious. We guessed that the huge line that was there earlier was from all the people that had actually gotten to the store at 4am and were then all checking out at the same time. So, it worked out pretty well for us, I think. :) And I've made a good dent in my Christmas shopping too.

Later in the day (after a mid morning nap.... getting up at 5am wears me out), we went to Bass Pro Shop to see Santa... they had kids activities and free pics with Santa. I had never been to Bass Pro Shop before... but it's basically just like Cabellas. On the way to the store, we had a rather amusing discussion with Emma... her cousin Adam was telling her that the real Santa is at the North Pole and the Santa at the store is just a guy in a costume. This disturbed Emma. :) So, we told her that Santa can't be everywhere at once, and sometimes he is busy working at the North Pole and sometimes he's able to come visit kids at the mall or the store. But that Santa has to have helpers also... so I told her that she could go sit on Santa's lap and decide for herself if she thought it was the real Santa or a helper Santa. This answer seemed to work pretty well... and after Emma sat on Santa's lap, she told me that she's pretty sure that was the REAL Santa. It was cute. :)



Can you tell that Becca and Jake aren't so into Santa? Becca actually really LOVES to talk about Santa and says she likes him, but isn't ready to sit on his lap yet :)



Afterwards the boys went off to play tennis, while the girls took the kids to see Tangled. LOVED this movie!! I didn't think I'd like it so much, but I'll definitely buy it when it comes out on DVD. Highly recommend it as a great family movie. Not as great as Toy Story 3, but pretty close. :)

Later Grandma Dangerfield also helped the kids make these cute turkeys with melted crayon...


We drove home on Friday night and on Saturday we met up at Scottsdale mall for lunch and Christmas PJ shopping. :) That evening we decorated for Christmas at our place. Yay!! Christmas!!




Whenever we get out the Christmas decor, we also get out the box of Christmas books. The kids love this!