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!

Our fun family night!

We had such a great family outing last night! I love my family. We have such a good time together. First we played a round of mini golf... the girls really enjoyed it and played every hole... Jake spent the entire time putting his golf ball in all the holes and returning other golf balls to their owners, even against their will :) I spent a lot of the time trying to distract Jake so that he wouldn't always be standing right in front of Emma or Becca as they tried to putt. We tried to view Jake as just another mini golf obstacle, adding to the challenge. :) And take note that we are all wearing sweaters... awesome!! It's officially Arizona sweater weather!

Ben taking the golfing very seriously

Nevermind... I take that back :)

We brought along a little toy golf club and ball for Jake to use... he spent a lot of time peering over the holes looking for golf balls


I'm a master at mini golf... ha! And in case you are wondering... those are maternity pants people! :)



After mini golf, we headed over to watch the girls drive the go-karts! This turned into the highlight of the evening. Becca was just barely tall enough to drive one... we just loved watching their little personalities shine through in their driving technique. :) Emma's a bit more reckless, and Becca's careful and responsible. We suspect that this is a sign of things to come in their future driving careers. So, the lighting was not great on the go kart course, so even with my flash I was getting really bad pictures... I tried out the nighttime setting and since my camera is far from fancy, it resulted in blurry action shots! Think of it as artistic. Becca's in the red car and Emma is in the purple car.


But I did get a video and you can see the girls quite a bit better here....



On the way home we stopped for some hot chocolate... mmmm.





Definitely a good night. And also notice that I was feeling well enough to have a good time, so I'm doing better everyday! :) And this is random, but I took a picture of Becca this week with a new hair style we've been trying out... we've put her hair in pigtails and ponytails for a very long time. Her hair has always been very thin and fine and uneven on the sides... definitely still like baby hair, so the pigtails hide that. Anyway, we've started to experiment with it down again because her hair has been filling in a lot more lately. Isn't she such a pretty little lady? She's just really growing up. I love her. :)

Going to the carnival...

We had a great Saturday today! I love that. And I love even more that Ben is home on the weekends in November plus many of the coming months. I also love that, for the most part, I'm feeling a little better every day. Just a few more days and I'm officially done with the first trimester, so I'm almost out the woods with the morning sickness... hooray!! :) So, I've been craving Olive Garden lunch all week... you know, the unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks... mmmm. I told Ben I had to eat lunch there today, so we took the kidlets and went. It was yummy and fun, and I'm usually quite impressed with the kids when we eat out together... even Jake - he loves to eat, so he was thrilled to have a whole breadstick to chew on while he waited for his kids meal. :) After lunch, we wandered next door to the World Market and browsed at the cute kids toys, and I oogled over the Christmas stuff, and we even got a few heavily discounted Halloween trinkets. I was happy to have saved so much money, but sad to have to hide it all away, not to be used till NEXT Halloween - ho hum.

THEN we headed to Emma's school carnival. We had a great time! The kids loved all the inflatables and games. I was bummed that we didn't win the cake walk - we could have walked out of there with a WHOLE cake, but oh well. :)





I was surprised that Jake didn't like the cotton candy


Emma and Becca rode this spinning apple ride... it looked miserable to me... and since Becca is prone to motion sickness, I thought she might throw up on all the kids in there, but she insisted on riding it and ended up having fun!




Spin Art


This looked like the only game that Jake might actually be able to play, so we used our last ticket for it - you just pick a door and open it and see if you are a winner... Jake opened up a door, and surprise! He won a sucker! :)

After the carnival, the kids played on the school playground for a little bit... that was Jake's favorite part