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...