It's a….. Our Christmas Surprise!

3 days before Christmas, I had my regular checkup to see how the baby is growing.  

Before I went to the Dr, I went to the store and bought a box and two ornaments - a pink one, and a blue one.   I didn't have an ultrasound scheduled, but I hoped I'd be able to bat my eyes at someone and see if they'd take a peek so I could surprise the family on Christmas morning with the gender of our baby.  When I got to the Dr, I told the nurse about my wish.  She gave me a big smile and said, "I'll look for you!".  I was so excited…  We went over to the ultrasound room and she took a quick peek.  I turned my head and said not to tell me anything because I wanted to find out when Mike and the kids did.  

All I heard her say was that the cord was between the baby's legs and the baby wasn't cooperating.  She fussed around for a minute… I knew since I was only 15 weeks along, that it may be hard to tell the gender that early anyway…  But after a few minutes of peeking around, she said she had an answer for me.  Then she took both ornaments and left the room.  When she came back she had one of the ornaments securely wrapped in the box.   

The drive home with the box next to me was torture.  I wanted to peek so badly!  But don't worry, I was able to control myself and I hid the box on a high shelf until Christmas.  The best part was that Mike and the kids had no idea that I had a surprise for them!  They all thought we had to wait until the end of January to find out...

After we opened all of the presents, I told them I had one more surprise… I went and got the box and told them what was inside…

Meg helped Mike open it...

PINK!  It's a girl!  

I was shocked!!  I thought for sure we were having a boy based on how I've been feeling this pregnancy.  What a great surprise!  

It will be so fun to see this ornament on our tree every year and remember the Christmas we found out we were having another sweet baby girl!  I can't wait to meet her… and cuddle her up… and kiss her little face.  She will be one loved little lady.

Christmas Day

Our December has been incredibly warm.  In fact, the kids have played outside (in shorts!) quite a few times this month.  It didn't feel like Christmas was coming…  Then on Christmas morning, we woke up to this…  

What are the odds of waking up to the first real snow on Christmas morning. So fun!  

Not only did the snow find us, but so did Santa.  

Santa brought Morgan a watch and a gift certificate to go get her nails done at the salon for the very first time.  She was so excited!    

Santa brought Miles a watch and a pass to go to basketball camp this week.  He's so excited!  

Will finally got the basketball jersey and socks he's been begging for.  He is so much like Miles, it's crazy.  

Meg got the pink laffy taffy she asked for.  That's all she really wanted from Santa.  She even wrote him a letter and drew a pink laffy taffy.  So easy to please :)  

Miles favorite thing this year was his kendama.  They are all the rage these days apparently.  Almost all the kids we know have one, or got one for Christmas.  Miles is already pretty good with it and can do quite a few tricks.  (I'd hope so - he spend about 5 solid hours playing with it Christmas Day.)  

Will spent all of Christmas playing Legos.  We haven't really done the Lego thing yet, but I see why everyone loves them.    

I think Christmas was a success.  I have one more Christmas surprise, but that will get its own post next!!! 

Christmas Eve

The kids woke up on Christmas Eve to their last day with William.  Kind of sad.

Sweet William brought reindeer food complete with glitter and sprinkles for the kids to put out before going to sleep.  So glad he did.  Who knows if Santa would have found us if we didn't :)  

Christmas Eve is one of my very favorite days of the year.  We look forward to Christmas Eve as much as Christmas Day! 

The cousins lining up outside of Grandma's bedroom to check what the Julenisse left in their shoes.

Gift cards to Disneyland!  What!?!  How did the Julenisse know we are all going on a Beckstead vacation to Disneyland in a few weeks…  So sneaky!  

Ding, Ding, Ding… We have a winner….  Will found the whole almond in his rice pudding!  

The cousin gift exchange was a huge hit!!  

Then it was time to go home and get ready for Santa.  When we walked in the kitchen, William the elf had a new pair a jammies for each one of the kids out on the table.  The girls were so excited to have matching jammies again.  

Then we cuddled all together and watched the nativity.  The church has such great movies online now, we watch them all the time.  It was fun to watch the nativity instead of act it out this year.  

Then we sprinkled our reindeer food on the lawn, put out cookies for Santa (thanks to the huge pile of neighbor goodies on our table, we didn't need to make any!), and we went straight to bed.  

I sure hope Santa finds us!!!

Just another visit to urgent care...

What would we do without our sweet, accident-prone, poor Will to keep us on our toes??  

We would definitely see a lot less blood... But what fun would that be?   Boring!  We love our tough, active little guy.  

On Saturday at Miles' basketball game, poor Will bumped his head on the pointy edge of the bleachers and popped his forehead right open.  Poor Will had blood streaming down his face.  We just got there too! So we waved good luck to Miles and ran poor Will right over to urgent care.    

Waiting for the Dr to stitch him up.

It doesn't look too bad...

Until you zoom in... GROSS.  Much deeper than we thought.

Only Will smiles in these situations.  I'm glad our accident-prone child is also our tough child.  They stitched him up and then we went to pick up our babysitter that was planning on watching the kids that night.  We felt bad about leaving him right after getting hurt, but Will said, "I'm fine, you can go".  What a good boy.  Thanks for being so tough so mom and dad could keep their date.  We normally would have just stayed home with him, but this was Mockingjay - with the NADAULDS.  You'll have to do better than 3 stitches to make us miss out on that :)    

December so far...

William the elf popped up on Dec 1st.  

The kids, especially Will and Meg, love him!  The first thing the kids do every morning is search the house for William.  

The first day William showed up, Will just couldn't think about anything else… Asking questions, wanting to look at him, begging to hold him, etc…  So finally I said he could watch a movie with William.  Will picked the movie "Elf".  Very fitting.  They haven't touched him since so he doesn't have to go back to the North Pole.  

Meg and I went with Morgan's fifth grade class to the Festival of Trees for their field trip.  It was fun and helped us get into the Christmas spirit.  

This was Meg's favorite tree…. PINK!   

Morgan's class donated this tree.  It turned out adorable!  We have some seriously amazing moms at our school.  Very creative and talented women!  I keep hoping some of that will rub off on me :)     

Everyday Will asks, "How many days until Christmas?".  Then after I tell him, he says, "so when we wake up?"… It was getting a little annoying, so on Dec 1st we made each member of the family an advent candy chain countdown.

The kids had the best time making these.  This is how we'll make them from now on… So easy and super cute.  

The finished advent.  

Let the Christmas parties begin…  We always love the neighborhood white elephant party.

Mike first opened this awesome "brief-case".  It was briefs sewn together with internal dividers, pockets, and an adjustable shoulder strap.  It had all the components you could ever want in a briefcase.  Mike was pretty bummed when someone stole this from us.  I wasn't so bummed.  Mostly because I knew Mike would really use it sometime :)  

One of the hot items of the night…  Don't ask me why, but all the ladies were fighting over this one…  

This was… um… creative?  Just glad I didn't get it :)  

Sad I didn't get this one… We have some photoshop geniuses in our neighborhood. 

This photo of Mike and Dan riding a unicorn would have looked lovely on our desk.  

And I know I mentioned this before, but we are still getting eggs every single day!  We love our little hens… and they love us :)  

It felt like Christmas came early at our house!!!

Dec 4th was a very exciting day at our house.

The kids were playing downstairs when all of a sudden they all started screaming something and they ran upstairs to where Mike and I were in the kitchen.  They kept yelling "there's an egg, there's an egg!"  

So we all ran downstairs to check it out…

Sure enough!!

Look at that beautiful egg!  

Mike has been the primary caretaker of these chickens, and I could tell he was proud of his little ladies.      

The next morning, another egg!!  Two of the chickens have started laying.  Their cycles must have synced :)   

We've had 1-2 eggs everyday this week.  So exciting.  The best part - they lay the eggs in the windowsill so all we have to do is open the window and grab the egg.  It will be so nice during the winter to have access to the eggs from the house.  It's a perfect set-up!

Thanksgiving Break

I love having the kids home from school for a few days.  It makes me happy, happy, happy!

Poor Mike didn't get much time off of work and school, but we figured out how to sneak in time here and there.  The kids and I met Mike at City Creek for lunch at Johnny Rockets and stretched our bellies out in preparation for Thanksgiving :)  

Silly Meggie dancing like a little chicken.

Can't wait to add one more little face to this group!  Then it will be just right!

The night before Thanksgiving, I was busy in the kitchen making my assignments for our family Thanksgiving feast.  As I was baking, this black flash kept zooming past me.  I stopped for a minute and just took it all in…  I could hear 3 of the kids in the bedrooms giggling and playing games while this 4th child just kept running circles around the house with his cape blowing in the wind.  

In this moment I realized how blessed I am.  As a child/young woman, I always wanted to grow up to be a mother and be surrounded by my very own little ones.  I'm living my dream.  I am surrounded by happy, healthy children and I was in the kitchen baking delicious smelling food.  The only thing missing was having Mike on the barstool sampling the food as I baked… But at the moment he was meeting with his MBA group, which makes me happy too.  I have a self-driven husband that is always hard at work to ensure we are well taken care of.  I appreciate that about him.  

Here's the black flash that kept making me smile.

Yummy smells were everywhere… My two assignments turned out amazing!  

Assignment #1 - pumpkin cheesecake.  I was happy with how it turned out.  My family doesn't like pumpkin pie, but everyone loved this!

Assignment #2 - Yams…  These were just as good as the cheesecake.  I tried a new recipe and now I have my official go-to recipe from now on.  So, so yummy!  

Eating with the fam. I sure love these people.  And the food was exceptionally good this year.  

Other end of  the adult table…  We were missing a couple of siblings, but we had a good sized group.  I tried to get a picture of the kids' tables, but they ate so fast and then were off playing before I could snap a picture of them.   

Quick family picture after dinner...

This year's group…  A lovely bunch :)

Then we carried on tradition and each family made a gingerbread house.  This is one of my absolute favorite times of the entire year!  We all work together on our house and we get to look at it and smell it all month long.  My mom adds windows to the house and puts Christmas lights inside so it lights up.  And the best part is that the lights warm it up and you can smell gingerbread throughout the house when it's plugged in.  mmmm.    

Our completed house…  

The team!  

After gingerbread houses were complete, the kids wrested with the cousins.  I have some great nephews and nieces that were good sports about playing with the little kids.  

Our gingerbread house made it home without breaking! 

I'm so excited about our new stockings.  My mom sat and knit each one of us a stocking.  I don't know how she finds time to do all the things she does, but I am so glad she does. These are just like the stocking I used growing up that my Grandma Thomassen knit for me.  So fun!  We even had a little extra one to hang up for baby….  My mom will make it one once we find out if it's a boy or girl.  I can't wait!