Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful, wonderful Thanksgiving and were very fortunate that all of our family was willing to travel to be with us :) It was sort of potluck meal, and people brought lots and lots and lots and lots of yummy foods - including the turkey!! We made the mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce, and all of it was good, but the cranberry sauce was the big hit! So, courtesy of my friend Jenny, here it is (a non-secret family recipe - so hopefully ok to share!)

Hansen Family Cranberry Sauce:
1 bag Ocean Spray cranberries, rinsed and drained with stems and bad berries removed (Other brands beside Ocean Spray can sometimes be sour.)
1 10.5 oz. can mandarin oranges in pear juice. (If you can't find them in pear juice, you can buy a can of pears in their own juice along with the mandaring oranges.)
1 cup sugar

Drain mandarin oranges, reserving 1 cup of the juice. (There usually isn't enough juice, so you make up the difference with water.) Set aside some mandarin orange segments (about 6) for garnish. Combine juice and sugar in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Add cranberries and return to a boil. Boil at low heat (to minimize splattering) for 10-15 minutes or until thickened (it will thicken more once you refrigerate it). Mix in drained mandarin oranges, pour into serving dish, and immediately arrange reserved orange sections on top. Cool, uncovered, at room temperature for about an hour and then refrigerate. The sauce can be covered once it has cooled completely in the refrigerator. Enjoy!

Yum! We finished the night watching the Eagles win, playing Quiddler (a very fun card game!), and eating way tooooo much dessert. I'll have to steal some photos from the people who took them to post later. Our first family holiday in the new house was a success :)

ultrasound comparison

So here is Sylvia at ~ 11 weeks:
and here is Sylvia's little brother or sister at ~ 12 weeks:

I don't know; they're both looking pretty blobbish to me. The profile shot is more distinct in the newest photo, but that could be because the u/s was taken when I was a little further along? or because the angle was a little better? It's kind of funny that John and I both thought the u/s looked like it could be a boy. (Sorry to offend you, my little baby, if you are a little girl!!)

Anyone get any insights from this comparison?

little baby update

Just a quick update....we had a doctor's appt on Monday that went very well. Sylvia and I got to hear the baby's heart beat again. If you ask Sylvia what the baby sounds like, she will tell you "bump, bump, bump". We also got the final blood results back, and just like last time, everything came back very, very good. I'm starting to feel subtle movements more frequently and looking forward to the bigger kicks :)

John is still sticking with his guess of "girl", but although he has an almost perfect record of guessing correctly for all of our friends' babies, he doesn't really like to guess his own little one. I am leaning towards boy for a guess, although that's what I guessed last time, and I have a near perfect record for guessing wrong. There's a first time for everything.