Christmas Photogs

Brooklyn Rockin

Brooklyn Rockin Around the Christmas Tree

Merry Christmas

Sick kids+crazy kids+crazy mom+busy dad= Christmas card being put on our blog rather than mailed out. :)

Turkey Day Trot

We decided to support the YMCA by running in a race bright and early Thanksgiving morning. Dave and I did a 6 mile race and the kids had a little dash across a field in their respective age groups. Dave trained really hard by running 1 1/4 miles the day before the race to test out an app on his phone that tracks your run. He felt good after the race . . .that is until he had trouble walking for several days after. I ran ]about 4 miles on Monday to train while pushing the girls in the double jogger that acts sort of like a parachute when I run into the wind. It would have been better without a screaming baby. The race was better without any children and having the masses of people to pump me up.

Some of the kids enjoyed it more than others. . .it was freezing!

Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy

I have found that attending church with young children often leaves me wondering things like : Why do I do this? Where was the spiritual nourishment? Where were the quiet, reverent m0ments of introspection? My calling in our ward as the sunbeam teacher for Dallas's class hasn't helped answer these questions either. Take last Sunday for example.
Brooklyn is producing enough snot to cover her face and clearly won't be going to nursery, but we decide to load everyone up in the car and go sacrament meeting as a family and then Dave will take the girls home afterwards since I need to stay for primary. Dave buckles the girls in the car as I run around the house franticly grabbing snacks, diapers, wipes, blankies, things for my lesson, etc. I get in the van, Dave gets in his car and we head off.
Upon arriving at church and unbuckling the girls, I notice Dallas doesn't have his shoes on and ask him where his shoes are. "I couldn't find them." Great. He's kind of passed that age where it is okay to not wear shoes . .I'm pretty sure that's only cute before a kid knows how to walk. However, we're already late to a ward where you can come early and still end up sitting in the hard chairs on the gym floor because there are so many people so I decided he's staying as is. I can't find Dave and eventually start herding the kids in alone. We all meet up happily on the hard chairs on top of the gym floor. No surprize there. The kids are wiggling and whining as they like to do.
The important part of the entire meeting arrives, the Sacrament. The few minutes where everyone is putting their full effort into reverence and the room is pretty quiet as a general rule. Well, Brooklyn takes the box of crayons out and loudly dumps them all over the floor. Good thing she got everyone's attention because the next thing we kn0w, she picks one up and strategically places it between her legs and starts saying "Oh my penis. my penis, my penis " over and over and over in her very high-pitched voice until the teenage girl and her mother sitting next to us are tearing up from laughing so hard, the people in front of us are laughing and others within ear shot are probably condemning us for "teaching" our daughter such things. I am holding Lexi and tell Dave to take her out quickly. Of course we're laughing too because of the choice moment and because I have a tendency to laugh a lot when I am really embarassed. Things went downhill from there and by the end of the meeting, Dave had taken the girls and the shoeless wonder home.
At least I had the sunbeams who spent sharing time, jumping out of their chairs, licking and spitting on each other. They spent their bathroom time on the counter "washing" their hands and in front of the full length mirror teaming up to try and remove the toilet plunger they had stuck there and they spent their hall time fighting over who got to be at the front of the train line I have them walk in. (No, their behavoir isn't always this bad and yes it used to be a whole lot worse before I was put in as their teacher. We do have good days where with a lot of guidance their behavior could be deemed acceptable for church. This just didn't happen to be one of those days).
Revernce? Hardly. Nourishment? only physical as I ate snacks with them in class. Introspection? Only as to how many more kids I want to birth. (haha) Why? You tell me.

One Man Down

Perhaps my use of words isn't very appropriate, but when were my words ever that way? My mom's birthday was a couple of weeks ago and after talking to her a few times on the phone that day to wish her well, I got a late night phone call from her as she tells me, "My dad died." I obviously didn't hear her right so I responded, "Excuse me?" (Stupid me making her repeat the horrible news again.) Well I did hear her right and she and I, like everyone else were shocked. This man, although no spring chicken, was as young and spry as any grandpa around. He was less than two weeks away from his 77th birthday when he mysteriously died while scuba diving in Hawaii. What a way to go though right? I hope if I die semi-young, it is living life as he was.
We still don't know what happened, but the results of the autopsy are expected any day now.

His funeral was this past Friday, none other than Friday the 13th and his burial took place a day after his birthday on Monday November 16th. I was able to make it out to the funeral with Lexi while the rest of my family stayed behind. It was a long (as far as time traveling goes) and short(as far as time spent with family goes) trip. As much as all of the family would have liked to be reuniting under different circumstances, it was really good to see everyone and my mom kept saying how it felt like the holidays because of that.

Highlights from the trip:
I finally got to know my sister-in-law Aimee and little better and she stepped right into the role of Aunt being a huge help with Lexi all weekend.

I got to experience my first emergency landing on airplane as one of the passengers suffered from a stroke in the air on my way home.

I got to sing in front of several hundred people during the memorial service in a quartet that ended up with 5 people somehow (good thing I have such a nice raw voice-as in unrefined and untrained). My proud moment was simply that I was able to block the the loss of my grandpa from my mind long enough to sing at all. (Having all the grandchildren sing the closing song at the end was a bit of a different story . .it was more of a have all of the grandchildren stand up in front of everyone and cry . . . but I guess Grandpa would have appreciated that just as much as he was much better at crying than singing himself)

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I'll save the rest of the mushy details for my personal journal and share some of the pictures from the weekend.

The survivors of M. Keith Hansen: his 5 sons, 1 daughter and mother.

My family

Why I miss Oregon: Hello beautiful and you can't even see Mt Hood because of the clouds-which leads me to my next point of why I don't miss Oregon: the incessant overcast and rainy days.

(I took this picture from the window of the guest bathroom at my parent's house.)

The evening get togethers where there are too many people in too small of space and yet we wouldn't want it any other way.

Lexi, Aimee and Kevin .. .look they're totally ready for a baby.

The baby. Champion traveler. So glad I didn't have to be all alone.

All Dressed and Sugared Up

Featuring: Darth Vader, Tinkerbell Captain Rex Clone Trooper (or something like that) and our little Witch. Margaret and Nick bought the kids pumpkin pails and they were put to good use around the block on Halloween night.

Trenton was just glowing that evening as he came back with all of his treats (and stood by our black light).

Cue heavy Breathing

The mand behind the mask

One treat collected, one treat consumed. Go Dallas.

We were a little late getting started as they begin trick or treating long before dark here (maybe because we're sort of out in the country and it really does get dark without any street lights??) Dave took the 3 kids who can walk on their own two feet around the block and I manned the fort with Tink handing out candy to little beggers. I love Halloween.

Cake, Pumpkins and Fairy Princess Cowboys . . .oh my!

No huge 1 year old birthday bash, but I did make fondant for the first time and had fun experimenting with it. As a result, Lexi enjoyed not one but two little cakes just her size. The kids and I celebrated on her real birthday and we did it again that weekend so that Dave, my Sister Margaret and her boyfriend Nick could join in the festivities.

She was very girly and neat with her cake, not at all exciting, I just hope I can teach her how to make a good mess with it by the time she gets married.

The cold weather left us not wanting to go back out after the boys' soccer games on Saturday so we stayed in and carved pumpkins instead.



Lastly, Brooklyn. Such a girl. Loves skirts. Loves dancing. Loves being "pretty". Loves pink. I can't wait for her to turn three so I can get her in soccer or something and make sure she can at least be a tough ballerina. She is forever changing outfits and they are all so cute that we often have to hunt down the camera.

Happy Birthday Lexi

Lexi turns one today and I am somewhat saddened to see her grow so fast as I sit here for the first time at my baby's one year mark not already pregnant or planning to get pregnant in the very near future. She was born in the midst of an already chaotic life and I fear we haven't taken nearly enough pictures of her, but here are some of them we did catch from birth to one.

Hello bright cold world! Birth announcements that I never even sent out.

First Holiday: Halloween

All bald after mom went crazy with the clippers trying to rid her of horrible male pattern baldness. Firts Sunday at Church. One month old.

All bundled up for the winter cold.Just one of the many ways she is loved by her siblings. Easter sticker smack in the middle of her forehead that she has no way to remove.
First Rice cereal. First trip to Kentucky.

First Graduation experience as daddy finished dental school. almost crawling

Just last week as she is walking along things, still pretty much bald but with the beginnings of some strawberry blonde hair

She came as a suprize, but we cannot imagine life without her. She gets the hiccups everytime she laughs hard, loves to pull both her own hair and others and continues to be one of the greatest sources of joy for our family. We love you Lexi!

Labor Day

No exciting journaling on this one . . .just some photos from our Labor Day trip to the Natural Bridge State Park in Easern Kentucky. My mom was out visiting the week before Labor Day and overlapped a few days with a visit from my cousin Lachelle and her husband Nick and kids. The hike up to the natural stone bridge included something like 500 steps so to motivate the boys we told them they could play a minute of xbox for every step they counted. It worked pretty well and they probably still have time saved up since the following weekend we put the xbox and television in an extended time out as I felt like it was not bringing the best out in our children. They haven't played xbox since and have watched maybe a few television shows that they earned for completing certain things. They have however, learned to ride bikes without training wheels, played outside a lot, taken an even greater interest in books, used their imaginations to play, wrestled, enjoyed soccer season, etc. . . .all better activities anyway in my mind. In case you're wondering, Dallas has also returned to some bed wetting, but still can and does go dry . .so we'll continue to work on that and search perhaps for some other form of extrinsic motivation for him.

How many is that Trenton??

It's a toss up on who poses the best. GQ/puffy chest Dave or pop a squat/ride a horse Bri?

It was fun to have Grandma's company . .not to mention help. She and Lexi enjoyed the view opposite the natural bridge (it's the line of stone you see in the background.

We almost got the whole crew to look at the camera.

Butler . . party of 6.

Coming back down. This little crevice in the wall was creepily narrow. Lachelle couldn't even walk through it with the baby back pack on. I knew there was a reason we wanted Nick with us .. .who else was going to hoist Dallas down the mountain? Dallas and Keyton were fast friends after this unique experience they shared together.

I like the Fall: Halloweeen , cool weather, leaves changing color . .However there are a few things I don't care for that come with the season: plentiful spiders huge and small and snakes. Dallas found this little guy wrapped around the sensor on or garage door. Yuck!!! Apparently it was a rat snake and they can grow up to 6 feet long. I wasn't happy that Dave let him go near our house as I now have nightmares of him coming back for a visit when he's all grown up.