Joshua, leopards, & Joseph

After church yesterday Joshua was telling us about his classes and explained that the person who was to give the talk in primary was not there. He went on to say that he volunteered to give the talk because he had a favorite scripture story to share with the rest of the kiddos aged 3-7. He was so proud when he told us that he shared the story of "The ten leopards." At first I thought I heard him wrong. I mean the kid is missing 6 of his front teeth! When I asked him to repeat himself it was till leopards. So trying to restrain a laugh, I asked him to tell me the story. He went on to tell me that Jesus healed 10 leopards but only one leopard came back to say thank you. I'm pretty sure the boy knows it wasn't large cat creatures, but I guess leopards sound pretty close to lepers.

A little while later I got a phone call from a lady at church. She wants Josh to act out the role of Joseph when the kids do their Christmas program next week. My little man is gonna be Joseph! I was a bit concerned that he would not want to do it because he can be shy, and they do want him to put his arm around a girl...But he was actually okay wit that. He's quite excited too. His count down last night was of how many days until he gets to be Joseph rather than the usual how many days until Grandma comes or Christmas.

Oh yeah..the one request Josh was given for his performance was that he smile while he's up there. I guess I'm not the only one that loves that almost toothless grin.

Oh pooo!

Sunday morning was a bit more hectic than usual. As I scrambled to get myself and 5 children out the door before 9 I felt that I may have been on the brink of success. Our scriptures were ready, lessons prepared, talks written, hair combed, shoes tied, Sophie all dolled up in her cute dress and custom made hair bow to match. Then it happened. I lifted my darling daughter out of the exesaucer to place her in her car seat and discovered what? She had decorated her outfit, tights and all with poo! Well, we changed her, rushed out the door, and actually arrived to church about 5 minutes after 9. Not too bad.

30 minutes later I take the girl to the mothers lounge for a quick fuel up. As I stand her in front of the large mirror that is conveniently placed to aide mommy's in making sure they're fully put together after a feeding I discover that my blue sweater has something added to it.... A large yellow line from the earlier catastrophe! I have poo on my shirt, at church!!!! I return to sacrament meeting and tell my hubby of my discovery. He looks at it and proclaims that he could turn it into a Christmas tree if I give him a green marker. Isn't that soo sweet. Gotta love my man!

The joy of holiday pictures....

This picture is what started it all.....



It was a great spur of the moment photo shoot and it went well. BUT My mom complained about the date stamp and asked that I redo it without the darn stamp across Joshua's mug. So thought we'd try for a holiday themed picture....



That my friends is what pictures are like in the Hanson household..... Joshua insisted that the flash was killing his eyes. He started off about it so dramatically that I had to shoot a few more quick ones to capture the true hanson family essence. Then Dh walked in and decided that we had to move a light and that HE needed to stand just so and got these....


We'll try again next week....








By the way....Do you think we can get reported to CPS for torture by pictures???

And He's Humble Too

Joshua had a substitute teacher today in class. When I was waiting to pick him up my friend who works at the school smiled as she told me the following:

Joshua raised his hand in class and when the sub called on him he said "I'm the quietest one in my class." I guess he works really hard at being good in class and wants EVERYONE to know it. Good for him! :)

Even the Magic 8 Ball knows

It's no secret that I am house keeping challenged. I'm not lazy, just scatter brained. Maybe they'd call it ADD? Anyhow, I was trying like crazy to get the house presentable for a guest (sweeping, vacuuming, general picking up after everybody kinda stuff) and came across a mini 8 ball one of my kids got from their cousins b-day party. I asked the almighty mini ball "Will I get the house clean today?", shook it, waited eagerly for the answer to appear through the blue water and what did it say?????

"DOUBT IT"

Apparently the 8 ball that has resided with us for less than a week knows me well too!

Thanksgiving

So, I'm a little late.. Happy Thanksgiving!!! I hope your went very well and it found everyone happy and healthy. This Holiday seems to be the hardest for me because it is close to the time that I lost my Father. I try really hard to look at my blessings ( I have 6 in my house right now) and enjoy the day as much as possible. Thanksgiving this year was pretty mellow for us. Ian ended up with a fever and that canceled our plans to see either of my grandfathers. We'll just have to go out their and visit them one of these weekends! It's always good to visit with family. I hope yo uhave many things to be grateful for. My sister inlaw mentioned writing a list of things that you're thankful for in an alphabetical list...she never posted hers...I thought about it but did not go any further (the story of my life). I AM grateful for many things I'll list a few



My Savior
My husband
My children
Family
My church
Mountains
Home
Sunlight
Fluffy white clouds against a blue sky
Sunsets
Computers
Books
Love
Health
Happiness

Family weekend

This weekend has been very nice and it's not even Sunday yet. My brother in law and his family are here from Northern California. We've spent the last two days at Trav's parents house just hanging out together. The kids have had a great time riding bikes, jumping on the trampoline, and spending time together. Tonight all the guys played Risk and earlier a few went shooting together. My poor hubby came back with a battle wound to the head..but they all seemed to have had fun. I am so very thankful for all of my family. Travs family is great and have always been a wonderful support to us. I'm grateful for the holidays and the excuse it gives all of us to spend time together :) I wish we all lived closer so we could have more times like this.

Twilight

My dear Krystia turned 13 this weekend and wanted tickets to Twilight. So I bought 3, one for her, a friend, and myself. We went to an early morning show and Sophie was almost asleep when the trailers came on. What was the 1st one for? A freakin' Friday the 13th movie. The woman been chased down by the psycho lets out a blood curdling scream and Sophie follows suit. MInd you my 13 year old and her friend ditched me for better seats so ther I was a 30 something mom, with an infant coming to see a teen movie. I had a few rude comments and saw half the movie standing near the exit, swaying the baby to sleep.

Onto the movie though..I heard it had bad reviews, I heard that it would be laughable to non-fans, but I was not prepared for what followed!!! I am a fan...I'm that 30 something crowd that Stephenie Meyer speaks of. However. it was really pretty bad. Edward was all wrong in my mind..appearance and manners. Inthe book he's an old fashioned gentleman not an impatient teenage snot. Bella, Kristen Stewart, was so emotionless at times I wanted to slap her. Some serious parts were actually funny due to the lack of acting and directing. The meadow was wrong and the SPARKLE...don't get me started....

So I was disappointed and secretly hoping that the movie would NOT do well enough to warrant a sequel. I woke up this morning to learn that I'd be disappointed again. The movie has made enough to ruin the 2nd book in the series. Bummer.

Baby's got a big butt....

My dear little Sophia was sick AGAIN this week with another fever. Not sure what this is all about. While I had her checked out by the BEST pediatrician EVER I asked him to take a look at her leg creases again. Some days they just did not look symetrical to me and I was hoping he'd see what I meant. Well, unlike the car that's making a weird noise until you take it to the mechanic, the leg creases were doing what I had been seeing off and on.... This means my already rolly polly baby has to wear 2 diapers again. So I put her in a size 1/2 (what is withthat odd size at Sam's club???) and then put a size 2 diaper over that. This limits most of her 3 month sized clothing options now because they become way too tight. BUT (hahahha) she does have enough 6 month clothes to get by for now. Unfortunately she has to be int this 2nd diaper set up until she is 6 months old. We are praying that this will allow the hip to grow in the socket properly. Until them my dear lil' Sophie has a big bum and fusses that her diaper changes take a bit longer. She's working on that rolling from side to side thing while I change her..so that does not help :)

Utah

Well we made it home a week ago from Utah and I've had yet to make time to blog... Our trip went very well considering we had a sick baby in tow. Sophie came down with a fever on Wednesday and I took her in to urgent care. The dr gave me the green light to travel with her and so it was set. We left Friday at 12:00 in the morning and after packing in the kids with their blankets, pillows, etc we had to then fill up the gas! Ooops..I forgot that part. Well Sophie did cry inconsolably for the first 10 minutes of this trip and then Josh joined her because he couldn't fall asleep. At that point I joined them and prayed that we would not spend the next 11 hours trapped with a cranky baby. Just like that Sophie fell asleep and the journey went well.

The kids woke up at State line and through Vegas around 3:30 am and then again as went through the gorge in AZ. The sun was beginning to rise and it was absolutely beautiful! They settled down to sleep again for a bit. Then around 7 we entered St. George and Trav took us on a short detour so we could drive by the temple there. Yes, you can see it from the freeway but driving right next to it was wonderful.

We arrived in Provo around 11 and visited with a couple that are very important to Travis. The husband, brother McKell, was a teacher of Travs at church when he was just a young pup and left quite the impression on Trav. We visited their lovely home for a good hour and then went onour way to Trav's sisters house. She and her hubby when kind enough to let us stay with them and the kids LOVED being able to spend time with their cousins.

After we unpacked we went to see Grandpa Earl J. He is in his upper 80's and is facing the sunset of his life. The main purpose of our trip was so we could see Grandpa Earl J and Grandma Alice. The kids got to play their instruments for them and Ian was very proud to play the trumpet..the same instrument grandpa used to play. We got to hear the fun story of how Grandpa got his first trumpet, that he still has! The kids also got a demo on latch hooking and enjoyed their visits.

We then traveled home early Sunday morning and all I can say id THANK GOODNESS FOR THE DVD PLAYER! It took us over 12 hours to get home and that thing saved us from many hours of "he's touching me" "She's inmy space!" and such.

On our trip home Trav and I did come to a realization..we actually like Utah...we'd LOVE to move to Cedar City. This comes from the 2 of us who said we'd "never" move to Utah. But the air is so clear, mountains so pretty, ..sigh...it was very nice. I can't wait for the next trip!!!!

Got brakes, will travel..& stop too!

So this weekend was a bit unordinary. My hubby came home Thursday night to proclaim that he was taking off Friday to do the brakes on our van. (Our van by the way, has quite the taste for brakes. that sucker eats them up at least every 6 months. And NO it's not my driving..it's really a proven fact that our monster van has a rep of going through these suckers like crazy. Don't believe me? Google 2004 Kia sedona and brakes) I thought this was wonderful news. That would mean we could use our Saturday for family fun, or cleaning the house, or something. With in 10 minutes of his declaration he threw his back out!!!! How? By walking, I guess. So he was down for the count and there were still brakes that needed changing.

So how did he spend his glorious day off? Lying on his back. Come Saturday he's still hurting but those brakes were still calling. So we loaded up the fam, went to the inlaws and Trav showed me how to change the brake pads. My dad would be proud. Of course I did not do much of it. Part way through the baby woke up and needed to be fed. I took care of that and headed back to the garage. Trav really did most of the work and a great bro in law, who knows how to do everything, helped out when I got a lug nut stuck in the one wrench thingy. However, I do know how to take off my tire now, how to put them on, how to jack up my car..safely, yeah. So my poor hurt hubby still did most of the work..but I lent a helping hand and am happy that I gained a little bit of knowledge about things mechanical. Ohhh and it was i who noticed the car sounded funny as we left and that the van was shakey....the lug nuts were not tight enough. So the other important lesson....make sure you tighten your, uh, lug nuts! If not, the tire might fall off...ooops!

So now I'm off to go get 2 stinkin' tires for the van...That'll be the last of our van prep for our up coming road trip to Utah... Next will be making sure I have winter clothes for my kiddos...That's another post for another day....

The end of an era...

for our family that is. When Krystia went off to speech in 99 we had no idea how many years we would spend in speech therapy. She'd go to a special pre-school twice a week and participate in speech therapy there. Then in homeschooling we'd travel down to the church building the charter school used to have more speech therapy 2 times a week. Off to public school and she was still in speech. Even in middle school she was still in speech... Well just last year she was exited out. I teared up a bit and was very happy to know she had reached that point.
In the midst of Krystia's speech career Mr. Josh came along and decided he didn't need to talk because everyone spoke for him! When he did begin speaking we could not understand what he was trying to say and he'd get soooo mad!!! I tired to get him into speech at the age of 3, no luck (darn therapist..I KNOW he qualified) anyhow before Kindergarten he "qualified" and had been in speech since. Just last week I had his annual IEP and he had his triennial review/test that we were going to go over. Well, he no longer qualifies! I have to admit he's improved dramatically...if only we could get him to slow down it'd be great!

Sooo after 8.5 years of speech, 13 IEP meetings, countless speech homework forms and a mountain of parental rights notification forms, we are done! I'm proud of my kiddos and how hard they work. I'm grateful for the wonderful speech therapists we've had throughout the years. Let's see what little miss Sophie does....speech or no speech. That question will be answered in about 2.5 to 3 years....

A politically minded child...

I'm not very political, anyone who knows me could tell you it's not my cup of tea. I research issues, candidates, and make an informed choices. But I do not get wrapped up in the hype of it all. Trav is more informed and up to date, but political issues do not rule the dinner table. That's why I am surprised that Ian had such a strong opinion about issues and candidates. He was telling me why I should vote for Obama over Mc Cain and what propositions he felt were important and why he'd vote yes or no on each. I was impressed. This morning the first thing he did after falling out of bed with his blanket wrapped around him, was to mosey on over to the computer to see what had changed since bed time. He enthusiastically announced what props passed that he agreed with. Then I had to chase him away from the computer to get ready for school...but not before I peeked at where prop 8 stood.

This is Halloween....

That was actually for crazy hair day....I had to add it here somehow :)

Okay here is the group halloween pictures taken last night before the school Halloween party:


Not the most flattering pic of my munchkins...but it captured the moment well.




Here's the carving party:

Ian picked out mood music. He settled on.......
The Evan Almighty soundtrack????


Here are the costumes & pumpkins in no particular order

Sophie the Ladybug

Krystia the princess & her twilight pumpkin


Pirate Audrey & her happy pumpkin

Ninja Josh and his pumpkin (It has bullet holes and scars too...but it's still a jolly fellow)

Last, but not least, ninja Ian & his gourd of many faces



One last lady bug for the road.....

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

A song for Christmas

Audrey has the opportunity to audition at the local high school for a solo part in the h.s Christmas concert! Her elementary choir teacher chose her and 2 other girls to go audition on the 14th of next month. So as she practices singing the song over and over and over the family will be in the Christmas spirit in no time! She'd sing a verse from Hark the Herald Angels Sing solo and then she'd sing a song I hadn't heard before with the rest of the choir. We all have our fingers crossed for her and we're happy that she has this opportunity. I have to say that she has confidence in her abilities. She told me, "I have a beautiful voice so I should make it." I feel like I've done a good job on the confidence factor for at least one of my children!

It's not Smurfette...it's Jack!!

So when I was 7...many moons ago...mt dear Momma let me have a birthday party. I remember a neighbor boy named Jimmy, I think, a friend named Heather Crow (how can I remember her name but forget where I put my wallet?) and some other kid all at my aunt Lisa's house. The highlight was the cake...It was SMURFETTE!!! I even got a smurf sleeping bag ladies and gents! That's the one themed birthday I remeber ever having in my life time. Well my awesome hubby surprised me for my birthday this year. The older 2 kids had parent teacher conferrences scheduled at their school that day. I had to meet with 9 different teachers in 2 hours. Well, when I left my sweetie pie was frosting a cake with white. I thought that was sweet and thoughtful. When I arrived home though I found this.....

In case you can't tell..here's the cake....


I had a Halloween birthday with my very own Jack Skellington cake!!! Did I tell you how awesome my hubby is??? He's a plumber as of late, an artist, and a cake decorator :)

I got some pretty cool gifts from the dad and the kiddos...a Sally plush, a mini Jack and Sally, a Jack and Sally figurine, a Jack night shirt AND the new CD from The Nightmare Before Christmas. So that was the highlight of my month and I think Halloween is now one of my favorite holidays!

Some of you may still be asking "What's a Smurf?" Well, I tried to upload a pic of one and it did not work..So go google it :) or find a cartoon on You Tube (it's not like I remember).

it's been busy, as usual...

The kids have been busy with all things school and church related. I shoulda been posting...but now that I have a blog I can't seem to think of anything to blog about. Go figure.

After my second post...about that mountain of trials we had faced in the not so distant past... we had the water heater go out, the cat get sick, and Trav had a flat on his way to work...Yep. We must have some sorta bad karma goin' on here. I'm not sure what it is. Is it something I did, Trav? One of the kids???? Seriously, I know this goes in cycles and I'd just love for us to cycle out of it.

Trav was tired of fixing things due to immediate need so he chose to fix all 3 bathroom sinks because he wanted to. Well, the one sink had a leak underneath and the other didn't work at all, and... let's just say it wasn't immediate...just needed to be done...eventually. So my handy man played the role of plumber today and did a great job!!!! We have 3 shiny new faucets that run both hot AND cold water with stoppers that work too!!! It's beautiful. I think I'll go fill a sink with some warm water now and...splash :)

That email blog from the summer

This was my living room...ahh the date...Sophie was 1 day late at this point. THANK GOODNESS!!! This really was a nesting, prego moms nightmare.

My familyroom...the furniture from the boys room had to go there...but then they had to break open the wall inthere too!!!

the boys room..you can see on the floor where they had repoured the cement and the patching on the wall

Here's that email I had sent to a few people that I thought would make a great blog post. I read over this and thought aside from my aunt passing, geez that week was nothing compared to what happened the following week! That's when we received a $500 gas bill and $300 water bill much to our bewilderment. Come to find out we had a slab leak and I had to have a plumber come in and jack hammer the boys floor open, punch holes in their wall and our family room wall and re-route the hot water line all while being left alone with a parolee (the plumber tells his assistant, "Hey John, your parole officer called while I was out, he needs to talk to ya.")

I've got pics of the disarray that I'll have to add here. Anyhow....I hope you can get a laugh out of some of this.


July 18, 2008
Freezers, Death, broken bones, birthdays, laundry& ants

That sums up my last 7 days give or take,,,

Last Friday: Enter garage to find a puddle at the freezer door. Much to my dismay the kiddos left the door open while getting out the otter pops!!! I had to throw away over $200 in food and quickly figure out what to do with the meat that had begun to defrost but was still in safe mode. I threw the turkey and chicken in trash bags to put in the house fridge and decided we'd be eating those for the next few nights...I rarely cook meat so I tried to turn this into a positive...it got me off my butt to cook a nice meal or two for the family.

Meanwhile the ants invaded again, even after the exterminator had come 10 days prior. I noticed them coming out of that little overflow drain in the 2nd sink in the master bath. So the kid in me comes out and I take a small dixie cup of water and pour it down that tiny little hole. BIG MISTAKE!!!!! They literally poured out of that tiny hole and the main drain! I cloroxed and used hot water thinking all would be okay. DH gets home and uses the "big spray" that I absolutely hate using indoors. Before he sprays he says "What are they attacking on the counter?' I tell him I've cleared EVERYTHING off. Turns out they were building a freaking nest on my counter. So I have a nasty pic of them carrying their eggs, larvae etc.. just so the exterminator would believe me when he came back. DISGUSTING!!!

Move on to Sunday....I decide it'd be good timing to cook that turkey now mostly defrosted in my fridge in the trash bag. Well....now it was time to clean the fridge..it had leaked turkey blood through the bag ALL over the bottom shelf and into my newly filled crisper drawers. I had to toss ALL OF MY PRODUCE!!! I cried about the lettuce and grapes. Poor DH offered to run to the store and buy more..very sweet considering we don't shop on Sunday's. So now I have a twice defrosted freezer (purposely defrosted it 5 days before the otter pop incident) and a sparkling clean fridge. We proceed to cook the turkey (it's about 100 degrees outside) and what was supposed to be a 3.5 hour cook time took 6 flipping hours! We were eating dinner at 8. Unheard of in our house. 1/2 the kids are in bed by that time!!!!!

Move on to Monday..new call from my mom about my alcoholic aunt...she's not doing well. She puts the phone up to her so I can "say my good byes (can't travel there..over 2,000 miles away) and all I can hear is her labored breathing and moaning. Totally lost it!

Tuesday I get the call that they are unplugging everything and that she'd slip away any day.

Wednesday morning, just as the kids are all piling in my bed and ready to send daddy off to work my mom calls to let me know that my aunt is now gone. I actually did really well with this because I know she's soooo much better off.

Wed afternoon...we go to get more otter pops out of that twice defrosted freezer to find what????? SOMEONE LEFT THE DARN DOOR OPEN AGAIN!!!! All that was left were otter pops and 1 bag of meatballs I had moved out there..but still..So I grounded our family from otter pops for the summer. I refuse to buy them! They've cost me way over $300 stinking dollars in 1 week alone with all the food gone.

Wednesday night...DD #1 is getting ready for a church activity...I asked her to find her phone. She jumps over her brother who's lying on the floor and she trips over him and lads on the floor by catching herself with her right arm. I knew right away it wan't good. She turned greyish and cried and cried. Poor brotehr kinda got kicked in the tummy..but he's all good. So off to urgent care we went, instead of church. The dr see's her gets xrays, sees nothing broken and says it's a sprain. We go home with it wrapped in an ace bandage.

I started having painful contractions and then panicked at all I have to do..including laundry!

Thursday...we have a movie/shopping routine for thursday that we do. Plus it's DS 11th birthday! FuN!!!
On our way home from the shopping trip (had to buy food to restock that poor freezer!) I check my home messages and there's one from urgent care saying I need to call them. Well, I call when I get home I cal and they say.."oh the radiologist read the xrays and says your daughter has a fracture. We need to see her so we can splint her arm" WTH???? Call DH who insists on coming home to watch the other kids do DS doesn't have to spend his b-day at urgent care with his sis. So now my DD has a splint from finger tip to arm pit! The u/c dr today was amazed she has a fracture because she can mover her arm with no problems. they called over and had the orthopedic surgeon double check and sure enough it's chipped near her elbow.

Tonight we went out to eat for my sons b-day and I started to double over from sharp cervical ( I thought) pains. I barely made it through dinner and DH is all excited thinking this is it. I'm telling him no..not contractions..just a little girl who like to use my cervix as bongo drum. Finally get home, had several urgent BM's (sorry tmi) and I'm all better, to my families dismay.

However it's 1:00 am I'm wide awake, sorted and folded a ton of laundry. I have that stain remover I so desperately wanted to buy Wed. night when I thought it might be time for baby and have a pile of clothes soaking in it now. While I was beginning to type this DS comes in to tell me he had an ant on his bed!!! AAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! We stripped his bed down and aside from the 10 books and other misc. items in his bed there were no ants. *sigh of relief* I concluded it must have been his imagination since he and his big sis had just watched Harry Potter 2 and they have that yucky spider scene. He now has my mag lite in his bed and is cozy and secure. Actually he's been asleep for well over an hour.

I've arrived

Here I am. Entering the blogging world. I actually wanted to do this months ago. My first idea was to create a blog titled "Transformation of a Crappy House Wife" and document my progress around the house and with all things domestic. You see how far that got..and if you've been by recently you'll know that not much transforming has happened. Shoot.. shoulda took a before pic of my bathroom counter and corner...(okay I'm getting side tracked)

My other burst of blogsperation came when I was 9 months pregnant with munchkin # 5 and our house was falling apart among other things. It was a laugh or cry kinda situation and I did both. I wrote down all the things going on, emailed it to a friend, and thought "this would make a good post on a blog." I think I will search my emails for that one and post it here.

I think I'm gonna like this....once I figure out how to customize my template, add pics, etc.... But for now I have lunch waiting to be eaten, laundry to be folded and put away, lists to be made, emails to reply to, and teachers to call.