The Hanson Crew

Jonathan's new favorite form of exercise...and he is really good. He jumps really high and just smiles the whole time!

...in our bedroom. My in-laws were told by their interior decorator that a room always looks bigger if you are facing the bed when you walk into the room. We are trying it out in our bedroom and it doesn't look too bad (with the new paint, curtains, and decor). I even gave my couch and love seat a small makeover this past month and tried them at a new angle in the middle of the living room. Amazing how "new" the room feels!

After a few emails with this video, I thought I would share it. The kids really enjoyed it :0)

If there is one fear I really have as an adult it is clearly passing a truck driver on the interstate. I literally hold my breathe as I speed pass them each time. My husband will agree that it is a little ridiculous how much I am afraid of them. The funny thing is I am not alone in my craziness...we must have had some freak accident almost happen as a child because my younger sister is exactly the same way. When we are together we practically scare everyone else in the car as we chant "go go go" 80 MPH in the fast lane around them, leaning toward the driver window. Yes, we are related to three truck drivers and have actually been inside numerous truck cabs before, you would never guess that though driving with us in a car. There are many converations you can have with a truck driver as you drive besides "go go go." When we were younger, we would do the typical fun thing all children do and pretend to pull the large string hanging by our window in order to hear them

The funny lady who wrote the E-Bay ad I shared a couple days ago has a blog . It is pretty funny too so I wanted to share it with you. I am going to become a daily reader of this one and thought many of you with multiple children could totally relate.

Top to bottom: Great-grandpa Pat, Great-grandma Shirley, Grandpa Gary, Grandma Sue, Aunt Carol, Caleb, John, cousin Rylee, Ashlyn, Joshua, Deanna, and Jonathan

My friend Dani sent this link to me in an email and it cracked me up...I am not sure how long the ad will stay on there since the bidding has ended. "Lot of Pokemon Cards my children sneaked by me" And I thought my Wal-mart trips are interesting with four little ones!!!

We got the result today from Caleb's speech pathologist appointment. She tested him using a preschool language scale (PLS-4) and tested both his auditory comprehension and expressive communication ability. We knew he was doing great at the auditory comprehension - the part where he can hear and follow commands, etc. He needed to have an average score for these two parts with a 50% delay to qualify for this program. He did not have that bad of a delay and did not qualify for their program, which is good and bad. Great that the delay is not severe, bad because most others programs do not begin until 36 months. He is 28 months old now, and understands/hears like a 27 month old. He speaks/communicates like a 20 month old. The next step is to seek further speech-articulation intervention/therapy. We are going to try the Clay County Speech therapy program next, hopefully next week. Then, when he is closer to 3, the school districts program. We'll keep you posted on his progress.

Last year we had wasps all around our house, which scared us all the time. This year, crickets everywhere, especially our basement!! They are loud and just fall apart when you kill em, YUCK!!! Josh is our brave bug catcher - the rest of us, run as they hop toward us... are you seeing them all over too???

I saw this trailer today and got so excited to see it...I like all the actors and the idea of the plot. Comes out Feb 2008, right after 24 starts up again :o)

Jonathan has officially hit the cute age where he smiles/grins at anyone who talks to him. We just love this age and his adorable smile. He is looking a little more like Ashlyn now, and sometimes the way his mommy looked when she was a baby. Here are a couple pictures taken today.

Well, we all survived the first day of school this year. Ashlyn had a great time and enjoys her new teacher, Mrs. Denny. The boys I and got to visit John at work in the morning, ate breakfast at McDs , and got in a two hour nap just in time for her arrival back home. That is going to become our new tradition without her - naptime - we all forgot what that was like for awhile and everyone, even mom, quickly remembered the joy in that time. We'll keep you posted on that too. Ashlyn's favorite thing about yesterday was having 3 recess time. Our favorite time, probably the nap :0) More to come, we are going to teach Joshua to read this year during our home school time. A friend from CO teaches her children to read between 2 and 3 and we are excited to try it out too. We'll keep you posted on his progress and Caleb's speech concerns as we work on them.

Ashlyn is getting to be quite the helper in the Hanson household and tomorrow will be her first day of school as a 1st grader! Going to first grade is a huge deal because she will be going for a full day now from 8:00 until 3:30 (on Mon, Wed, and Fri). What will we do without her!! I am sure we will turn to trains and cars for most of our excitement, but we will sure miss her a bunch. We are going to become early risers now (at least those 3 days) in order to get to North KC by 8:00...we'll let ya know how that all goes in a few weeks. We're also moving our weekly Walmart trip to Tuesday now. Ashlyn is most excited about her full day because she will go to PE, Music, and Art classes now, as well as lunch. We'll add a post soon about her new class. Here's a big hooray for our big girl Ashlyn!

Experts say that as a child develops and grow they tend excel in one of two categories: verbal skills or motor skills. Caleb has clearly been a motor skilled child. He was running and climbing before even thinking of a word! We became a little worried when he turned 2 and other kids his age were really talking and he was still babbling. Joshua wasn't completely clear until around 3 so we asked our pediatrician. She said to not be concerned until he was 2 1/2. He will be that age in October, but just to make sure he isn't too far behind, we are applying to an organization called First Steps . It is a state funded company that helps children (birth to age 3) with developmental delays, in our case speech therapy. Our initial visit for Caleb is on Monday and we will find out if his delay is bad enough to need therapy (needs to be a 50% delay). We'll keep you posted on how it goes, we think his tongue muscles are not developed completely . If your child seems to be having some

Today is our 9 th wedding anniversary and John surprised me with babysitting and a dinner invitation. We went to a small town BBQ restaurant in Kearney and opened presents there. We have always used the table of traditional anniversary gifts for our presents so with that list came our "Willow" anniversary. It was a tough one for me...I finally found a willow basket and wrapped a computer game that John has been wanting again (we lost our old Sims license key so we could not install it on this new computer) in it. John bought me the Promise Willow tree figurine (I've always wanted one of these) so we were both surprised. We enjoyed BBQ and shared a brownie delight dessert, it was wonderful! All four kids managed to be great for their great-grandparents here from AZ. Next year is tin or aluminum so we better think ahead on that one too...Happy 9 th Anniversary John!

A.A.A.D.D. -- Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder This is how it manifests: I decide to water my garden. As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing. As I start toward the garage, I notice mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full. So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first. But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first. I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only 1 check left. My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Coke I'd been drinking. I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the Coke so that I don't accid

We filled our tummy's and then played! Our favorite game and the way we won all our cool prizes! A fun time for Joshua, Ashlyn and Daddy The boys loved the car games!

We just got in from a short family vacation to Omaha, NE today and we thought we would share what we did. We drove in Friday night and slept at John's grandma's house (its about a 3 hour drive). The kids enjoyed catching up with their great-grandma that night. We got up Saturday morning and went to the Omaha Zoo . Grandma's a zoo member so it only cost $10 for all of us to get in :) After the zoo, we showered and went to the Amazing Pizza Machine , which was a blast (thanks Lisa for the idea). We then all went back to the house and watched High School Musical , just in time for the sequel on Friday. We got to visit with John's Aunt Sandy on Sunday morning, eat lunch with great-grandma and then drive back to KC, arriving back home about 4:00. Overall, it was an awesome vacation and very relaxing! The kids did great in the car and in Omaha. Nothing like a bunch of monkeys, a buffet and Hanson humor to get a family together! Lots of pictures coming soon....

Caleb was our first child to have a real "favorite" toy. Ashlyn was really close to a small doll named Molly for a few months, but it never stuck like this puppy. His official name is "ba ba" ever since Caleb was about 1. We have lost the puppy before and spent hours looking for him. Caleb just LOVES this puppy and sleeps with him, chews on him, and just wants to take it everywhere. Well, he has survived the past 4 days without him. We noticed he was missing about 3 days ago, but wanted to see how he would react. He never brought it up! Yesterday, we spent a vast majority of our morning looking for it and decided he is hidden a little too good this time in our house. We know it wasn't taken anywhere this week so it is here somewhere. John and I have decided to utilize this opportunity :) We told him the puppy has gone bye-bye and to start sleeping with a couple other animals (the ones with no real attachment). He is okay with it so far. We do hope t

The Main wall with our new "Cars" theme Jonathan's picture on that wall Joshua and Caleb's picture on that same wall Their new red lamp with Cars stickers on it The window valance I made that will match the bed skirt I am making Above the crib, some pictures of Jonathan A couple flags we made to go with the theme (Still to come...matching Cars bedding for all 3!)

We went ahead and tried the big RedBox DVD Rental stand yesterday at McDonald's and I had to write and tell you that "I'm Lovin' It". This is the best invention in DVD rentals so far. You pick the movie you want to rent from a list of about 60 movies, you insert your credit card, it charges the card $1.07, enter an email address and out pops your movie. The movie is due the next day by 7:00 pm, and if you don't return it, your card will be charged another $1.07 for each day you keep it. At 25 days, you own the movie for about $27 dollars. Not a bad deal at all, especially for us prompt renters!! We are going to be renting from there for some newer releases - we go to the library for all our older favorites all the time. That is still the best free way to get a movie, especially a kids movie...and Inter Library Loan allows you to request it online from your house. The kids love getting the mail that tells them their movie is in. We get about 6-8 movies

The crew went to the Drive-In last night and had a great time. We tried a different theatre than where we typically go and that made the experience interesting! We went to the I-70 drive-in over by the Sports Stadium in Independence. It looked abandoned and something from a horror show. A few more people came later, which helped us feel a little less uncomfortable. It was a Monday night so we figured it would be a little less busy - and then we got to switch movies after the first one to see Transformers instead of I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry (they said that was allowed since it wasn't busy). The kids did great and really enjoyed going. We had a hard time finding the interstate after we left, which was a little scary in the neighborhood we were in. We recommend The Bourne Ultimatum and enjoyed Transformers as well. What an adventure!

Especially when we go to Walmart - we all have specific jobs. Ashlyn pushes the stroller with Jonathan as the designated rider. Joshua puts the groceries in the cart. Deanna pushes the cart, while Caleb keeps her entertained in his designated spot as "list guy". It has become a regular Monday tradition! Now if we could only cut our bathroom breaks down to two again. We've got a great team.

Here is a crazy video of Ashlyn moving her loose tooth with her tongue...it was crazy enough for me to record it :)

Last night, the whole family went to the Kearney Theatre in the Park and had a great time. We saw the play "Sugar," which is based on the screenplay "Some Like it Hot." It was pretty funny and something different to do. The actors included high school students as well as adults (and I think one or two children). We're going to try it again next summer if we are still in Kearney. We also spent the morning at this park at a kids festival looking at fire trucks, playing games, more jumping toys, and watching a helicptor land and take off. It was a great family day! We are also planning a mini-family vacation for next weekend to Omaha. We plan to visit great-grandma and go to the zoo. We might try a swimming outing or a visit to a new pizzeria. We'll keep you posted. John and Jonathan enjoying the play after the sunset.

Platte-Clay Electric every year has this huge annual meeting up in Kearney for all of it's co-op members. We have gone the past 3 years and really enjoyed it. The first year I tackled it on my own (John works late on Thursdays). Caleb was only a few months old and slept most of the time so it wasn't too bad. The next year was a little harder, but I had my mom go too so that Ashlyn and Joshua could do more rides while I took care of Caleb. This year was a little more challenging even with my mom there. When you first get there, we register for a bunch of prizes and get our annual check ($17). Then we get a free meal, even kid's meal from McD's. Then we enjoyed some free ice cream from the ice cream truck (we did that a few times!) and went to get our free caricatures done. Then we tried multiple rides and blow up toys - the lines weren't too bad, and Caleb managed to finish them all but one (he got stuck climbing a big wall). Lastly, there is a meeting you go to a

and not too sure about it!

"Joshua being Joshua"

We are all in shock about this horrible disaster. It is the interstate we take to go to Minneapolis and we are planning a trip there for Sept. (a DG conference that will be only a couple miles from this bridge). It is very sad to watch the news tonight online. John Piper wrote a very good response to the collapse a couple hours after the event on the Desiring God blog that I wanted to share. Please take a moment to read it if you can.... Putting My Daughter to Bed Two Hours after the Bridge Collapsed by John Piper

Yesterday, we had some good friends come to stay with us from Colorado for the night while driving back from Omaha and had a fun time touring the KC area. We went to Union Station, Crown Center, Jack Stack BBQ, Sheridan's Custard, and the Liberty Memorial....nothing like some good ol' KC history, BBQ, and custard! Unfortunately, the museum part of the memorial closed at 5:00 so we did not get to go through the inside, but we were all in awe of the outside. It is such a neat place to visit and reminds me of something you would see in Washington DC. If you are ever in the area, we recommend you check it out. We probably looked crazy with their 5 kids and our 4 running all over the stairs and grass, but we really enjoyed the last July evening there. John and the kids want to go back again soon to see the inside and walk around some more. We'll take some pictures then of the WWI memorabilia and other historical stuff. If anyone here in KC has gone, please feel free to comment

More to come...homemade curtains, new lamp shade, some pictures, and matching bunk bed bedding.