The Hanson Crew

This past year, John has started advertising on billboards around KC.  They rotate around town so the first one was near downtown for about a month.  This month, it was moved in the Northland pretty close to our house. We were excited to drive by it and get a picture on Friday night while we were on a dinner date.  There was a funny story to share about taking this picture... The billboard is a newer digital one, that actually rotates between 3 businesses.  So depending on how slow you are driving when you drive past it, you may only see 2 of the 3 businesses.  Well when we entered the interstate where the billboard is, we noticed it was on the first business.  So John slowed down quite a bit so I could get the picture when it was rotated to the Maids ad.  Because he slowed down quite a bit, he turned his flashers on and stayed in the slow lane while I had my camera ready.  Keep in mind this is a 3 lane interstate and cars go a little faster through this part because of an on ramp

 On Friday at preschool, we celebrated Jonathan's May birthday with a good friend from church who has an April birthday.  We picked a median date for the two to celebrate together :) Libby tuned 5 around Caleb's birthday and Jonathan will turn 5 on May 15th.  Libby's mom made amazing bags of white chocolate popcorn with a birthday cake cake mix in it for each child and we made little bubble gifts for each friend.  I think both were a huge hit!  The bonus thing about being the birthday kid in preschool is that you get to pick the book for story time, wear a cool birthday crown, hold Clifford the Dog and sit in the birthday bean bag chair.  Both Libby and Jonathan enjoyed those pleasures.  Here are a few pics from the celebration...

This past weekend was our church annual  Spring Women's Retreat.  It was the second retreat I planned and organized in a row (along with a couple luncheons and a few summer homemaking classes in between).  It was a success!  The location was wonderful and all the women seemed to be re-energized and blessed by my planning. I have decided to step down from the Events Coordinator role at my church and focus more on my family and our family business the next two years.  John and I would really like to be more involved in mission work as well.  I am very excited about the time that I will have now that this time commitment is gone. It has been a very rewarding job the past 2 years and I have been very blessed by the experience.  I will keep you all posted on some of the things we are most excited about accomplishing the next few years...

Our crew with cousin Rylee after church service on Easter morning.

We celebrated with family on Monday evening...

While John was in Omaha for his annual Maids convention, the kids and I took advantage of the fancy hotel stay. I was able to participate in one Maids evening and took the kids swimming. We spent most of Saturday letterboxing at a beautiful lake. Because we got a little lost at first, we ended up walking 4 miles. And we found 4 letterboxes!! That was the most we have found for one day. We also saw Great-grandma Steiner and played on the Old Market slide again. Here are a few pics from the fun...

Sorry once again for my lack of blog posts.  It has been a busy couple weeks.  Grandma Sue and Grandpa Gary migrated back to Kansas City.  They have become snowbirds and will be spending winter in warmer climates going forward.  John's annual Maids convention took place last weekend in Omaha so our whole crew got to enjoy a mini-vacation up there for a few days.  I have some pics I'll share soon from that trip. I have been busy planning another Women's retreat for our church.  That is in two weeks.  It somehow helps to know it is my last event I have to plan.  I have decided to become more involved at the Maids, which is turning out to be pretty fun and rewarding.  We are working on some year end goals together that I hope to see reached in December. We haven't worked together for 15 years when we met at Blockbuster Video.  I think it will be a little more fun being married and working together than dating.  But I'll keep you posted on how that is going soon...