The Hanson Crew

from our crew to yours!

This year marked our fourth year being home together on Christmas Day. We loved it! We slept in, opened gifts while we enjoyed homemade cinnamon rolls, and took our time. Then we all made our traditional Christmas brunch together. After breakfast, we played with some new toys and played some board games. Then we tried making a new tradition that John's family always did on Christmas Day - homemade chicken and dumplings. They turned out great! And we had fun talking to our family in AZ who was making them at the same time as us. After that meal, we enjoyed a new movie and used our theatre popcorn machine we got from Papa Phil and Gramma Velma. It was a great day. Here are a few pics...

Ashlyn and I spent some time this year making a few Christmas gifts together. We didn't get pictures of each one, but we took a few. Here are some of the things we made...

We celebrated Christmas Eve with my mom and her boyfriend Larry.  It was small and intimate.  We finished cooking dinner together and then opened presents.  They stayed a little while after while we played with a few favorite toys and then headed back home.  It was a relaxing, nice way to celebrate Christmas Eve.  We enjoyed ham, baked potatoes, green bean casserole, corn, salad, and dinner rolls. I remembered my camera this time so I have a few pictures to share of the fun...

Today was our first family celebration for Christmas this year.  We celebrated with Grandma Sue and Grandpa Gary today.  The main reason for the early celebration is because our family has enjoyed Christmas Eve with my mom the past 3 years (while they were in the Philippines with Carol and Rylee).  And we really enjoy Christmas morning with just our crew.  So I asked her to celebrate Christmas with them Christmas evening, but she was afraid the kids would be too tired and not excited about her presents.  So we moved it to the Sunday before.  We started the day with a Christmas service and then headed over to their house for dinner, gifts, and games. Because the Cordovas planned on going to their house all of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, they did not come to our celebration.  So it was just our crew and the grandparents. We enjoyed marinated Pork chops, baked potatoes, green bean casserole, dinner rolls, strawberry casserole, and Oreo pie.  It was delicious.  Then we opened gift

Joshua has a mild prescription for glasses now and we tried to go shopping together for new frames. Looks like we will try again tomorrow when John can go too..we didn't agree on the same ones.

Twas the Night Before Christmas play at Line Creek Elementary...Jonathan was a reindeer and did a great job!  Grandma Sue, Daddy, Mommy, and Ashlyn were all in attendance for the big show. 

Took a fun, family road trip to Arizona where we hung out with John's aunt, uncle, grandparents, and cousins. It was our first time driving there. Jonathan started Kindergarten in August and loves it! He attends the public school near our home and has a wonderful teacher who has him reading a writing like a pro already. John and Deanna enjoyed an annual couples getaway to Minneapolis in Sept while Grandma Sue watched all four kids for us John and Ashlyn volunteered at Voice of the Martyrs in Oklahoma for a few days serving the persecuted church Ashlyn began homeschooling in August full time for 6th grade and really enjoys it.  Deanna does too - we are looking forward to next semester and for the opportunity this year to really bond Both Caleb (2nd grade) and Joshua (3rd grade) attend Faith Christian Academy this year going MWF and working at home Tues/Thurs. They are both enjoying school so far this year. Deanna, Grandma Peggy and all four kids took a fun road trip to St. Lo

So last night around midnight, I woke up to a horrible smell in my bedroom.  It smelled like a fire of some kind, almost like it does when you first start your heater after a warm summer.  I woke up John and we walked around trying to find the "fire." But we never could find where the smell originated so we turned off the heater, brought Ashlyn upstairs with the rest of us just in case there really was a fire, and went back to bed.  Our hope was that when we woke up, we would turn the power back on and the smell would be gone.  Well, when we turned it on in the morning, nothing happened.  The heater never came back on.  We called a friend of ours to come take a look at it after he got off work.  Ashlyn and I survived the 55 degree house by hanging out at the library for part of the day and sitting by our new electric heater the rest of the day.  Then the boys joined us.  We were so excited that around 6 pm, our friend came out and found the problem right away. The problem h

Ashlyn and I scored another tall bookshelf off Craigslist last week for $15 and was able to re-organize our school corner again.  We really need the shelves we got for all the supplies, books, and folders we use all the time.  I was also able to pick up a cool electric stove heater for the room to help with the winter months out there.  Jonathan can reach all of his fun Kindergarten puzzles and games now to when he wants to play them after school.  Next project - Organizing Ashlyn's trunk I bought last summer.  I am going to take out all the photos and art projects I have been storing in there and make it a "mother-daughter trunk" of things I want to pass on to her.  We're excited to fill it up next spring while we finish homeschooling with recipes, crafts and other memorable things we worked on this past year.

On Black Friday, Grandma Peggy, Ashlyn and I ventured out to Old Navy for some great fleece deals around 1 am.  Little did we know that our hour long wait to checkout would end in such great value!  When we checked out, we each received a plastic Wii U card with a serial number on the back. My mom gave us hers and we went online the weekend after and entered in our 3 codes to see if we would win a new Wii U from any of our cards.  The store said they were giving away 1,000 Wii U's which sell for around $400 each.  We were amazed that two of our codes said we won.  Our confirmation email said they would ship them in about 4-6 weeks, which would be around Christmas.  I didn't know if I should tell the kids because I wasn't sure how real it was and if we would really get them in the mail.  Well, today we were excited to find out it was REAL!! We got them in the mail, no strings attached.  THANK YOU OLD NAVY and WII!  We can't wait to hook it up and give it a try after