Hanson Crew

Try your skill at carving a Pumpkin ! Since we missed actually carving a pumpkin this year, our kids thought this was pretty neat. This was Joshua's pumpkin he made today. To all those who celebrate halloween, have a great evening!

Yep, both people and money. We are on a pretty tight budget around here and try to eat for about $1 per person per meal. Well, even though Jonathan is not eating solids, I use his dollar for my meal since my appetite is a little bigger while nursing (at least that is what I tell myself!) So we are always looking for creative, cheap dinner meals! Anyway, we tried a new one yesterday and I thought I would share. Our favorite is still the $5.99 Papa Murphy's pizza, but this was really close... We bought a Chipolte Rotisserie Chicken from Walmart for $4.97, took off the chicken and made spicy chicken tacos (shells - $1.00). It sure was yummy and quite the change from our normal beef taco meal. Best news, total prep/cook time was about 10 minutes. We even had left over chicken today for soft tacos for lunch. Now we have the dollar to justify renting Spiderman 3 today from the Red Box - Yah !! If you have any other cheap meal ideas, please send them our way (we are getting tired of h...

I just saw this on a Justin Taylor's blog and couldn't believe it! This is the last play of the SCAC title game between Trinity University and Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi on October 27, 2007 with 0:02 left on the clock

...to sit up and getting my first tooth! Yah!

Yep, you guessed it - my favorite fast food chain of all time is giving away free tacos on Tuesday from 2 pm -5 pm at participating stores according to my little sister who is a huge Rockies fan!!! Go out and get some if you can!!

Even though we haven't seen any snow like you all in Colorado, or much frost like you in Washington, the Hanson Crew officially turned on our heater this morning when we woke up for about an hour!! Fall is here!

Dressed in fall colors for our fun fall day Ready for some boy time with mommy Daddy gave grandma some time off to enjoy the day too!

The boys, Grandma Sue and I all went to a pumpkin patch today We were the only ones there so it was pretty neat to get a tour alone The pumpkins were not very good or big, but we found one We rode the "train" instead of the hayride all over the farm The boys were sure glad Grandma could come with us.

She is getting so big and so smart! We started a new birthday tradition today, a mother/daughter lunch to Red Robin (John is doing the same for the boys). We had a great lunch with a yummy ice cream sundae for dessert. Ashlyn is a real blessing to our family and is such a mommy's helper. We love her very much!

We celebrated Ashlyn's 7 th birthday today at her grandma Sue's house with about 15 of her friends from school and church (plus about 5 of their younger siblings). We had a rainbow theme because we wanted to incorporate Ashlyn's favorite color, orange. We had everyone wear a bright, favorite color from the rainbow. We had an M&M scavenger hunt in the backyard where each team had to find six colors of the rainbow (M&Ms) using clues that rhymed (one example: "To find the first color of your M&M rainbow, you must go to the instrument that will tell you which way the wind will blow"). They would find a bag of red M&Ms under the wind direction thing in her yard (weather vane?) Anyway, that was a huge success and everyone enjoyed being out in the 80 degree weather! We also told the story of Noah's Ark and the reason we have rainbows. Then they colored a rainbow picture and looked under their plates to see who got the 3 rainbows under their plate...

Had to end a long day listening to an old favorite song...oh, the memories of high school dances with great friends. Good night!

...and enjoying every minute of it (finally on his tummy)!

We made a " Lazytown " brownie dessert following his special Red Robin lunch with dad. His new favorite superhero these days is Sportacus. He loved the singing birthday card which sang "Who let the dogs out!" We played outside this morning trying out the new Spiderman bike. He will have a party with the grandparents on Sunday where he will be overwhelmed with other gifts and love.

So we had our annual fall church picnic this Sat, but because of the rain missed out on the kids' favorite part - the hayride. We also didn't get to have the face painting, games, or picnic blankets spread throughout our beautiful green acreage with children everywhere. We did however get to see something new and even though our family was a little too "chicken" to try the pig, we had to capture it on camera! John and I did try this similar meal in Hawaii at a Luau , but just didn't have the appetite after seeing this one :) Still think of Wilbur the pig on days like these!

I had seen this about a year ago and it made me laugh. Have a great weekend!

I was hoping this song was at our Stand conference in Minneapolis, but it didn't make their great songlist. I first heard it at a friend's funeral in CO and her husband met us in MN this year at the conference. So I wanted to share this song in memory of our friend Lisa Diane Eckert who is walking now with God (she was paralyzed on earth at 26).

Ella, Audrey, Joshua (future fireman) and Caleb with their fun "stuff" Library time yesterday included firemen, Sparky the dog, 2 fire trucks and about 100 kids! We had a fun time with some friends and then went to the park after to play. It doesn't feel like fall here quite yet during the day (a little in the evenings)!

We got to spend about about 4 1/2 hours with some friends last week to help our friends work on their new house kid-free. We had a blast with their 3 kids and we got to see what it would be like to have 7 kids ( two 6 year olds , two 4 year olds , one 2 1/2 year old, one 22 months, and one 4 1/2 months). Boy how blessed and busy are those moms with this many children! I am feeling a little less busy this week and sure look forward to more play days with these good friends!

While I was at a baby shower this weekend, the boys all watched Star Wars for the first time with dad. It was actually Joshua's idea who is really into watching movies right now, especially Disney Classics. He was Darth Vader last year for Halloween because I got the costume clearanced from the year before and Josh had no idea who that guys was. Now he knows he is a bad guy. We were talking today about the movie and what he had to say cracked me up. Here is what Joshua said Star Wars is all about (the old original Star Wars by the way)... "Well first Luke was on an airplane with some other guy trying to get to Prince Louis's plane (aka Princess Leia). There was a silver robot who got all tangled in cords, but he got out! Darth Vader was the bad guy with the red light who was mean. At the end there is a wedding ceremony where prince Louie changes her hair into prettier pig tails and everything is really pretty at the ceremony. Sam was a baby dog on this movie. (??? not sure...

So I had began writing a book for Ashlyn when she was first born with hopes of actually typing it out on an old-fashioned type writer, getting it bound and presented to her as a Christmas gift or something a few months after it was written. Well, six years later, I am on page 15. The story began pretty simple and was kinda like a autobiography of my life hoping to merge into hers. It was pretty humorous and made fun of most of my crazy life of 23 years (at the time I started!) With all that said, I have decided to go another route. I have been reading in the book of Psalms lately and decided to give poetry a try. This book is going to be much shorter and perfect for her to read. I am envisioning a digital 8 x8 memory book where I can put an enlarged black and white picture of her on each page with each stanza in a pretty colorful font overlapping part of the picture, maybe about 20 pages. Last night I got pretty far with some basic thoughts and ideas. It is the first draft, but I thou...

Ashlyn is our only child who has a bedtime ritual. I say ritual because if it is not done the correct way each night, she freaks out. We made the mistake of starting this when she was about 2 1/2 and quickly learned to not start one with our other 3 kids. Here is the routine: Turn on her lamp, start her worship/bible verses CD at a certain sound level, tuck her under her covers, shut the closet door, and kiss her goodnight (usually followed by 'I love you with all my see ya in the morning goodnight heart'). It's crazy! She is okay when she is at grandma's house without a few of these things, but not here. All 3 boys can be put to bed in complete darkness wide awake and fall asleep staring at the open closet door in silence. But not Ashlyn. So I had to share that she has added something new this week to her ritual. She is now sleeping with a sleep eye mask that we got in our hotel room in Minneapolis. I asked her last night, "Do you mind if we turn your lamp off now...

We were discussing this song driving back from MN this weekend and couldn't remember who sang it with Jennifer Knapp...yep, it is Mac Powell from 3rd Day. This song was one of our favorites back when we saw her in concert with Jars of Clay and Sean Groves!

Jonathan had his four month check up today and we're excited to let ya know how big he has gotten. He has always been in the 97 th percentile in weight, but only the 50 th in height (yep, short and chunky ). So today we are excited to announce that he has become tall and chunky ! He is in the 90 th percentile for both height and weight now (weighing almost 18 pounds and measuring almost 26 inches). His head remained in the 60 th percent. We are sure that with all that roll it might be while before he can actually roll over, but it is coming. It's funny to see how many people think he is 6 or 7 months old when they first see him and I have to explain he is only 4 1/2 months old. If he continues to take after the other Hanson kids, he'll be in the 25 th percentile before you know it! For now, he is our proud chunky monkey!

So we just got back from the Piper conference in Minneapolis for our third time. Again, it proved refreshing and glorifying. We have gone all three years with our good friends, the Knorrs . The first year we took Caleb (about 5 months old) along to the conference, last year Lisa and I skipped the actual conference and went to the Mall and hung out scrapbooking and this year we took both baby boys (Jonathan - 4 months and Isaac - 2 months) and met up with an old friend who lives in Indiana - Steve Eckert (we met him back in Colorado when we all lived there). There were also about 20 people from our church there, so we spent most of our breaks talking to people or walking around downtown Minneapolis. It was a great weekend! The boys did great at the conference and only went to the cry room a couple times (this was one of my favorite additions this year for all the sweet babies who attended - the sound booth in the auditorium where you could still be in the conference but no one coul...