The Hanson Crew

Whoohoo!!! 5 days on the market and we have an agreed upon offer. We are starting contract stuff, inspections, and what other stuff that has to happen when you sell your first house...our closing date is July 15th. So now, we need to find one :) We went to an open house today and fell in love with it right away. The backyard is amazing and the house has much more square footage than our existing one. It was very good to see that there is possibility in our price range on the day we went "pending." We have appointments to go on Wed all day and look through tons more. We'll keep ya posted on how it all goes! It's all very exciting!

So we heard back from the first offer again and they refused our counter offer. So we submitted the next counter offer to the 2 nd family. Both offers we originally received were pretty low (because of the great market we are in), but this one was better than the first. We countered with the same offer that the first family refused. Keep us in your prayers as we wait again for this call. It is really hard not knowing when they will call. It should happen sometime today. If they also refuse, then we will keep our carpet clean for Monday and head into our 5 th day on the market! There are 2 showings scheduled for this next week already. If they counter back, we will then need to decided how much less we will take and go from there....We are more excited about this close date which isn't until the end of July. The first offer had a closing date of June 29 th which scared us all a little bit. We know that God has a plan in our life for our house and the timing for this all and are

Tues morning - Put sign in the yard & schedule carpet cleaning for next Mon Wed morning - entered into the MLS system and online (a few sites) Thurs morning - take some pics and put them online, start talking about the flyer Friday morning - went to look at a house for the first time - no luck Friday afternoon - surprised by first showing, followed by 3 more showings all within the same 2 hour time frame Friday evening - a second showing occurs and first offer comes in (not second showing person) Sat morning - a second offer comes in (still not second showing person) and first counter sent Sat evening - awaiting counter from first offer, with second offer counter in hand to submit if the 1st offer doesn't work out. Canceled flyer and carpet cleaning...started looking more online to buy a house....called in-laws to see if we could live with them for a month or two....ha! Getting very anxious for the next phone call! We'll keep ya posted as it all plays out....

or helmet as Caleb called it today at speech. So funny! Remember to put your helmet on too!

We are officially on the market!!! And yes, I managed to miss my first call about a showing. This summer might be a little more stressful than relaxing. We are very excited the hard labor part is done and will be working on the picking up part hourly. Better luck tomorrow.

Today was Joshua's last day of preschool and the school had an awards program. Mrs. Yeomans was an excellent teacher and friend to our family. She presented Joshua with a diploma and the "peacemaker" award. She said he was the child who always helped other kids and made sure everyone was involved and friends. He was given a Dove chocolate bar representing his peacemaking skills! It was very cute! He also got his report card and got all outstandings, but one - completing his work in a timely matter. He tends to take a really long time to get things like handwriting assignments done....maybe too busy helping everyone else? We'll work on that over the summer along with a few speech problems caught on this assessment. She commented again on how sweet and well-mannered Josh has been. We look forward to a relaxing summer now as we prepare for Kindergarten! PS - We are in our last week of prep work for our house to go into MLS. It looks like our realtor is coming

We made this cake for our birthday party this year and it was so easy and good! The kids could even help make it. Here is the recipe we followed from the Duggar Family Website. Pampered Chef makes a similar one that is also so yummy with Oreos instead of Butterfinger.... Makes a 9"x 13" Pan Ingredients: 24 Ice cream sandwiches 8 oz. Cool Whip™ 1 Hershey's™ chocolate syrup bottle 1 Smuckers ™ caramel syrup bottle 2 king size Butterfinger ™ candy bars chopped up 1st layer -12 ice cream sandwiches 2 nd - half of whipped cream 3rd - half of Butterfinger ™ bars, Squeeze 1/2 of caramel &chocolate over that. 4 th - rest of ice cream sandwiches 5 th - Cool Whip™ 6 th - rest of Butterfinger ™, caramel & chocolate You can freeze this and eat as desired!

Ashlyn and I celebrated her fantastic job in 2nd grade this year and went to a late night showing of 17 Again. We were able to use my birthday pass for a free ticket so it was an awesome deal! I had heard the movie was alot like 13 Going on 30, which is one of my favorites....it was very good and fun to see with my favorite little girl! Yeah, for summer break! Check it out!

So yesterday the whole crew spent the morning picking up the house in preparation for Jonathan's birthday party, worked in the yard, and painted some more trim on the front of our house. We kept the afternoon open before the party to go to an annual Kearney festival we go to each year. This is one we might miss if/when we move. The festival is called Kid Fest and is a celebration of Kid Safety. The have a car seat check, tours through a fire truck, ambulance, and police car, identi-theft stuff, balloons, moon walks, and a few other fun booths to visit. My favorite part is the free stuff of course - lots of drawings for fun prizes and free lunch! This year it was moved to our new park we love and talk about on this blog so much, Jesse James Park. They had a awesome Army helicopter that we walked through before it took off over our heads. And they had a "Mr. Stinky Feet" concert, who we really enjoyed during Ashlyn's preschool days. It was a nice break after all our har

Happy 2nd birthday Jonathan!

Thanks for the birthday gift A. I am very proud of my family and love it! I spend most of time in this silly car and would love to decorate it a little :) I couldn't decide if I should make Jonathan a baby or not - he's growing so fast. I decided to wait to make him bigger when he is potty trained! John said to go ahead and throw away the pet stickers - looks like it will never happen! Thanks again.

All of you Northland KC drivers who need oil changes done with little ones running all around you, I have found the answer! I typically go to the Liberty Jiffy Lube and usually early so I can get their "early bird" special, which almost always results in a long wait, spilled water/coffee and dirty looks from numerous business men waiting with me. The price has always been okay, but the wait horrible. And that all happens in between feeling a little pressured to call John about all the important other options needed right now for my car! So a couple months ago, they tore down the old KFC in Liberty and build a new Valvoline Oil Change place. We saw a sign today that said "$24.99 All Day" so we stopped to try it out (that is actually cheaper than the early bird special at Jiffy Lube). I'm not one who usually passes on good experiences, but this one has to be noted. It was amazing! We were in and out in about 10 minutes. There was no pressure conversation a

So as I awoke this morning and heard that insane Cardinal charging at our house all morning, I was reminded of how things are really good right now. I don't mean that they are perfect by any means, Jonathan still has croup and wants to be held most of the day, this last week of school is lingering on, and Caleb's speech progress seems to be regressing again. But overall, we haven't been in a trial for a long time. I believe that we go through valleys and trials so God can remind us of his sovereignty in the world and His will in our lives as we try our hardest to do our will each day! His loving hand is there to pull us up out of the pit we fall into and consequences start to settle in. As I was reading another Karen Kingsbury series last night (book 12 so far!) and reading about all the horrible things so many people have to go through in real life, I came to really be thankful for not having anything BIG going on right now. It almost makes me a little nervous that one

So we just finished up a few different tests in our crew's house. Ashlyn had some standardized testing she did a few weeks ago and her results were awesome! I just love the private Christian education we have chosen for our family! She also was able to participate in the Presidential Fitness Test this year and she will be awarded a National Award on Friday's last day of school assembly. Joshua had his kindergarten assessment at that same school and also did great! We only have to work on some minor speech issues over the summer. And we had no idea until now how he also substitutes some sounds for others....very interesting. Caleb did a 3/4 year old screening this week too through his Kearney School District Speech teacher. He did really good too and much better than I thought he would. Other than speech articulation he is right on track for his age. Besides continuing to focus on those speech problems we already knew about over the summer, we are going to start workin

I have been blessed to have 3 mothers. One who knew me since birth and who got to share my childhood with and two who entered my life when I met John. My mom, Peggy, has been a huge blessing to me and my family. She lives close by and can enjoy seeing her grand kids when she is free during the day. She taught me about God and helped me learn what unconditional love really means. She also was a listening ear through some of my young adult life. I am so thankful she was able to move closer to us after we moved from CO, and hope we can someday be as close as we once were. My step mom, Velma, is also a huge blessing to my life. She married my father when I was only about 7 and has loved him ever since. Although I did not know either of them growing up, I know they both thought about me all the time. It has been very rewarding to get to know both my step mom and my dad since 1997. It is really neat that John has been able to be involved in those relationships with me since the beginning. I

Yesterday was the first time Jonathan took his gum out of his mouth and played with it (while I was driving of course). When I got him out of his car seat, it was everywhere. So he is looking a little like his dad now!

So today was the second morning that Jonathan has woken up and come out of his room looking for me. His usual morning routine was to wake up and start knocking on his door (from the inside). He would also usually yell mama over and over again until I opened his door. He has been able to open doors for about a month, but finally figured out he can open his own door. Now we'll wait and watch if he tries it in the middle of the night :)