The Hanson Crew

John: Boys Canoe Trip, Hawaii in Feb, and Election Day Deanna: 2nd Honeymoon to Hawaii with John, planning and being a part of Carol's wedding, and leaving the diaper stage forever! Ashlyn: Seeing the St. Louis Arch, Chicago trip, and visiting 3 American Girl stores in one year Joshua: Boys Canoe Trip, taking care of Ella twice, and hanging out with Uncle Chris Caleb: Playing with Uncle Chris, going canoeing, and riding the bus Jonathan: Christmas, my birthday, and loving Ella

We love you very much! We hope you have a great day and look forward to your birthday lunch with us! Mom, says "Happy Birthday too."

Ashlyn got a new digital recorder for Christmas and has become quite the interviewer/film maker. She has made over 20 videos already. Today she made a video of her room that we worked on the day after Christmas. We decided not to put the bunk bed back together after all. But we moved the furniture around the room and she really likes it. We added her new quilt rack to the room to display the quilts she has made with Grandma Sue. Here is her first blog video:

While I was taking down Christmas in the family room, the children were putting up forts in the living room. I think this one was mainily for Ella, the cousin dog we dogsitting for a week.

A couple of friends get together after Christmas each year and come up with a biblical virtue or theme they wish to work on the following year. They spend time in God's Word that year studying that truth and hold each other accountable on the theme they wish to work on. I have decided to give it a try in 2011. My area of improvement....contentment. Lisa, you are going to have to hold me accountable :) The reason I pick this word is easy, I struggle with contentment everyday. Complete contentment with my house, my car, my yard, my budget, my children...I could go on and on. God is showing me recently how content I should be with the life He has given me and how this life is not eternal. Christ is enough! I plan to read about this truth daily as I read my bible each evening. My encouragement today: Heb 13:5 Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." I plan on talking to As

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas today. We sure did. We stayed home all day and enjoyed our PJ's , new toys, and melting snow. We have a little visitor for a week and I think she had a good day too - this is her typical pose at our house. Half of our crew is sick and the other half is taking good care of the others (the main reason for the lack of blog posts lately, I am in the sick half). We forgot to take alot of pictures today so I will try to take some enjoying our week off together next week. A small mental image of our day includes marshmallow gun wars, remote control helicopters hitting the ceiling all day, zhu zhu pets squealing in delight and some serious racing between Mario and Luigi. We are reminded today of Christ in our lives and how much love He gives us too. Not one gift we were given today compares to the one of His birth so many years ago. Merry Christmas everyone!

Dominican Republic trip is one month from today! We had our meeting and have our 8 day agenda in place. I am the team's photographer so I am excited to bring back alot of pictures. I have bought a few pair of scrubs and have my passport and luggage picked out. Please pray for the hearts of the children I will be in contact with, both at the school where we will be cleaning as well as the AIDS orphanage we will visit on our last day. May God be glorified through the trip and His love and mercy shown through our mission team.

The boys have all been fighting over who should sleep on the top bunk lately. Actually, none of them wanted to. So I finally gave in to taking apart the bunk bed this weekend. The room is big enough to have 3 twin beds and they usually play in the school room/play room anyway. Around the same time, Ashlyn started talking about getting a full size bed or putting back up her bunk bed (right now we have one of the twin bunk beds set up in her room and the other in storage downstairs). She has decided to have the bunk bed again. So sometime during break we are going to put it back together in her room. Here are a few pics of the boys room. I am watching the big paper mache letters at Joanne's to hang above each of their beds (C, J, and J). I love that in the Pottery Barn magazines when there are 3 beds in a row on a big wall. We have some Star Wars stuff on a shelf above where those letters will go too. I might do something with Josh's headboard too when I work on the let

I have always wanted the Noel Piper advent calendar for our family. This year I finally decided to buy one for myself and discovered they no longer sell it. A friend of mine at church told me about another friend at church who also wanted that advent calendar so she made her own using a similar story. I created one the past few days using that friend's as a model . I loved how it came out. I made it out of felt and was able to buy all the supplies for $5 (and I made two of them - one for my best friend too). That sure was cheaper than the one I had originally wanted! The story we will read is from Luke 2 and each day we add another part to the story. I have the pieces stored in the back in an envelope on 3 pieces of felt. I hope to sew pockets on the back before next year for each piece - it was too large to put them on the front like Noel's calendar. Here it is...

according to Caleb: "You know why God made banks mommy. So all those people who don't have any money can go there and get money. He wants to help them" This was said right after I told him I didn't have enough money to add crazy bread to our pizza order tonight.

The world's best photographer, who happens to be my best friend, gave me a wonder surprise today. She made me an accordion photo book for my wonderful photo purse she gave me a couple years ago. I had never seen one of these accordion books before our Nebraska trip where John's Aunt had one of her first grandbaby. They are great and are magnetic to close. Here are a few pics of it.. The front cover The inside The other side The back cover

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in Kansas City. A lot of lights are up and on and some fun white stuff today... This weekend was very cold, but we were still able to get out some. We hung out with our church family on Friday night at a open house in NE KC. On Saturday, we hosted a nice birthday dinner for my mom and her boyfriend Larry. It was a really good time and nice to finally get to know him more. On Sunday, we went to church and then saw the 3D Narnia movie. It was our first 3D experience and everyone really enjoyed it. Here is a shot of that... This week will be a slight warmer than this weekend and not quite as busy. We are looking forward to Christmas already. We have moved our tree in by the fireplace instead of in the cold sun room. It is wonderful to listen to hymns and songs of Christ's birth all the time now. One more week of school for FCA too...off to hot cocoa and warmth :)

there was a big kitchen store who invented a wonderful little product, Star Wars pancake molds. One humble female Jedi attempted to make Yoda, Darth Vader,and Storm Trooper pancakes. She soon realized that you have to be from Planet Nebu to get them to turn out... Mr. Skywalker will attempt the 2 nd attack this weekend. We'll keep you posted...

Ashlyn performed O'Come Emmanuel with her fellow 4 th graders in both Latin and English (second picture). She also joined 3rd thru 6 th graders on her recorder for 2 Christmas songs (last picture). She did a wonderful job! It's great to see her getting louder and more confident at the these things. We missed Joshua who was home sick. And we missed Caleb's school program when we were in Nebraska last weekend. So this was our only school Christmas star this year...

Here is a cute video of Jonathan. Sorry it is sideways. We have been working on learning different parts of his name. He really does know his first name, even though it does not appear that way in the video. We called this video, Grandpa Gary's Influence. You'll see why at the end. Enjoy!

Here is a 5 minute glimpse of our fun at Mahoney State Park this past weekend...

Josh stayed home sick from school yesterday (so long perfect attendance award!) He is so different than my other two, who are obviously more like me. He doesn't care at all to miss school. Ashlyn and Caleb can't rest at home wondering what they are missing and how much they will have to make up. Not Joshua...he enjoys movies, pjs all day, puzzles, soup and a little snuggle time. I surprised him with Panda Express while the Maids came and cleaned too. It was a great day. He had to miss his Christmas program last night because he still felt bad, but he is all better today. And he was pretty quick at doing his work from yesterday and today during school time. Now I just wait and see if anyone else gets it (sore throat, bad headache, and small fever)...

We are back from Nebraska and celebrated Christmas early with Grandma Sue and Grandpa Gary. We got a much nicer cabin this year, had fun ice skating, painting ceramics, playing the in the tunnels, slides, and ball pits together, watching the NE game, and of course just enjoying each other in the freezing NE air. We also got to see Aunt Sandy, Uncle Paul, Aunt Nancy, Taira, and Great-grandma Steiner before we came home. More pics in slideshow form to follow this week...

The kids and I had a little fun playing on the laptop during school today. Here are some favorites...

I am a little more organized this year - we still have to give to church and neighborhood friends, but we got all of the out of town ones done :) This weekend we go to Mahoney State Park with Grandma Sue and Grandpa Gary to celebrate Christmas....I think we can just sit back and bake the rest of December!