Hanson Crew

Here is the pretty green Ashlyn picked for her room downstairs. We are going to paint an accent wall tonight and then move her furniture down tomorrow...more pics of the final room soon.

So this week we will be making some big bedroom changes we are excited about :)  We moved most of our school room stuff out to our sunroom this past month.  And we have weeded out a lot of toys that were downstairs in our school room/play room.  Today, we are prepping the room to be painted for Ashlyn's new bedroom suite.  She is very excited!  We are building her a bathroom that will be only for her room (no boys allowed) and moving her downstairs.  Her new room may be as big as our master!  She is starting to babysit occasionally for some date nights and gaining a little more responsibility around our house.  I know she will love the quiet new area she will be getting.  And I love having a new decorating project too!  We are getting her beach theme, but painting the room a different color and buying some new bedding.  When visitors come stay with us, they will use your bedroom suite and she will sleep in Joshua's new bedroom upsta...

We pray you all had a Merry Christmas!  Our plans changed a little when we woke up on Christmas morning with some kind of cold in a few eyes.  We weren't sure if it was pink eye, so we warned Grandma Sue and the rest of the family over there.  They agreed with us that we should stay home instead of Christmas dinner at Sue's.  So we enjoyed just our crew for the 3rd year in a row (the others were in the Philippines the last 2 years together).  It was great!  We slept in, opened presents, made a big breakfast brunch and played all day in our pjs.  We hope to celebrate with John's family tomorrow for John's birthday and Christmas the day before Grandma Sue and Grandpa Gary leave for AZ.  They are retired and moving there for a few months each winter.  I'll post pics of Christmas Eve with Grandma Peggy and Christmas morning soon...

A matinee movie! Today the 3 boys and I saw the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. Ashlyn and John saw the new Sherlock Holmes. We hope to try it again next year too. It's great when your kids are old enough to enjoy things like going to the movies! We go so rarely that this may be a tradition they look forward to and love! Hoping next year there is a movie that everyone wants to see...worked out great this year though.

May the celebration of Christ's birth bring you love and hope this Christmas!  With Love from our crew.

Ashlyn and I made some fun Christmas banners for gifts this year. She made one for Grandma Sue and Mrs. White. I made one for our fireplace and 2 for a couple of good friends who share the same name.  A special thanks to Andrea for giving us the idea from her hand painted banners she sold at our holiday open house in Nov.  We used scrapbook paper instead of painting the background and only painted the letters.  We also chose "Rejoice" to help with less letters (she made "Joy to the World" and "Merry Christmas" banners). Here is how one turned out...

Best Evers 1 stick of butter or margarine 1 package of graham crackers 1 bag of chocolate chips (or half butterscotch chips/half choc chips) 1 cup of nuts (we use walnuts) 1 cup coconut 1 can sweetened condensed milk Warm butter in pan and mix in crushed crackers.  Press that mixture in a 13x9 jellyroll pan for the crust. Layer chips, coconut, nuts, and drape milk over the top. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.  Cut into small squares when cool. Soda Cracker Toffee 1 package soda crackers 1 cup butter 1 cup brown sugar 2 cups of chocolate chips 1 cup of finely chopped walnuts Preheat oven to 350. Line a jelly roll pan with foil and grease with butter. Line pan with soda crackers. Bring 1 cup butter and 1 cup brown sugar to a boil on stove, stirring constantly for 3 minutes until thick. Pour over crackers and spread around.  Bake 5 minutes and remove. Sprinkle with ch. chips and nuts. Cool in fridge, peel off foil and break apart.

We started last week with our Soda Cracker Toffee and finally got to some Best Evers today.  We hope to get to our Almond Bark Pretzels tomorrow or Thursday. Our little cook, Joshua, has made a list of items we hope to have done by Christmas.  I'll keep you posted...

Caleb was invited to see the Nutcracker in KC's new Kaufman Performing Arts Center this weekend with his good friend Charlie.  He had a great time!  His family took him for most of the day.  They played at his house, went to the ballet, and then to a very nice dinner.  We are very thankful for the friends and families we have gotten to know at FCA. What a great experience for him.

Faith Christian Academy enjoyed their annual Christmas Program this past Monday night and all 3 kids participated. I think it was one of our favorite programs. Grandma Peggy, Grandma Sue, and Grandpa Gary all came to watch them perform. Here are a few pictures from the night...

Got around to updating our family website today so I can email out our Christmas postcards soon.  I am still working on our Christmas letter though.  After January, I am excited to replace the "our Christmas Letter" button with a new button, "Hanson Crew Design".  I am working on that site too right now.  That is my new small business where I will be offering web site design and hosting, blog designs, marketing projects, and graphic design work at a great price.  Stay tuned...

We bought a used Christmas tree this year off Craigslist for $50. It's NINE feet tall! Which is much taller than I thought. When Ashlyn and I went to buy it, the tree was right around the corner from my in-laws house, which was kinda funny. The owner knows Sue and Gary and was a Maids customer of ours. Here it is all decorated for Christmas... It takes up a lot of room in our family room... But the fireplace is still my favorite part of the room...

I took some pictures today for Sue's Christmas card at our lake. This one was my favorite one of everyone even though the sun was behind them...notice we are letting Jonathan's hair grow out and it is in the awkward stage between short and long so he is wearing his new $1 hat from Dollar Tree. Ashlyn keeps saying she thinks he should not have worn it because it stands out...they are all growing too fast!

So today is December 1st. We are about 80% done with Christmas shopping, which is very exciting for me. We have received our Christmas postcards to mail out and I have begun working on the re-design of our family website and Christmas letter. We were able to start watching favorite Christmas movies yesterday and are talking about out baking goals. I was thinking this morning about Christmas and how important some family traditions are this month. We don't have a lot of them, but can see how the few we have are really exciting for our kids. Ashlyn got out the hot cocoa and played Christmas Worship CDs while we decorated our tree this year without being asked. We started our tradition of our Chocolate Advent Calendars this morning and plan to put out our felt advent calendar tonight. We started talking about our Christmas schedule this year since it will be different than the last 2 years without Carol, Chris, Rylee, and Sue for Christmas. We plan to spend Christmas Eve with G...

While driving to the store the other day, Caleb asked a funny question. He said, "Do you think this lady ever gets tired of singing the same song over and over again every day? She must be tired of it!" I then went on to explain what the difference between LIVE radio and RECORDED music is...

Ashlyn's baby tadpole in first grade has become quite the large water frog today. Because we are not consistent with cleaning his tank and feeding him, we thought it might be best for him to live in our pond on our street. Today was his big moving day! We took this picture right before we released him. We told the kids that we would visit him often and that we would never know how big/old he gets. He swam right down in the water when we let him go. It's official, we are PET less :) And hope to keep it that way for at least 5 more years...

Because Joshua has a really hard time when his LEGO creations gets destroyed by a sibling or friend, we have decided to create a LEGO. This will not only help when things get taken apart by accident (or purpose), but also when he wants to use the pieces for a new creation. I told him he can be in charge of the pictures and then I would help him make a digital scrapbook for him with all of his pictures. He seemed excited and started this weekend with some pictures. We'll see if it continues and if he is a little more willing to take them apart after they have been displayed for awhile and photographed. I will keep you posted...

Tomorrow (from 6-9 pm) and Saturday (from 2-5 pm), I will be hosting a Holiday Open House at my house again, but this time to raise money for our church Orphan Ministry. Last year we did this for my first mission trip. Three good friends will be selling homemade gifts for Christmas and will also be raffling off a couple nice gift baskets. All the raffle tickets go to the Orphan Ministry and a percentage of their sales. Please stop by if you are in KC, looking for fun fellowship and a great way to contribute to National Adopotion Month! Thanks!

We all enjoyed 11-11-11 yesterday and even though I was bombarded on Facebook with comments about how my entry at 11:11 AM was wrong (I said is is 11:11 on 11-11-11, won't happen again for 1,000 years), I know that I won't be around for the next 11-11-11. In my defense, 11:11 pm is really 23:11, but oh, well! And we have too many friends in other time zones to the west of us, who chimed in. But anyway, most of us are recovering from a cold that is going around and enjoyed Captain America together on 11-11-11. We are looking forward to our Drop n' Date tonight at church where families can drop their children off (for free) and enjoy one another. We are doubling with some good friends who are leaving for the mission field soon. We are excited for it! What about you...did you do anything historic on 11-11-11.

Caleb and I were able to meet this afternoon with the NKC Special Education Director and his speech pathologist. We were meeting to discuss his progress this school year and discuss how he had met his planned goals for the year (all of his 6 year old sounds met). We usually get speech therapy 2 days a week (30 minutes each) through the NKC school district and knew going into the program that they could only work on age appropriate sounds in these sessions. What that means is that even though Caleb does not have his blend sounds (bl, th, sl), his r sound, and a couple other 7 year old sounds, they would not be able to work on those sounds while he is still 6. He was not saying 6 year old sounds and 1 5 year old sound when we began this year and the therapist has continuously commented to me this year that he is fine. I was worried, because I still hear so many sounds missing and so much mumbling, but I am a paranoid mother who has been going to speech since he was 2 years old! Anyw...

The kids had some friends sleep over this past Sat night and they made this funny video. We thought we would share it with you!

Kansas City felt some aftershocks from the OK earthquake this weekend (our crew missed the shaking fun, but most of our friends felt it!) We finalized our will and trusts with our lawyer (we pray we live another 14 years so the McKinzies are relieved of raising our 4 kiddos, but are so happy that it is all in writing and setup legally now) John went to the ER with some heart problems. Thankfully, there was no serious concern, but a need to follow up with a cardiologist soon (along with an MD to check out a few other concerns) The kids had friends sleepover for the first time I think (everything went well and I think everyone had fun). We are so thankful for both Owen and Olivia and their friendships with our kids We bought a Christmas Tree! We had borrowed one last year from grandma Sue while she was in the Philippines, and had been watching Craigslist for a while for one. This one popped up and I called within 5 minutes of the post. Later we found out that the family we bought i...

Caleb finished his first season of flag football this weekend! And we had to endure one cold game (the only one all season). We wished we brought ear muffs and gloves, but we survived. Caleb's coach said their team was the only team in the league where every player scored a touchdown all season. They were all excited about that! He also got a participation medal, which he was so proud of! Here are a couple pics of the morning...

Jonathan's preschool had a Halloween party and parade on Monday. He dressed as Thor and really enjoyed his first school party! After the kids paraded around the sanctuary, they performed 5 or 6 songs in the front. He did great. He LOVED the hand motions the best. Grandma Sue and I were both able to make it to his grand performance. Here are a couple pictures from the day...

Today after the kids finished schoolwork, we were able to join some school friends at the Kansas City Zoo. Today was 75 degrees, which is unheard of for November weather! And residents who live in KC limits, which we do, are able to get in the zoo for free for the months of Oct and Nov. That saved us $50 :) So we headed off to the zoo with our proof of residency, water, and camera. We hadn't been to the zoo for 5 years and we were happy to see some of the changes we saw. It was much better. They had added a sky lift, children's area, and cool kangaroo area that the kids loved. So off the funny story of the day... When we got to the flamingos, we hung out there for a little while so our friends could get some good pictures of the flamingos for their 1st grade animal research project. While we were standing there, Caleb really was observing them. After about 5 minutes, he said, "Mom, I feel so bad for some of the flamingos" in a very sincere voice. "Some o...

The kids decided to make a scarecrow for our yard this year and then told me to come out and see the final masterpiece. When I got outside, I had to giggle. I told them we could name him Humpty Dumpty . You'll understand why when you see him... Unfortunately , his hat had blown off when I took the picture. I was tempted to replace the hat with an egg!

Our crew tried out a trunk-r-treat this afternoon and enjoyed the nice weather. We have a Hermione Granger (from Harry Potter) along with the First 3 Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor) this year all anxious to fill back up their candy stash. Because it was so nice today, I got a few good shots of their costumes too...

We finally created and hid our first family letterbox this month. In case you are new to our blog, letterboxing is a family hobby we were first introduced to when Ashlyn was in first grade. The idea is that there are clues online that you print off to find each box. Then we all go and find the hidden box, usually at a park or trail, which has a stamp and log book in. We sign the book with our family stamp and the date we found it and then stamp our own journals with the stamp from the letterbox. We are getting quite the collection! So here is the info for our first letterbox we hid: The box is called "Courageous" and is found online here . Here are a few pictures from the day we hid it...