The Hanson Crew

Beef enchiladas and homemade Spanish rice on Monday. She did a wonderful job! Last night we made deep fried chicken tostadas, which were equally yummy!  Sadly, she has a sleep over Friday so I am on my own tomorrow.  This has been so much fun the past 2 weeks!

 One of my favorite things about home schooling Ashlyn this year is our Home Economics curriculum.  We are going through a Home Ec book, a bible study, and cooking dinner together 3 days a week.  It's been wonderful so far, even though we only cooked 2 days last week because we were both sick the third day.  We usually look on two websites for a recipe idea, talk about it's nutrition value, make a shopping list, go shopping, and then cook it together.  Last week, we make Pesto Pasta and Shrimp one day and Chicken Casserole another day. It was fun to watch her learn how to boil and shred a whole chicken the most!  Today we are going to try a Mexican dish. I think I will be learning just as much as her this year.  And I definitely think this is John's favorite thing about home school!

Our crew tackled a big job yesterday at work.  We started cleaning out, vacuuming, and detailing our 13 Maids vans.  I am not sure this has happened the last 8 years we have owned it!  They were horrible - huge stains, money glued into the ashtrays, trash everywhere, tons of extra supplies, and on and on.  Each team of 3 or 4 Maids leave our office each morning, with a trunk of supplies, a cooler for lunch, and whatever else they bring along to tackle their 4-6 houses a day. We have a huge garage that holds 8 of the cars so we pulled them outside and tried an assembly line of 3 cars at a time in the garage.  Caleb & Joshua vacuumed. Ashlyn cleaned the vinyl and plastic. I took out the trunk of supplies and went through everything.  And John cleaned the carpets and detailed everything.  Jonathan helped be the go to guy for moving things from car to car. Man, was it hard work!  The kids were completely black when we left. We did pay them $5/hr for their hard work which really motiv

Caleb's new favorite thing to do in the kitchen.  Wave plastic lids to create a gush of wind.  Why?  To blow out my gas stove while I am cooking. UGH! I didn't figure it out until yesterday, and he has been doing it for awhile.  That's why my dinners have not turned out. Ha!

Hard to believe.  I remember taking her to preschool for the first time!  We have really enjoyed our first week of home school even though we were sick and not as structured as we will be normally. She is so bright and I think we will both learn alot from each other this year.  I especially pray that God uses this year to grow our character, minds, and confidence in Him.

Joshua's first official day of 3rd grade was yesterday at FCA.  His teacher is one of our favorites, Mrs. Auxier, who Ashlyn enjoyed for both K and 3rd grade.  He is excited to be with his good friends Jet, Paul, and Caleb this year.  He can still enjoy his good friends Owen and Chancelor at recess and lunch though who are in the other 3rd grade class.  We're excited to see what the year will look like for our first boy and how different it will be than when Ashlyn was in 3rd...

Ashlyn loves to play "Draw Something" on my phone when we are driving in the car.  Today, she went to play and it didn't work because I login with Facebook normally to play.  Somehow while she was trying to login, she re-activated my FB account.  I didn't know until later at home.  So I took the plunge and went through my friend list.  I deleted about 100 people I rarely talk to or hear from on there.  Most of them were from high school.  I think I am still going to fast from it (not login as much and keep it off my phone), but my account is actually active now. I'm a little anxious to see if people notice I deleted them from my friend list.  I am keeping my name on there, but deleted all references to my home town, maiden name, education, etc. so it might be harder for people to search me out.  We shall see :) PS - Ashlyn, John and I all have the cold Joshua started out with.  Caleb has a mild form of it and Jonathan never got it....Mucinex and Advil seem to he

I asked Joshua to set his clothes out for his first day of school tomorrow and this is what I just found... This lefty cracks me up sometimes! At least he is symmetrical like his OCD mother :) And he will smell good.  Notice the belt behind the the rest of the stuff.  It somehow looks like art to me!

Tons and tons of coughing. Blowing noses. Steam rising from the humidifier. Tons of toliets flushing. Snoring while sleeping from lack of breathing. Medicine bottles opening. Drinks pouring into glasses. A little moaning. Ashlyn yelling "get away from me!" You get the picture...more down with the virus Josh has.  We were healthy all summer! Wonder who will be up for school today or the rest of the week even?

If you're reading this blog today you must have some interest in what our family is up to this week.  Thanks for reading!  Because I enjoy blogging alot more than Facebook and usually end up writing everything twice anyway, I have decided to leave the FB social media circle today. I am also excited to be less distracted while at home more with Ashlyn during school. We hope to spend more time learning in everyday moments. I felt like facebook had been taking up too much of my free time lately again.  I also noticed how very different my friends are.  About half go to my church, are pretty conservative, and have known me the last 10 years.  The other half are pretty liberal, people I have only stayed in touch with through social media, and people I rarely see or talk to in person. Those friends seemed to have more to say about my political or religious posts I would put out there (which were rare, and funny enough my last post) than my other friends.  The conservative half would co

We have a SECOND grader as of today (yes, the two is for second grade and not peace)!  Faith Christian Academy began today and Caleb was able to join Jonathan as our second child in school.  Sadly, Joshua has a cold and stomach virus today and had to miss the first day of 3rd grade.  So his first day will hopefully be Wed.  Ashlyn and I had a fun filled first day planned out for today as well, but since Josh was home sick we moved our first day to Wed too.  Instead we enjoyed a QT pop and movie we had all been wanting to see.  We did throw in some Math and our first day of Insanity though (our PE class).  We're anxious to hear what Caleb learned today and how much information will be sent home for Joshua.

Our family heard about Homeschool Day at World's of Fun through our new Homeschool Coop and decided to go that day to avoid long lines while most kids were in school. We ended up getting free tickets from our radio marketing rep which was a better deal than the homeschool price and a deciding factor on going! The older 5 went around noon and then Jonathan joined us after Kindergarten at 4. We spent much of the day doing the harder rides that Jonathan is too short for. Then when he came, we did Planet Snoopy and some adult rides he could do. He definitely takes after John, like Ashlyn and Joshua. They want to go on everything, over and over. Caleb is much more reserved like me and does not like heights. We stuck together alot today. Yesterday was his first time on the Mamba, which was a huge deal since it is such a tall roller coaster. We were very proud of him when he got off. Yesterday was Joshua's first time (I think 3 times) on the Patriot, which is an upside down roller coa

John and I ate on the Plaza tonight at a place called Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian Restaurant similar to Em Chamma's, for our anniversary dinner. We highly recommend it.  It was really good, especially the service.  Hard to believe we were celebrating 14 years of marriage though. We have grown so much together. Looking forward to many more...

Jonathan enjoyed his first day of Kindergarten as a Line Creek Lion today. He loves Mrs. Reddekopp and so do we :) He took the bus, which he wants to do all year. Here are a few pics from his morning getting there...

It's official.  Ashlyn is no longer in girl's clothing.  How did this happen?  We went through her closet, which we did at the beginning of summer, and she has no clothes now.  She went through 3 sizes in one summer.  It's crazy.  Oh, and we now wear the same size shoe. - a women's size 8.  I wonder how much more she will grow this fall??

I spent a large portion of my afternoon working on a project that I hope will save me a lot of time in the future.  Recently, socks have stressed me out during laundry.  Ashlyn and I wear the same size socks now.  And so do Joshua and Caleb. So unless I have to put away John or Jonathan's socks, I am not sure which room to put my clean socks.  When the boys help with folding, it gets even worse. I have always wanted to mark on the socks somehow to keep track of where they go.  But it seemed like a big job and a lot of work.  I also worried that once I have a system in place, and their feet grew, I would have to start over.  But then I realized how often I buy socks for people who claim they have none (when really their socks were piled in another room).  I also noticed we hardly pass down socks like we do all the other boys clothes.  So I figured I might as well give it a try... It didn't take too long to do it.  I went through all the socks in their drawers and threw out

Jonathan is going to Line Creek Elementary next year, which is part of our public Park Hill School District here in KC.  We sent Caleb there for Kindergarten for 3 main reasons: free speech, free tuition, and full day Kindergarten.  We really liked it!  So when it came time to decide to send all 4 of our kids to our private school this year, our first thought was how to avoid the $1,100 monthly tuition payment.  Jonathan was our first thought. Attend Line Creek like Caleb.  We save $400 a month, he will qualify for free speech to I think, attend full day Kindergarten instead of half day three days a week, and the ability to ride the bus sometimes!  Well, I forgot about another huge benefit we loved about Park Hill.... The PTA moms run and operate a free clothing center for the entire district.  They basically take donations for clothes throughout the year, organize them by gender and size and then fill a huge house with racks of clothes.  It is open a few months out of the year for s

Earlier in the summer, Ashlyn and Joshua spent the night at Grandma Sue's. So both of the little boys have been waiting patiently for their turns to go and have a little one on one time there too before school starts. Last week it was Caleb's turn and it was Jonathan's turn this week. Caleb went to a T-Bones baseball game with both Grandpa Gary and Grandma Sue. He really enjoyed that alot! He also took the dogs for a walk and helped water all of the plants. He attended the Chik-Fil-A Appreciation Day with Sue before he came home. Here are a couple pics from his sleepover...   Jonathan enjoyed Panda Express for dinner, Penguin Park, and ice cream for dessert.  Here are his fun pictures.  Thanks again so much Grandma Sue!

Great-grandma Steiner came down to KC with Aunt Chris and Uncle Tom today to meet Molly, while driving John's cousin to the airport.  We stopped by to see her too.  Here is a picture of our crew with Great-Grandma, Rylee and Molly during her short visit.

With school right around the corner, our crew decided to have a fun family summer outing this past week.  We tried a newer water park in Kansas City, KS that we have never tried before.  It was a lot of fun!  I really appreciate that my kids understand the sacrifice we make for things like this and vacations.  They know that because I stay home and we pay for our children's education that we don't get to go to places like this often.  So they usually are very grateful when we go.  We had really enjoyed the day together!  We spent most of the day in inner tubes floating down awesome "rivers" together. We hardly had to get out of the water all day - just float right into another line or right into another ride. Because we were in the water almost all day, it was hard to have my camera and get a lot of pictures.  But here are a couple I took...