Our 2024 Christmas Update

Merry Christmas from our crew to yours! We are thankful for 2024 and all that it brought to our family. God has been gracious and merciful to us as we hope to glorify Him with our lives and figure out our next season of life. We had more ups than downs this year and are excited to see what unfolds in 2025. John and Deanna celebrated 26 years of marriage this year and were able to celebrate with an anniversary trip through four National Parks in CA and NV. It was an amazing trip and of course urges us to travel more this coming year while we are healthy enough to hike and have more time on our hands in this short season. Other family highlights of 2024 included seeing the Total Eclipse, watching the Chiefs win another Superbowl, and spending time together all six of us at home or on vacations together a few times this year. 

John spent the last year continuing to volunteer with Partners Worldwide, his business mentor group, and our church, Bethel Baptist Church. He started a contract position with Partners Worldwide in August and worked for them in various capacities throughout the end of the year. He was able to travel to Honduras, Mexico City and El Salvador for a couple weeks, visit Ashlyn in Seattle, California with Deanna, and Grand Rapids, MI a couple times with PW. He is still in the interview process for a Chik-fil-A operator role and has his next interview in early January. This process can take up to 4 years and is very selective, but we are praying this will be our next career move. We are open to relocating to a new state and are hopeful if it happens, that it would be after Jonathan is settled in a college next fall. If CFA decides to go another way, John is excited to start exploring other options this year as well. We celebrated our anniversary with a 2 week road trip through California and Nevada. We loved it! John hopes to convince Deanna of longer trips together like this in 2025. Turkey is a huge hope for 2025 and possibly Belize again! John continues to enjoy day trading, investing, reading, and hiking in his spare time. He is utilizing his gifts with other KC businesses and students as well as serving in our church.

Deanna tried a small business venture in early 2024 with a home design company called Hanson Crew Design. She mainly was painting rooms, organizing, and giving design suggestions. It ended up being a little more than planned and she decided to stop doing it after 6 months. But it was a great opportunity and she knows now that she would rather find something with a little more structure, routine and less hours. She spent a good portion of her time after that traveling! She checked off many National Parks from her list and added Yosemite to her top 5. She fell in love with Olympic NP as well with Ashlyn and Jonathan. Her goal is to visit Glacier and Banff in 2025 along with a few smaller ones on roads trips. She took another trip with her mom to Kentucky to see the Ark, Mammoth Cave, and Churchill Downs. It was a great trip and she's thankful for time with her mom. She visited Colorado three times this year (which was a record for 1 year) and was able to reunite with both sisters and brother-in-laws for her niece's wedding in the fall. Her goal along with more National Parks in 2025 is to start an Etsy shop of some kind. She's still deciding what to create and sell though. Some part time business would be amazing as she continues to minister and serve her friends, church and family members with most of her time. Hosting family visits is becoming a favorite as our kids continue to leave our nest and return home for short visits. She still loves a good home improvement project each quarter too! 

Ashlyn is still living in Seattle, WA and is enjoying public transportation, downtown living, and being part of her AWS team. Amazon is right across the street from her apartment so rainy days seem more bearable to walk across the street to her office each day. She still has a bearded dragon named Barry who she loves dearly. She was able to visit home for Mother's Day and Thanksgiving this year. And it looks like she will be home for Christmas after all too! John got to visit her once this year and Deanna and Jonathan came out in August. She's been enjoying musicals lately and have many soundtracks memorized. She's cooking and watching Dancing with the Stars when she isn't on call or reading. One of her favorite things about Seattle is all the introverts who live downtown with dogs. They all walk amongst each other running various errands or work related tasks and there's no pressure to smile or say hello like in the Midwest. We are so proud of her and look forward to our weekly phone calls. If you're ever in Seattle, let her know so she can meet up with you.

Joshua started 2024 moving to Iowa Falls, IA for his Spring co-op with Cargill as a Chemical Engineer intern. He got his first rental house, worked 8 hour days, found a church, and spent his evenings cooking dinner, walking and resting. He worked there 8 months through the summer until August. It was a great opportunity that most engineers do their junior year. He was thankful to do it his sophomore year and return to Missouri S&T in the fall as a junior. He learned so much about working in a plant and earned enough money to pay for his last two years of college. He was just offered another paid engineering internship for next summer here in KC at Black & Veatch. So he'll be home for the summer working full time before starting his senior year in the fall. Since he only had a week before his internship and the start of college, we took a quick trip together to South Dakota to see the Badlands. He's still a member of the SigEp fraternity along with the Baptist Student Union at school. Both of those organizations, along with a community service fraternity and his church keep him very busy in between his Chemical Engineering classes. Oh, and he turned 21 this year!

Caleb is still working with Climate Control in HVAC and has been promoted to a Lead Installer. He's learned alot of new skills this past year and has really grown his tool collection. He is hoping to start a water heater side business in 2025. He loves working full time and spends most of his free time with his girlfriend Caitlyn, who we love and enjoy spending time with. He's been looking for a house most of the year and hasn't been able to find the right one yet. We keep waiting for interest rates to drop too, so he's still living at home in the basement, and racking up his savings account for a down payment. We don't see him every day, but love it when we do. We often hear his truck pulling into the driveway as a way to know if he's home. He was finally able to take a week off from work and take his graduation trip this year. Deanna and Caleb went on a week long cruise to Honduras and Mexico. Caleb was able to have his first legal drink, hold a sloth and monkey, and enjoy a gigantic cruise ship he had been wanting to try. He took a couples trip with this good friend James, Reagan, and Caitlyn too. He hopes to have his own place by the end of the Spring and wants to start saving for a second fuel efficient form of transportation.

Jonathan is our last "kid" and will officially become an adult in May the week before graduating high school! We often joke with him about our next phase of life when he ventures to college. He is still unsure if he will do a community college his first year and transfer or began at a university from the start. He is applying to different colleges this month and trying to improve his ACT score. Jonathan continues to enjoy hanging out with this friends and now has a girlfriend. We love Audrey and hope they end up going to the same college. Between spending time with her and homework, Jonathan also got a new job at QuikTrip. He doesn't love it and misses the CFA food benefit, but is glad it's very flexible with his schedule. He hopes to work there through the summer to save money for college. He was able to go to his last YoungLife camp this summer and took a vacation with Deanna to Washington to see a couple National Parks with his sister. He also went to AZ this past week to visit GCU with a friend. We hope to go to Colorado with Audrey and her mom this summer and will plan an awesome graduation trip for next year too. Jonny's senior pictures turned out so good and I posted his gallery link above if you'd like to see them. Jonathan is living his best life as an only child right now, often eating Chipotle and Panda for dinner and taking naps when he can. We are excited to see if he sticks with a Physical Therapy major and what college he chooses next year. We'll keep you posted...

Thanks for staying in touch with us through the year via social media, texts, calls, and visits. We love our city (Go Chiefs) and would love for you to come visit if you haven't soon. We are still in pondering how quickly the years go by and how grown up everyone has become in our crew. We started our blog in 2006 right before Jonathan was born. It is a treasure to spend time together and it's such a joy to see them flourish in their own lives. We are starting a countdown to being empty nesters and hope 2025 will be the year! We'll keep you posted next Christmas! Deanna is often on Facebook and John is typically on LinkedIn. Feel free to touch base with us there or leave us a comment here and let us know what you have been up to. As we reflect on Christmas and the reason as Christians we celebrate, we pray that our Savior Jesus Christ is reflected in our lives and this Christmas is a reminder of our salvation in His birth, death, and resurrection for our sins. We love and miss you all!

With love, 

John and Deanna Hanson

(and the rest of our crew)