Vacationing on Valentine's Day

The 3 kids loaded on the back of Daisy getting ready for a ride around town. David and I flew up to UT together last week then he left for Georgia to a CE course till Friday. The kids and I are enjoying an extra few days with my parents. I miss my Valentine but he's left me in good hands. Mom took the four of us to Cafe Rio for lunch. The first half of our vacation full of family has been the best. David and I love that no matter what time of year we choose to come up we get to see all of my sisters. Thanks for coming up! And you don't know vacationing till you've done it with my parents. All we have to do is get here with a change of clothes. Food, wipes, diapers, the kids' favorite snacks, my favorite salsa, snow clothes in all the right sizes are here just waiting for us. It's the life of ease. I'll blog more with pictures when we get home. As for now, we still have a few more days of spoiling left to enjoy!

Looking Up and Forward

I haven't had any desire to blog and replace the top post with anything but Atticus. He's at the forefront of all my thoughts and I hardly go through a day without just breaking down in tears for the Hansens. It is a constant reminder for me to look Heavenward and be reminded of Heavenly Father's plan.

So while I want to just take a hiatus I know I can't. I was reading in the Ensign today and it said maintaining a family blog is doing your own family history. And since I'm not a great scrapbooker I know I can't give up on this for posterity's sake. I do incredibly well at journal writing for me and all the kids. I just wish printing off pictures and pasting them in their journals would come as easily as blogging. Anyway, I'm not giving up. Just looking forward. Please keep the Hansens in your prayers.

Here is Happy Hollow our favorite spot on post. There is a perfect little sandy beach leading to the river and goes only about 1/2 a foot deep till you're 5 feet or so into the river. The flow is slow and the kids love to splash around even on cold days.
Here's Mallie and the playground that flanks the river. It'll be gorgeous in the spring. Did I mention this is 8 minutes from our front door? Truly amazing.
Not much else is new. David loves work. I love the army life and our amazing friends. We always talk about how we're exactly where we're supposed to be right now and for once I don't feel in any hurry to rush to the next stage of life. We're so happy here. I just got a new calling as YW Assistant Stake Camp Director. As soon as I accepted I said, "But wait I still get to keep my other calling, right?!?" The answer was "yes" so now I can say with my whole heart that I'm thrilled! I loved Girls Camp growing up and haven't gone as a leader since I was 36 weeks pregnant with Mallie two summers ago when I could have gone. It'll be fun to see the stake side of things but still get plenty of time with my ward.

So that's whats new. We're off to Midway soon to visit my family for a holiday trip that got postponed until now. Just 4 links left on our countdown chain - we're ready!!

Atticus

When we left downtown Dallas for Richardson with only 15 months left in Dallas we weren't sure if we'd even care about making new friends. We were so wrong. We made friends in that area who we will keep in touch with forever. The Hansens were some of those people. Cindy came to drop off a meal after I had Mallie and we were instant friends. She would come over and we would talk for hours and make and then consume an entire batch of sugar cookies (on more than one occasion). To this day one of the huge reasons Dallas is on our top 3 places to live is because the Hansens will still be there. Cindy's oldest son Atticus is just a month younger than Ashton. The boys could play for hours because they were in the exact same stage of life. It was all about CARS. They could spend hours racing them up and down the hallways. It just worked out so perfectly that I adored Cindy and Ashton adored Atticus. This picture was from the day Cindy called and told me about a parade and I said I didn't have a car to go anywhere. So she came over and loaded all 3 of my kids into her car and chauffered us to the parade.
The doctors found an inoperable brain tumor on Atticus' brain stem. They'll do a round of radiation and chemo and basically just wait and see. The doctors have given him 1-2 years at best. Please please pray for Atticus to have a little bit of normalcy during this process. He so badly wants to regain his balance to run and play sports again. He is the most determined, smart and sweet boy I've ever met. He has been such a champ so far. Please keep Cindy and Eric in your prayers so they can find some peace during this hard road ahead. They are amazing people. My heart is broken for them - let us all remember to hug our kids a little tighter today.

Here is the link to Cindy's blog so you can stay up to date.

New Table

This post is mainly for my Mom. We've finally finished the table and covered it in clear vinyl. Our table growing up was always covered in a map, pictures, scriptures and the articles of faith. After we were finished laying it out I told David I'm pretty sure my Mom left more dead space. Either way I love it and I get wait to see the kids tomorrow. This will definitely help with me being afraid to leave them alone with crayons at the table. So here's to you Mom for coming up with this genius idea many many years ago!

Christmas 2011

We decided to stay in Missouri for Christmas this year instead of going to Midway. David gets 30 days leave every year. The Dental clinic is only open every other day for the 3 weeks surrounding Christmas and New Years. So for 3 weeks David gets every other day off for free. Where as if we went out of town he'd have to take actual leave days. We've decided to maximize time off and stay in town. We don't mind celebrating Christmas on our own and Ben and Emily staying in town definitely helped us from missing family!
We tried to let them sleep under the tree one night. That lasted about 20 minutes. Then they went to their beds. Maybe we'll try again next year. On Christmas Eve we headed to Ben and Emily's. We did the traditional appetizer dinner (David's fam) and then David and the kids watched the Claymation Christmas. Every single one of the kids ate cheetos for dinner and we let them. You'll notice from now on cheeto faces in the rest of the pictures.

We then played Bingo with the money tree (my fam). Ben had tied up half dollars on the tree. Are you seeing a pattern here with Hannah's face during Ashton's happy moments?

Cute Christmas version of Bingo where Ben would call our "stocking, chimeny, snowman etc" instead of numbers.

It is not Christmas eve for me without the kids acting out the nativity. Ashton and Kate usually have a love/hate relationship but the minute we let them dress as Mary and Joseph and put baby Jesus in the manger they were united in a cause. They were perfect the entire time and just kept looking at him. Check out Kate's fingers.

Cutest thing of the night. They tied the stuff lamb to James so he could crawl around. This was genuis. I will take note so all crawling kids will have a prominent roll in every nativity.

Mallie played the one wiseman. Paying attention to the cheeto theme?

Here is the back of Angel Anna with her pipe cleaner halo. We made the mistake of letting Mary ride in on David the donkey consequently Hannah (the shepherd) cried through the entire show just b/c she didn't get to have a ride. Here is the youtube video.

Then it was new jammie time. I'm over trying to match Ashton to the girls. So now he gets WAY cooler pajamas - hence the superman outfit.

Christmas morning! The kids woke up at 8:20 for our 9am church so we kept them all upstairs while we got ready. We came home changed and then let them go check out their presents. We pushed out table to the side of our dinning room so they had room to ride their new plasma cars and trike. We originally were just going to get 1 plasma car but I knew Mallie would be old enough to care about being left out - thank goodness we did. She actually can ride that thing just as well as the older two.

Hannah got squinkies and was in heaven. She lined up all day long and put them in and out of her box and stayed occupied for hours.

Ashton didn't ask for anything this year but rubber ninjas. They are 1 inch tall and over the course of our time in Richardson we collected 16 of them from the quarter machines at Cici's pizza. When he asked for more for Christmas we almost sent some friends $10 in quarters to get some for us. Then I looked at the actualy vending machine distributor websites. 100 ninjas for $24. Score. We gave him half and he was thrilled. I love when kids do their awkward posed smiles that look nothing like their real smile.

It was a great day. It's been a better Christmas season than I could have imagined. We held a family Christmas talent show FHE with friends which was awesome especially when our 8 year old friend's daughter played Mary and plopped the doll in a manger from under her shirt. She had us all rolling. Then we went to a caroling party. We had Santa come through our neighborhood in a firetruck handing out candy canes. We made a big Thanksgiving dinner for Christmas day. Then we blinked and it was over!

In you didn't get a Christmas card...

It would look something like this.

David and I have talked a lot about how Christmas seems like the new year. As we celebrate the birth of Christ we can't help but reflect on how we've done spiritually. Have we learned, have we grown and what can we do better this year? I taught in YW and David in EQ today. Last night we ran through our lessons together. His topic was exaltation and mine was Christmas. The conclusion we came to is that every Christmas song we sing containing words of Joy, Hallelujah, Glory to God etc are not just words to describe the event of the birth. But the sheer elation we (and they) feel is because He came we can be exalted. I love Christmas time. We've learned a lot this year. A lot about the Lord's timing and patience. We've learned you can make a home anywhere and feel completely happy. We'll always miss great friends but I wouldn't trade the entire world for every new and amazing friend/experience we've made along the way.

I personally feel like Young Womens in the posh calling in the ward surrounded by such great youth. I know I can't stop gushing over them. All I have to say is that every 5:15am temple trip is totally worth it. I love it.

We'll have to save New Years for all of our resolutions about budgeting, exercise, brushing teeth etc

It was a great Sunday and I'd like to leave it at that.

The Sweet Life

On Saturday I looked at this girl as she came to the stairs to get in the car and she just looked so old. In fact at dinner the other night she was in her booster seat and wouldn't eat her chicken which she normally loves. She kept whining and reaching towards Hannah. We switched sippy cups, bowls and gave her everything we could think of that was a quick fix. I was about to pull her out and put her to bed when I decided to try and give her Hannah's fork. Sure enough this little girl didn't want to eat dinner without a fork. She stabs all of her food perfectly and wont eat dinner any other way. Then there is Ashton who wakes up every morning and heads straight to the playroom half awake with bedhead to play with his Batcave he got for his birthday. It is a home to army men, GI Joes, HeMan and stray plastic animals. For anyone with boys out there it doesn't get better than this.

Then there is my guy. Who got so into making Sugar Cookies with me this year that he even said, "you should blog this!" David reads my blog once every couple of months and never suggests a blog post. He was THAT into it. Then last night we sat down to watch (our 1st week of Dec tradition) the Forgotten Carols and we both may or may not have cried like we do every year.

Hannah is still our sensitive soul. But in the last 6 months she has gone from uttering only a few stray words at her 2nd birthday to full on paragraphs. We love that she can express her emotions and never lets any of us leave the house without a "big" hug. She was worth every non-verbal emotional melt down we've dealt with from 18 months to 2 yrs old.

Mallie apparently decided to do her best to avoid having to eat any part of the actual cookie. The Christmas countdown is in full swing. We're so excited to celebrate at home this year. And when the flag on our mailbox goes up our kids get to find out the Christmas activity we'll be doing that day.

As I was driving to the commissary the other day I felt overwhelmed with gratitude to be exactly where we are right now. This army life may not be ours for the long haul but we love it so much for right now. I love when the trumpets play reveille at noon and 5pm we can hear it faintly in our house and the kids all stop to salute and yell "I hear army music!" I love living on post, our amazing ward and the incredible friends we've made in just a few months. I love David and the kids and this stage of life. Life is so sweet.