Birthday week

Along with moving into our new house, we got to celebrate two birthdays this week: Grant Boy's and mine. For months Grant has been asking, "Is it my birthday yet? Is it March?" so he was one happy boy when we finally got to celebrate. We did an early birthday party for him while Popsy and Tim and Paul were still here, and our friends the Crittendons, the Kuettels, Miss Pam, and Miss Deanie joined us.

The party crew

Of course Grant got breakfast in bed. He chose sticky buns and fruit.

Do you think he's excited about all of this?

He kept driving the cars and trains around the cake, then he got to lick all the frosting off. :)

The new Mater scooter from Popsy and Nana has already gotten hours of use. Thanks!

Along with trains and cars, one of Grant's new loves: firetrucks. Thanks for the new puzzle, Nana and Grandpa!

Grant and I went on a date to the mall to ride the carousel and the trains and get a treat on his birthday. It was a happy time for me to enjoy my little boy. I can't believe my baby is three! Although he has his sassy moments, he is such a sweetheart.

My birthday followed Grant's, and although I didn't get any cars or trains, I had a happy day. Kimball surprised me by making me breakfast in bed, all by himself. :) Some friends took me to brunch, I got to go shopping, we had dinner at the park as a family, and I took my kids to swimming lessons. I loved all the phone calls and thoughtful gifts from my family and friends. Thanks everyone! I'm looking forward to a new year. 

All Moved In!

After weeks of packing and cleaning and saying goodbye to our home and friends in our old neighborhood, 

Miss Joyce, Miss Pam, and the Grinells, all from our cul-de-sac, gave us a good-bye party. We're going to miss our neighbors there!

our big move (actually only 3 miles up the road from our old house!) was last weekend. Thanks to the help of Mark's dad and brothers Tim and Paul and a lot of awesome friends, we were able to get everything moved over quickly. I've worked really hard this week trying to unpack and set things up so that this new house feels like home. Our new house is big and beautiful but really different than any home I've ever lived in, so it has been fun to try to figure out how to make it work for us.

Here's the formal dining room, which we're using as a toy room on the main floor.  I figured that at our stage we need play rooms a lot more than we need formal rooms! 

The new piano area has made Kimball much more excited to practice. :)

Here's the new bookcase that I bought with my birthday money. I got this and the toy organizer in the first picture both from Costco for a great price. Happy birthday to me! 

I like how the kitchen and family room are one big open room.

The kids' rooms turned out fun, and Mark and I are having fun with our gigantic master bedroom and sitting room. We're using the sitting room as an office space for him and a craft/project room for me. It's nice to have our own space so the rest of the house stays cleaner. Anyway, we're feeling moved in and ready for life to get back to normal around here.

Great Wolf Lodge

Since Mark had work off and Kimball was still out of school the first week of January, we decided to head down to Charlotte to visit our friends the Burgons and then spend a couple of days at the Great Wolf Lodge. We'd heard about the awesome indoor waterpark at the Lodge, and it turned out to be the perfect little family vacation spot. Our kids never got tired of the slides and the water toys and the wave pool--especially Kimball who's already begging to go back. 

We stayed in one of the Kids Camp rooms, so our kiddos had bunk beds with all sorts of fun critters painted on the walls.

We made it down to the lobby just in time for pajama story time.

The kids loved all the animals and cabin decorations everywhere.

Don't get wet in there!

Here are a couple of videos from the Lottsa Water Dump Zone...

We're all still singing the little jingle from the Great Wolf Lodge website: "Take me to the Lodge--Great Wolf Lodge. Owwwooooo!" Very fun family trip.

10 years!

To celebrate our 10th anniversary, Mark took me on a get away to Asheville, NC. Asheville is a charming little city in the mountains, about 3 1/2 hours away from where we live. It's famous for having America's largest home, the Biltmore Estate, built by George Vanderbilt in the 1890's. Mark and I stayed at the Biltmore Inn, on the Biltmore property, and pretended we were rich and fancy for a couple of days. We ate out at some fun, highly recommended local restaurants around town, and all of them turned out to have amazing food. Asheville has a really artsy, hippie, natural flare, so the food tasted fresh and different. And I'd forgotten how fun it is to eat out without having to worry about whether our kids were behaving. :) We were only gone for about 36 hours, but we packed in a lot of good memories...

Breakfast at the Sunny Point Cafe

Heading off to tour the Biltmore

Of course we had to get a classic "take-it-yourself" photo

Look at the sky, the house, all surrounded by gorgeous mountain scenery... the Biltmore is awesome.

Thanks to our friends the Kuettels for tending the kids for us so we could go. It was so nice to get away and talk and laugh and just be the two of us for a couple of days. We've had some grand adventures in our first 10 years of marriage--here's to many more!

Holidays 2011

Merry Christmas!

We had a great Christmas at home here in North Carolina. It was strangely warm outside, but we still drank hot chocolate and snuggled in blankets and wore Christmas pjs just because that's what we're supposed to do at Christmastime. We read lots of Christmas books and acted out the nativity and had some great moments talking about the birth and life of our Savior. We had fun parties with friends and played games as a little family and missed our big families in Utah a lot. 

Kimball did an awesome job learning Christmas songs on the piano, and he loved to play them as duets with me and Mark. 

Liza asked Santa for a boy baby doll, and she has taken very good care of her new little guy. At first she named him Martin (I think because we had recently read "Shoemaker Martin") but then she changed his name to Sammy Duke Hansen. She's a funny girl. 

Grant boy was super cute with his new dump truck on Christmas morning. He took big loads of all his presents and trains and candy and delivered them all around the house. 

Liza picked out this amazing set of 24 glitter eye shadows and gave it to me for Christmas. As soon as I opened it she said, "And you can share it with me Mom!" 

Grant was awake in his bed Christmas night since he'd had a long nap earlier. Mark went and got him and let him come play with his toys for a minute. It was a fun moment for me to watch Mark and Grant roll the fire truck back and forth and talk about what a fun Christmas we'd had.

Kimball got Beyblades for Christmas, and he's had a lot of fun playing with them. He also got 2 new wii games, and I can hardly get him and Mark to go to bed at night because they don't want to turn off NBA Jam. It's nice having Kimball home from school and letting him just play and be a carefree kid. I love this time of year for lots of reasons--having my family home playing together is one of my favorites.

And now it's 2012, a fresh start. I'm really excited to go into this new year feeling healthy and hopeful and happy. The past year was a tough one for me in lots of ways, but I feel grateful for what we learned and for how it brought us closer together. Hooray for the New Year with all its new opportunities and adventures waiting.

Thanks Momma!

My mom came to visit this past week, and we loved having our Nana here! We spent a lot of time at home reading books, watching movies, and playing with the kids. For a special treat we took the kids to the new train exhibit at the children's museum.

 Grant, my little guy whose world revolves around trains, was in heaven.

Kimball had the camera with him at the museum, and he took about 40 pictures in the train exhibit. Here's one he took of me and my momma.

My kids made a "house" outside in our yard among the trees and pine needles. They invited Nana and me to have dinner (leaves and berries) with them. I sure love that my kids can play outside here even in December. :)

Kimball had a country project due this week, and since he was reporting on Japan (where my parents served a mission), it was really cool for him that Nana could come watch him. He told me, "I was nervous for like 4 minutes, then the rest of the time I was up there in front of my class it was pretty fun."

I hated to put my mom on that airplane on Monday. I'm so thankful we got to have her here for a few days!

So much to be thankful for...

I hosted my very first Thanksgiving dinner this year--and cooked my first turkey. It was a big undertaking for me, but it all turned out great. We had a fun group of friends over: the Vances, the Kuettels, the Burgons, and the Annisons. 

As was tradition in my house growing up, everyone had to make a Thankful Turkey before we could eat. :)

The guys watched some football and did a lot of dishes. The kids ran around--inside and outside--and got along great together. We all played some dodgeball, laughed and talked, and ate awesome food and pies. Although we missed our families back home, Thanksgiving 2011 was a happy one here in NC.