Kate's first race!!

Katelyn ran her first race today! It was a 200m race for 1-4 year olds, part of the BYU Homecoming festivities. It was SO FUN. She LOVED it, even though she didn't realize she was supposed to start and ended up in the back. And she didn't want me to hold her hand like many of the other parents so she didn't have that (I think unfair) advantage. :) We were so proud of her, and I guess she's just a steady long distance runner like me, not so much a sprinter. :) Here she is at the starting line, see the video at the end too.

It actually ended up being a REALLY exciting day for us: We met Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Katrina and Phillip at the race, they wanted to cheer for Katelyn! And then we walked over to the BYU stadium where they were taping ESPN college game day! It was super fun, and we got 2 free $1 gift cards to Home Depot, enjoyed the exciting atmosphere and all the funny signs, and accidently met up with our cousins Kendra and Jeremy! We love that they're hardcore BYU fans, and that Kendra and I were both running the 5k race. So I ran my race and did well, it was great. The girls love to cheer for me. :)

THEN we decided to watch the Homecoming parade, and it was awesome! The weather was great and the girls got TONS of candy and a balloon and the music was fun. I left my camera in the car, sadly. I could have gotten some great pics of Katelyn "sneaking" out into the road to get some candy. THEN after seeing their pirate ship float in the parade, we decided to go out to lunch at this new restaurant called Pirate Island, it was so fun!! Great atmosphere, good food, pirate hat kids menus, and a guy making balloon animals for us at our table. Wonderful.

Kate got a parrot, she's staring, enthralled, while the guy makes Whitney's monkey.

We finished off with a productive trip to Kohls, and the girls fell asleep on the way home. Great times. Now if only BYU hadn't gotten it's rear kicked by TCU, it would have been a perfect day. :)
Here's the video, she's wearing green. I think you can hear Katrina laugh at the beginning :) and Katelyn is smiling THE WHOLE TIME! She had so much fun. :)

Enjoy at your own risk- do not watch if you have problems with motion sickness! I was running while taping! It gets better after the first little bit...

Enjoying MANY of my favorite things in one day (racing, FAMILY, beautiful fall leaves, BYU, going out to eat, parades, good shopping trips) = HAPPINESS!!

Hansen "family reunion"

This is the last California post. Let me just say that it was WONDERFUL for my entire family to be together, for the only time in this 4+ year period when 4 of my siblings have served/are serving/will serve missions. There were several times when we would all just be sitting around talking, it was so nice. And we did my favorite thing, sing together, for about an hour Sunday night. We made some great memories, to last us until we're all together again!

So here are my favorite pictures from the trip that I haven't posted yet. Right when we were leaving our house, I turned around to the girls and asked if they were excited to be going on our big trip to California. These were their reactions:

Love them! Katelyn kept saying "California here we come!!"
Katelyn and Whitney love all their aunts and uncles. Kate keeps talking about funny things she did with them. Here are their goodbye pictures with Uncle Derek, we will really miss him!!!
Derek is so much fun.
Jonathan is so sweet to the girls.
We got to see Melissa play water polo, and she even scored a goal while we were there! She's so awesome.
We saw Jenae race too, and she does a great job being the closest-in-age aunt to her nieces.
Eric and the girls during picture taking.
cousin fun! I love that they all have the same color hair.
even more cousin fun at our picnic after taking pictures.
Whitney loves to hang from things, she's so funny.
Kent and Allison brought Rock Band for us to enjoy, and let me tell you, it was a hit! They set it up in Derek and Donny's room, and the band Eric-Derek-Donny-Kent played for hours! It was HILARIOUS to listen to them taking turns being the singer. My family was amazed at Eric singing loud and crazy- obviously I've seen him like that many times but it was still funny to me too. This was when me, Dad, and Katrina tried the instruments for the first time and Derek was singing "Spirit in the Sky", SO funny. Man we're going to miss that kid.
Donny and Eric concentrating seriously, and Katelyn and Natalie with their own instruments singing and dancing too, it was great. I love that Eric is so comfortable with my family! I guess we have been married for a while now...
What a great trip. I am so grateful to be sealed to my family and know we'll be together forever.

family pics

In California we got new family pictures taken, it was really fun. My family and Allison already posted some on their blogs, but here are my favorites. Thanks again Brian and Gina!!

Me and my sisters!
aww, such cute siblings...
I knew this picture was going to turn out great! Except my dad bending over for some reason...

whitbear

Thanks mom for letting us borrow this sweet costume! We had fun pretending Whitney was a bear the other night! Darn, we just watched it and it's super dark, sad. OH well.

tea cup ride

I took a couple more videos at Disneyland, but the others were lame.

Disneyland!

We just got back from an awesome week in California! We had SUCH a great time with my family, which will be my next post. We also went down to Allison and Kent's house and spent a day at Disneyland with Allison and Natalie as our tour guides! Yay for the happiest place on earth, we had a nearly perfect day there- spending almost 11 hours in the park with no naps and only one meltdown per child?? Amazing! here are the highlights.

entering the park!

Obviously the rides were our favorite part. If you want to do Disneyland in only one day, October is the time to go! We went on 15 rides, saw 2 shows, and went to the petting zoo. Our favorites were:

The Rockets! We were afraid this might be too fast for the girls, but they liked it!

Dumbo was a HUGE hit!! Thanks Allison for taking so many great pictures for us!

as was climbing on the fake dumbo afterward.

the teacups were great of course

And the girls were delighted with It's a Small World! What a fun ride seen through the eyes of children! Eric and I both just remembered it as not great based on our 18-year-old perceptions (the last time each of us went to Disneyland) but it was so cool with the girls. Especially the last part, like heaven all in white!

The AWESOME Finding Nemo ride! A little scary, but we love Nemo!

Eric and I went on 2 rides by ourselves, woo-hoo! Here is Thunder mountain, not as thrilling as I remembered it, but fun. :)

Allison took all 3 girls (and she's 5 months pregnant- she's the best!) on the train around the park and to the petting zoo while we went on our rides. Here's Whitney with some kind of goat? She loves animals!!Then they got to meet Woody and color together! My girls wouldn't go near Woody of course, so we have no pictures of that. :)
We did enjoy a couple of other characters though- I love how the girls are just staring at Mickey. Natalie ran right into his arms!
Whitney got a stuffed Squirt from Finding Nemo as her souvenir, she LOVES it and kept hugging, kissing, and talking sweetly to it all day. Kate got a Mickey Mouse.
Some of our other favorite moments were:

takin' a break

the funny things the girls did while waiting in line, they loved to climb on everything!
Whitney waving goodbye to Disneyland as we walked down Main St. on our way out :)
And the girls conked out immediately once we got back into Allison's car for the ride home! Then we adults crashed on the couch talking and laughing for a while before bed- a perfect day!

Returned with Honor

My brother Donny came home from his mission to Mexico this week! So after not seeing him for 2 years, he and Katrina and I were reunited in a very cool way. He and my other 2 brothers Derek (leaving on his own mission in 10 days!) and Jonathan and my dad were driving up here for General Conference this weekend and we all wanted to go to the temple together. It ended up that the only way it would work was if we met them in Manti on the way up. So Thursday I picked up Katrina and we went! ( Eric stayed with the girls so we wouldn't have to get a babysitter for such a long trip!) We met at the temple and didn't see Donny until we were all inside already dressed in white, it was like heaven! Such a wonderful way to spend time together! ANd it was my first time going to the temple with Derek, and the Manti temple is AMAZING, so beautiful. And then the whole way home I got to listen to Katrina and Donny swap mission stories, SO fun. I can't wait until next weekend when we're all together!

We missed you Allison, Melissa, Jenae and Mom!

The girls got a real treat this weekend, 4 new playmates! And they had a BLAST! It was especially cool to spend time with my dad in such a relaxed atmosphere. He is usually working so hard at home. But here he made salsa and cleaned my kitchen, studied all my plants, read to the girls, and was in on the next adventure below...
Probably the most memorable thing we did while they were here was an impromptu acting out of the Book of Mormon story about Nephi getting the brass plates. Katelyn loves to act out that story right now, so she asked everyone if they would, and of course they were up for it! So Katelyn assigned the parts: Nephi- Jonathan, Laman and Lemuel- Katelyn and Whitney, Sam- Donny, Lehi- Grandpa Jamie, Laban- Derek, and Zoram- me. (Eric was at work) It was HILARIOUS of course! Here is Jonathan and a headless Laban!
here is an AWESOME acting job by Donny and kate! This is when they saw Nephi dressed as Laban walking with Zoram. So great.
Basically we had a great time playing and going to the BYU game (the boys) and listening to the prophet and apostles speak. It meant so much to me that each of the boys took time to play with my girls, all the time! They were SO cute with them and I wish I had taken more pictures. What lucky girls I have, they have so many uncles and aunts who love them!! I guess that makes up for the fact that they only have 1 1/2 cousins so far. :)

A cute shot of Kate and Whitney relaxing on Eric while watching conference in our family room.

scissor fun

Katelyn's new love is scissors. She spends many a happy hour these days drawing and then cutting out her pictures.

It takes a lot of concentration!
We have many piles like this around the house. Luckily she doesn't seem to notice if they're not there the next day... and she doesn't look too closely at the trash cans...

The above pile was all the people and objects for the Book of Mormon stories about Nephi- getting the brass plates, sailing to the promised land, etc. here is a close-up of Nephi with the plates (right) and the liahona (left).
The other result of this new hobby is many many scraps of paper everywhere! :)
Any tips for how to get your child to hold a pencil and scissors, correctly? I have tried, but she always reverts to her own way after 5 seconds...