Saturday, December 28, 2019

Grandma Hansen

On September 6th, my Grandma Hansen died peacefully asleep in her chair at home.  She was 88 years old.  This first picture was the last few minutes I ever spent with her.  At Jenae's wedding lunch I walked her out to her car.  It took almost 20 minutes, but I had watched Allison hold Grandpa's hand for that long in the temple waiting room and I knew I wanted to do something like that for a grandparent that day.  So I offered to help her walk out to the car and she was so calm, stopping to listen to Jenae sing with her mission companions, and stopping to take a picture with Jenae and Connor.  I tried to talk to her but she was mostly focused on the task at hand.  I was able to tell her I loved her though, and just be with her.  It was a fitting goodbye.


Of course I was sad when I heard the news, but I was mostly just relieved for her to be finished!  The last couple (or 5) years had been really hard for her and all her family.  For almost 2 years I had been praying for her to finish her mission on earth, teach others what they needed to know, so she could go home!  So all of our prayers were answered that day.  She was reunited with her parents, who died almost 50 years ago!  And with her 4 siblings who had already passed on, and many other friends and relatives.  What a joyful reunion!  How wonderful for her to be free from her frail body and foggy mind, to remember everything and be at peace! 

They next week I drove with my 3 youngest kids and Jonathan to CA for the funeral.  Whitney had 2 soccer games that weekend, and Katelyn was nervous to miss school since it's harder in Junior High, so Eric stayed home with them.  I was a little sad to not all be going, but I understood.

It was fun to hang out with my brothers, I was the only girl who could come!  Owen had a blast playing with his uncles.
The kids adored Adelaide- it was our first time seeing Derek and Raycelan's little sweetie!

The funeral was beautiful.  My brothers and I and a few cousins sang, all the talks by my dad and his siblings were inspiring, and we all cried as we sang her favorite song at the end, "I Wonder When He Comes Again".
Owen got to hang out with my cousin Matthew, Von and Amy's youngest.
selfie with the bros

I got this gem of an address from my dad's cousin:
And we stopped by Grandpa's house after the funeral for the kids to see it since they didn't remember much.

The next day we got to go roll raisins at the Vineyard, it was awesome!!
Owen got pretty good at it, but it was pretty hot, and at one point he was like "what the heck? Why is water dripping on my hand?" Well it was sweat dripping off his face onto his hand haha!  It was so awesome, me and my mom were like "wow Owen, that means you are working really hard!!"


mmmm grapes!!
Afterwards me and Owen scavenged these leftovers to take home to Eric!  So exciting!

And we had a safe drive home, I somehow survived driving to CA by myself twice in one year!!!  Well Jonathan was with me but he didn't drive at all.  Anyway here's Maris in a cute rest stop bathroom she liked haha.


Friday, December 27, 2019

Fall Sports and School!


First Day of School!  Cutie Owen is a second grader.  He flies through all his assignments and spends his free time helping other kids and making all kinds of creations out of paper.  He is starting to speak a little Spanish and it is so cute.
And he can be super silly--zombie pose!
Big 8th grader Kate! She is rocking junior high and enjoying it.  last year she took art and dance for her electives, but this year it is all drama as she is in MDT (Music dance theater) Preparatory company, Drama 2, and the Junior High Shakespeare Team.  She has found what she loves!

Whitney the rockin' 6th Grader!  She is doing great, loving science and enduring Spanish for her last year of full immersion.  She is learning to handle the drama of 6th grade, and has major "senioritis"- she is ready to move on from elementary school!


And the little matching cute girls!  This was the first time I got Emma's hair into one ponytail.

We have lots of adventures while the big kids are at school: such as this fun game at Thanksgiving Point.

Also in August, Donny and Christine came home from Japan and moved to Idaho, and we got to see them!  Super cute that I have little girls to match theirs.

And we went to Lagoon of course!  This year Lagoon Day was after school had already started, which was fun.


I don't have pictures of it, but one of the best parts of the day was that Whitney went on Cannibal- the scariest roller coaster at Lagoon- 5 TIMES!  3 with Eric and 2 with me.  It was so fun!!  A great ride.
Sweet, sweet Maris started Kindergarten!!  We can't believe it.  The first few weeks she was a little sad to leave me a few times, but every day she would come home SO happy and excited about learning and her teacher and her new friends, so it wasn't hard to convince her to go back.  She LOVES school and me and Emma have a good routine going so we don't miss her too much.  (We play for an hour and then Emma takes a nap and I usually have at least an hour and a half to get stuff done, yay!)


Katelyn was in a choir this summer in Santaquin, and she got some great part-singing practice!  I loved that she had to read the songs on sheet music, and she had fun.  This is her after their recital. 
Another cute uniform day for Maris!
One day Emma did this haha
And Katelyn got her braces off about 3 weeks into the school year! So exciting.
My marathon pics, I think I already posted about this??





Katelyn hanging out with Ariel and Abby.
Sunrise over our neighborhood pond.
This may be my favorite thing ever.  Owen's classroom is near Maris' and so he picks her up every day to walk out to the car.  ANd they hold hands to get through the crowd safely.  it's so so cute.
maris had a fun soccer season!  The couple of breakaways she had were awesome, but mostly she just followed the pack, smiling all the way.

Owen rocked the fun run, he is such a natural, if only I could get him to compete!  Maybe someday.
Maris did amazing as well!  This is her saying hi to me, she wasn't crying!  Whitney did great as well but I didn't get a pic.
Katelyn won her egg-drop competition in her science class with this cool bendy-straw design.
Whitney before she got braces on for round 2!
Whit had a fun fall season, but I didn't take as many pictures because I know I'm not good at it!  And here she is practicing at home with Eric. She has practiced more valiantly on her own the last few months, which is cool.
One day we made a castle out of a big box, and the girls really enjoyed it for a week until we junked it!
Owen in the black socks playing awesome defense!  His position of choice.  He had a fun season with Eric as his coach.

I ran a half and kind of got a PR, but the course was a half mile short.  it would have been too close to estimate if I would have made it in time if the course was long enough!
The BYU race!  They had fun preparing for it and were pumped the morning of.  Emma was super excited to wear a number like mom haha, and Maris was excited for her first 400 meter race.

Cutie Emma did great and ran the whole way!
Maris at the starting line!  She was one of the younger ones there, in the 5 and 6 year old girls race.  But she was well coached and has a great natural racing sense.

She started out easy and cut in at a great line for lane one.  She came around the first turn middle of the pack, but down the back stretch she started picking off girls one by one!  It was so cool! 
You can see her here in purple at the very left of the picture.  She hit that turn in 8th place and just kept churning!  I thought maybe she would hit a wall but she just held that fast pace and kept passing girls just like we practiced! 
She came around the corner in 3rd, passed one more girl and held on to finish 2nd!  As a cute little 5 year old in her first 400 meter race!  Me and Eric were so amazed and proud!!  I was almost crying lol.  She just had the biggest smile on her face, she loved it!!  And she was super happy to get another medal. :)
And last but not least, here's owen at the BYU women's soccer game we took the kids to, sneaking selfies on my phone haha.  I''ll have to add later the pic of the kids with Cosmo we took that night, I don't know where it went.
Yay for fall and sports and school!