Olivia's Birthday Celebration!

We had a nice celebration in honor of Olivia's 2nd birthday. She was quite thrilled with the attention, and we remembered God's goodness in giving her to us. 

My favorite was when we were saying what we were thankful about her and Stefan said: "I'm thankful because she's my favorite girl and I just love her." Sigh. A happy moment for Mommy.

Three sweet children. Olivia looks a little dazed, though!

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Playing with Daddy!

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100 % Olivia. Love this girl so much!

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Opening presents!

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Mommy's girl!

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Some of these are fuzzy, but I had to include them! She was playing with Daddy and Stefan here!

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Enjoying the party!

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He was a great big brother for her party and was not jealous about the attention being on her. I was proud of him!

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Just hanging out!

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Presents were not really a big deal to her. Life is way more exciting!

All in all, a great celebration of our precious little girl!

Happy 2nd Birthday Olivia!

 

Our sweet Olivia is two today.  To write about her personality is almost impossible, so I'll share a few pictures to help you see it! 

Things I love:

I love how her little foot taps in steady rhythm as she falls asleep.

I love how she burries her face into my neck when she wants to snuggle.

I love that she loves to snuggle.

I love how she rubs the silk ribbon of her tag blanket between her thumb and index finger.

I love how she is full of life.

I love how she has so much joy.

I love that she is so fearless and wonder how that will look when she is an adult.

I love how she is concerned that everyone else has their 'stuff' (namely Silas his paci, and Stefan his doggy).

I love her giggle because it is usually reserved just for us.

I love my sweet Olivia Karis Hanson!

 

 

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful gift of Olivia.  I had no idea how much could be added to our family when she was born.

Shots of our week!

Just a few sweet shots of my cuties.

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They are starting to really enjoy each other. It has been fun to see Stefan playing with him a lot more lately!

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He was menu planning here. He has really gotten to the imitation stage. He was talking through the menu, "on Monday we will have pizza, potato soup, carrots, and chicken." Wow...he had quite the selections going on!

Weekend Away

A couple of weeks ago, my sister came up and Brian and I were able to get away for a night.  We took Silas with us because of course he can't be away from Mama for more than a few hours:). We had such a refreshing time of relaxation, sleep, and lots and lots of uninterrupted talking.  

The kids at home seemed to have had a great time with Auntie Donna as well! Thank you, Donna!  We're extremely grateful. 

We actually ended up crossing the river to walk through the little river town of Madison, Indiana.  It was founded in 1809 and the buildings were old and quaint.  We enjoyed our brief visit of the town.  They had a GREAT bookstore.  No pictures, so I'll tell you about it:).  Wood shelves up to the ceiling, ladders, and a beautiful Steinway grand piano {drool}. Sigh. Someday.  Of course, I think we need a place big enough for it first. Ha!  It was an old fashioned bookstore, very clean and neat, and of course modern books:). We could have stayed there a long time, but Silas was getting fussy at that point!

The antique store was massive, too. That was fun to go through.

Snapshots of the town. So quaint and cute!

A stop for a coffee and a chai latte!

Check out this old, old movie theater showing Courageous!  And look at that box office! Too bad it was closed. I really, really wanted to go in!

We did a lot of driving around and looking at scenery. Because Silas was with us, it was a great way for him to nap and us to have lots of talking time!

Us!

And our adorable sidekick!

It was a very restful weekend. We didn't realize how poorly we have been sleeping due to loud neighbors until we were in a quiet cabin!  We had some great discussions. Set goals, dreamed dreams, made plans, had fun!  Love my hubs!

Intentionally Remembering

I mentioned in my last post that it is important to intentionally look back and remember.  Why is this so important? Simply put, it is very healthy to know where you are and where you want to go.

While in some cases it may be a bit uncomfortable or even somewhat discouraging to remember, it is the only way that you can make needed changes and move forward.

The flip side is that it is also encouraging.  There are blessings and changes that sometimes go unnoticed. This is just as dangerous.  God has blessed us above and beyond what we could ask or think.  The Bible is chalk full of instances where God reminds His children to remember. Remembering God's faithfulness in the past is the surest way of not falling into despondency over trials today.

We chose to remember by making an evening out of it.  I already told you that I put slips of paper with questions in a jar and we pulled them out and talked about that particular question and answer. This was both fun and serious and not only caused us to be once again reminded of God's faithfulness to us, but also helped us evaluate where we need to set goals to improve in this new year.

I will share with you some of the questions that we used to get our minds rolling.  This is most certainly not an exhaustive list and we had more than I am including, but it will hopefully get your minds turning so that you can come up with your own list.  So pull out a notebook jot down your thoughts as you intentionally look back on this past year.


1) What was one way I excelled as a spouse this year?

2) What was my biggest challenge in being a good spouse this year?

Use these questions to evaluate every relationship you have: Parent/Child/Employee/Employer/Neighbor/Church Member/Friend, etc.

(Special Note: The answer to the biggest challenge might be a good jumping off point for your goals for this new year!)

3) What is one thing I learned this year?

4) What one major goal did we accomplish this year?

5) What was my favorite book I read this year?

6) What are three direct answers to prayer this year?

(If you can't answer this question it might be that you have failed to ask God for answers. Or you might be so consumed with the answer coming in a specific way that you haven't even noticed the answer has been given just in a different way than you anticipated.  I highly encourage you to ask and let your faith be strengthened as you see God answer your prayers.)

7) What was my biggest time waster this year? (All I'll say is, ouch!)

8) What was our favorite family outing?

9) What is one funny moment that stands out?

10) What was Stefan/Olivia/Silas' biggest achievement this year? (Be sure and evaluate your children as individuals and not as a collective whole!)

11) What was one life changing event this year? (We had a lot! Baby, out-of-state move, seminary!)

12) What is one way I grew spiritually this year?

13) What is one way I grew intellectually this year?

14) What is one RAOK (Random Act Of Kindness) someone showed to you that you remember?

(Don't underestimate the value of a RAOK.  My answer to this was a kind man helping me out with my grocery cart when I was struggling with car seat, groceries, children, and cart. It was a simple act of kindness, but these things are vastly being lost in our society. We try to be intentional about looking outside of ourselves to the needs of others around us.  We want to do better about this and do better about teaching our kids to do this as well and these questions help!)

15) What is one RAOK I did for someone else? 

I could go on, but I'll stop here. Hopefully this is enough to get you all going. Throw in some fun, tailored-to-your family questions and you have a great jumping off point to spend an evening remembering.  It will strengthen your faith in God, it will help you evaluate where changes need to be made, and it will remind you of all the wonderful things God has given you.

For us, what always follows the night of remembering is a set aside time to set new goals.  We have already been talking a lot about it, but our official goal setting time is coming this weekend.  My sister is coming to babysit, and Brian and I are looking forward to some time alone to do just that!

This is certainly not a typical post for me, but I thought some of you might find it helpful so I thought I would share!

Bye Bye Christmas and other Random News

January is off and running and it seems like Christmas was ages ago.  We said goodbye to our tree and the only thing left of Christmas are the cards on our fridge, the new toys being played with, and the wonderful memories of a beautiful season spent together as a family. 

Sniff, sniff...

We enjoyed a simple New Years Eve. We first had dinner with friends, but since there were children involved it was an early affair and we were home with the kids in bed shortly past their normal bedtime. 

Brian and I then popped some popcorn and took some time to reflect on our year. While the beginning of a new year is certainly a good time for making new goals, we also like to take some time to look back and remember. I filled a jar with lots of questions that we randomly pulled out.  It made for a wonderful evening of fun, laughter, and serious reflection.   We remembered specific answers to prayer, funny moments, major accomplishments. We talked about how we had grown and changed. It was the perfect mix of serious and fun. If you haven't thought back on your year yet, I highly recommend it.  It is a good thing to remember.

I found Silas just chillin' on the couch.

We've been enjoying slowly working through Charlotte's Web.  Since Daddy has been home lately to listen in on the reading time he was able to capture the pictures.  As you can see, Olivia doesn't appear to be listening, but she is always sad when I put the book down.  Stefan loves it and has even read to me recounting stories about Wilbur, Charlotte, and Templeton.  It's been fun to see! We are nearing the end of our first chapter book read aloud. 

We had some snow the other day. It actually snowed most the day but no accumulation. I figured out that I needed to get excited over this, because we are not in the North and clearly this is probably all we're going to get so we had some Snowmen fun.

First we made puffy snowmen. (Equal parts shaving cream and glue)

We had snowmen pancakes. Stefan was thrilled about this, but I think he was feeling bad for the snowman because that night in Bible time he prayed for the snowman that he ate!  

We also read, among others, these 'snow' books:

When Winter Comes

The Snowy Day

The Biggest, Best Snowman

and

Juste un Petit Bout (in French, obviously)

Stefan's 4th Birthday

It really is difficult for me to wrap my thoughts around the fact that we have a four year old. Brian and I took some time to reminisce about Stefan's four years and how much he has changed specifically in this last year. He has jumped head first into boyhood and the toddler days seem long gone and the baby days even further. We have been overjoyed to see him develop and change. His personality is becoming even more unique. Maybe that's why this birthday was so fun?  Now we can get things because we know where his interests are and not simply "4-year-olds are supposed to like this" sort of thing. It really made it that much more special.  

This birthday was also unique in that it was his first birthday ever to be home.  We've always been on the road and we really enjoyed being in our own home and setting the pace for how we celebrated.

We started the day with breakfast which consisted of crepes with nutella and bananas inside. Candles to blow out right when you get up is always a good way to start the birthday!

I ended up deciding to go with a Cars theme because Stefan is a big fan of that movie.  I didn't want to forget this stage and I knew he would be thrilled.  Special thanks to Mimi who sent me the napkins and some stickers that I used. I'm really happy with how the cake turned out. It was my first time making my own fondant, so I'm thankful for no catastrophes!

I had stickers on each of our glasses and we were that character for the evening. Stefan got a big kick out of asking Sally (Mommy) for more water please, or Mack (Daddy) could you please pass the chips.  He couldn't decide if he wanted to be Lightening McQueen or Tow Mater so he had one on each side of his glass and we called him both:).  

At the dinner table we were remembering things about Stefan's last four years and also saying things we appreciated about Stefan.  I think he was starting to feel embarrassed at all that attention and he suddenly said, "Daddy, I'm thankful for you."  The sweet thing about that is that one of the things that Brian and I have been noticing in Stefan lately is a spirit of genuine thoughtfulness toward others. It is such a blessing to see that developing even at his young age. 

Of course, what is a birthday without presents?  It was so fun to see his excitement and joy over everything. The Legos (thanks to a last minute sale I snagged) and the scooter (thank you Papi and Mimi!)  were the favorites, but he loved everything.

After opening the gifts these two guys went immediately to work!

He was very happy about his cake, can you tell?  He also sang with us when we sang Happy Birthday.  Did those of you who skyped him and sang happy birthday to him notice that he sang along with you?  Yep, every time ;) He was thrilled about having a birthday cake and ice cream, but I think he only ate about three bites as he was too excited to go play with his new gifts!

Here he is with the very first vehicle he made with his Legos.  He has since made a house, a truck, a helicopter, a boat, a...you get the idea. He really likes them:).  It is not a huge set, but this is one of those gifts that I'm sure we will be adding to for years to come!

We are thrilled to see our boy growing up.

We count ourselves incredibly blessed to have him in our family and to have been given the responsibility to love, teach, and nurture him.

Our Christmas

Well, here goes a small sampling of our Christmas.  We have had a wonderful season, but much of the joy of the season comes from the little light of excitement in our children's eyes, excited squeals, looks of awe, satisfied looks between Mommy and Daddy because the kids are so happy.  None of these things, though, can be caught on camera.  

It is nice though, to try to catch a few memories.  Memories we will always cherish.

Gazing at the Christmas tree. It never gets old and we'll all be sad when we put it all away.  Yet, the excitement keeps on because there is always next year! 

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Our Gingerbread house we made. Not too shabby for little hands. 

Even better than the finished product is the fun we had working together.  The laughter, the joy, the mess. It was all wonderful!  We traditionally listen to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from Cambridge on Christmas Eve. This year we decorated our gingerbread house while doing. This just might become a tradition.

Happy with the results! 

I think that I will buy the cookie cutters for a gingerbread house so that next year I can make my own. the kits are nice and all, but who wants to eat something that has been in a box for months? Not us! So we just look at it :) .

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Christmas festivities!  No explanation needed! 

"One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly." -Andy Rooney

This gift was a hit, and is going to be enjoyed by all!

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Sneaking something from the candy dish!

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"I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus!"

Christmas Morning at Church

Just a sampling of some Sunday morning shots.  Getting out the door for church on Christmas morning was hard enough, so these are just some quick snapshots I took as we were walking to the car.  Hopefully I'll get more shots of our actual Christmas on here soon.  It's been a bit busy here, so this will have to do for now. 

I'm pretty sure this is the cutest six month old around. Ahhh....kills me how handsome he is! 

Smiley, Christmasy, and sunny...but hey, it's a shot;) 

Between the sun, being in a hurry and the fact that his new airplanes he got for Christmas were keeping his undivided attention, this is all I've got.  Can't you just hear him making the plane noises, though?