Happy Birthday Abi...January 8

It's hard to believe my Abi is now 12 and already a Young Woman! We couldn't be more proud of our sweet little girl. I think the best quality about Abi is her heart. Even when she was a little girl, she had this big heart and wanted to be a friend to everyone. One thing I have always admired about Abi is that she is kind to everyone. It is second nature to her to find someone that needs a friend and be that friend. She is very sensitive to the needs of others and doesn't follow the crowd if it means making someone else feel left out or excluded. I've watched her for many years and always wondered if that characteristic would wear off eventually but she is true to herself.....that is who she is. She is very loving and kind and loves to see people smile. She is an amazing student and works hard in school. She is musically talented and truly enjoys playing the piano....although at times the practicing gets to her a little. Abi's priorities are exactly where they need to be. She knows she is a Daughter of God and that comes first in her life. She reads "The Friend" (church magazine) every morning during breakfast (I guess she will be moving onto the teen church magazine soon), and many times she is the reminder we need to have family scripture study at night. She sets goals and accomplishes those and always wants to choose the right. She is truly a joy to our family. She has been amazing with Meili. Abi will probably never realize how grateful I am for the countless hours she has helped me with Meili or for doing household chores so I could tend to Meili. She truly goes above and beyond what is expected of her. She is a wonderful daughter, sister, cousin, granddaughter, and friend. We love her dearly.

Abi's birthday started out pretty awesome. The day before her birthday (Friday), she arrived at school to find her friends had decorated her locker. It made her day. I picked her up from school and took some photos which I guess, at that point, some of the decorations had been ripped off.....but still pretty dang cute. Also, her friend, Rissa, had brought her a donut (thanks Janna--Rissa's mom) for a little breakfast treat.

Since we only do birthday parties on the big years, Abi has been looking forward to this birthday since her 8th birthday. As we started planning her party, she started making up the list of friends to invite. She came up with 25 names!!! Are you kidding?? Can you narrow that down slightly? In the end, she really couldn't narrow it down. She has some amazing friends and they are all pretty close. I think she would've invited the entire 6th grade had I let her because there were quite a few she felt bad she couldn't invite. But 25 was the magical number and we had pretty much everyone show up except for just a couple of girls. Abi planned pretty much the entire party and it was so fun to watch her.

We have an amazingly talented lady in our ward, Julie Stenquist, who is a professional caterer. She makes the most beautiful things and the added benefit is that they not only look absolutely beautiful, they taste amazing!. For a couple of years, I've been telling Abi we could ask Julie if she would make a special cake for Abi. She was so sweet with Abi. Abi was able to go down to her house and pick out exactly what she wanted. It turned out fabulous and was the talk of the night. The cake was sooo delicious too.....coconut....mmmmm. I'm pretty sure Abi felt like a princess that day.

Abi had some great ideas for games and the theme she picked was a music/dance theme. The girls danced, had pizza, played games, made up some pretty awesome music videos, and of course danced some more. Abi sent them home with little bags of nail polish, lip gloss, manicure tools, etc. Such a cute group of girls....it was a great night. I even had a blast!

P.S. btw, ignore the wires and torn up walls in the background please? We are doing a little remodel job and I tried to talk Abi into waiting until the little remodel job was done but she really wanted the party on her birthday so we rolled the carpet back and tried to ignore the tore up mess. I think some of the moms wondered if that was the norm at our house. :)

Happy Birthday Sweet Abi! We love you! Always be the sweet girl you are today. You have so many blessings, always be grateful for them. Thank you for being such a good example to all of us. How lucky we are to have your as part of our family. We have watched your little testimony grow and know that your Heavenly Father is so proud of you. Love you Sweetheart...

Christmas Day 2010...

Christmas is my favorite time of the year. I love the special spirit and magic that we feel in our hearts. This year was even more special and complete with little Meili being home with us. What sweet moments we have had as we have watched her experience many new things during the Christmas season. One of her favorite things included the Christmas lights. I remember one night Russel and I got the Christmas trees out (YES we have fake ones), so that we could decorate them the following Monday for family night. When Meili got up I talked to her a little bit about the Christmas tree and then turned on the lights. Her eyes lit up and she started clapping. From then on, she would go around and plug in any garlands, trees, etc. that needed their lights on....even in the middle of the day. It was too cute and I knew she could feel that special spirit that we all feel at this time of the year. Christmas morning, the kids of course were up at the crack of dawn (well before that too but we wouldn't let them actually get up until the crack of dawn). Meili was asleep so the kids tear into room and tell her it's Christmas. I don't think she really knew what was going on or what to expect but it was pretty cute when she came in and saw one of her gifts that wasn't wrapped. She does a little funny thing with her mouth when she is trying to suppress a smile which is what she did when she saw the little pink kitchen Santa left for her. It was the cutest thing because you could tell she was way excited about it but she was a little shy about letting us know that. Once we started opening gifts, she didn't seem too interested but after about three gifts, she decided she liked it and caught on real quick. The kids had a good time just being lazy in PJs all morning and Russel made an awesome breakfast. Cousins came over later on in the afternoon as did Grandma Jo. Our favorite part of Christmas is spending time with family and feeling the love of our Savior. Things can get crazy and chaotic this time of the year but we try to stay focused on Christ and remember why we celebrate Christmas. When we do that, the Christmas season has real purpose and meaning and the hopefully those are the things the kids will remember.

I'm not sure who was on camera duty this year but whoever it was did not take the job seriously. So here are the few pictures we took that day. I guess we were just enjoying every moment and feeling so grateful for our beautiful children and the journey that started just over a year ago that led us to our fifth little angel.

We have felt so blessed this year and are so grateful for the many blessings we have. As the kids got ready for bed Christmas night, we got out our little treasure box (a friend told me about this tradition and I knew it was something I wanted to do for our family). During the month of December, the kids watched for good things in our home.....kind words, service towards others, etc. When they saw something good, they wrote it down and put it in our treasure box that we decorated. We read each of these acts of kindness and recognized that there are many good things that go on all around us and many times we do not take the time to notice. In fact the kids asked if we could keep the treasure box out all year. The memories we hold dear are the time spent together and the feelings and love that we share with one another.

Christmas Eve 2010....

Every year we spend Christmas Eve at my parents' house. It's just tradition....the Hansen family party is always Christmas Eve. We have the traditional dinner and have many traditions that we look forward to each year. We have many recipes that we love to make on Christmas Eve and add new ones occasionally too. We have the kids act out the nativity which is always quite comical and special at the same time. And of course we always do the pajama thing too. We had a wonderful time and headed back to Logan just in time to set out cookies and milk for Santa.

P.S. Meili wanted to be the wiseman......I think the simple silver crown was more appealing that being wrapped up in yards of fabric :)

2nd Annual Temple Square Trip...

This is a tradition that we started last year and we love it. We decided we wanted to do something that was for just our little family. Even though grandma and grandpa live close, we really wanted this time to be a focus on just the kids. So we let them pick where we eat and then we find a hotel to stay in for the night which they think is fabulous. The lights were absolutely breathtaking as always and the kids love to wander to each of the different nativity scenes and guess what country they are from. Last year was bitterly cold but this year was sooo nice.....almost balmy.....well almost. We got back to the hotel around 9:30 and the kids got in PJs and turned the TV on just in time to start The Polar Express. It was perfect timing and the kids really enjoyed seeing it again.....for some reason it's more fun at a hotel. We had a great breakfast at the hotel the next morning and then Russel had to run back to Logan to see some patients. But Grandpa was awesome and came and picked us up with front door service when we were ready to go. Oh and I have to give my Abi credit for most of the pictures above. She is becoming quite the little photographer.

Gingerbread House Tradition...

Every year we try to do some sort of Gingerbread House Tradition. It started many years ago when we lived in Kansas City. We had some very close friends and she actually made the gingerbread houses and then she would have us over to decorate them. Since we both ended up in Arizona, we continued on with that tradition. We have some great memories from those years and have continued the tradition on with our own family. Granted, I do NOT make the gingerbread. :) This year we had a gingerbread house for the girls to decorate and one for the boys. Since Josh wasn't able to be there, we elected him as the judge. He was very fair and gave the girls the best put together gingerbread house and gave the boys the coolest gingerbread house (complete with lego guys staking it out).

Christmas Recital 2010...

Abi and Nick did a great job at the Christmas recital this year. Nick has two friends in the neighborhood that take piano with him and they are the cutest little things. It was a duet recital but Carol and Mary (our wonderful piano teachers) arranged it so that all three boys played together. It was awesome! Abi did a wonderful job playing Away in A Manger with her cousin McKenna. They were pretty dang adorable themselves. We didn't even plan it and they totally matched each other. Very cute. Usually we have lots of pictures but for some reason we only got Nick and Abi together. I guess we just did video of the actual duets.

Treehouse Pediatrics Christmas Party

Russel's office always has a great Christmas party. It's something we always look forward to. This year we decided to have it at our house. It was so fun and it's always nice to get to know the spouses a little better and enjoy a more casual environment. We had a wonderful dinner catered by Hamilton's, played some games, and then made gingerbread houses. Oh and I can't forget to mention....in case you can't tell....we had an ugly sweater contest. Russel won one of the prizes....although he can't take full credit since it was the office manager, Wendy, who came to the rescue and brought him a sweater to wear. :) What a great group Russel works with.