Cleaning the toy room

Rad and Cade work so hard to clean up their messes in the toy room. Sometimes I will go in to check it out afterward. I see some fun things like this...

Sweet hand me down

About 3 years ago an acquaintance of mine gave me a bunch of coats for Rad. Rad did not fit into them until this year. The other day while I was hanging up his coat I noticed the name tag on the inside. The coat once belonged to a boy in Berlin. Cool huh?

Baby Bunny Adventure

On the way to the grocery store the other day, Cade and I saw this baby bunny on the side of the road. So what do I do? I park the suburban in the road. I jump out and chase this bunny into the woods. I actually catch it. I take it home and now little Lucky is a happy Hanson rabbit. What happened to me? The "never going to own an animal lady"?

I taught Kindgergarten!

I had my first substitue teaching job! I was able to teach Rad's Kindgergarten class. It was so much fun. I loved it. The kids were, well, 5 and 6 and very well behaved. Can't wait for the next time!

The Handy Hanson's

So Derrick and I both not having full time jobs has been pretty neat so far. We have both had some miscellaneous jobs here and there and we're paying the mortgage, and we are home for the important things. We love it. Last Saturday Derrick, Rad, Cade and I had a painting job. We spent 10 hours painting the interior of a duplex and pulling out all of the carpet and carpet pad. It was some physical labor for sure but we got it done and had a lot of fun doing it. The boys were real troopers. They both got a bit tuckered out as you can see in the pictures but they were so well behaved. They sat on the purple blanket and ate junk and played with toys. After we were all done, we headed to Safeway. It must have been about 9:30pm. We picked out ice cream and on the way to the register, we were dragging our tired feet, covered in paint and filthy from the carpet. I looked at Derrick with tears in my eyes and said, "I am so happy I think I might cry." He reached out to hold my hand and said, "Me too". What a beautiful life. :)

Oh Rad

So I had a bag of York Pieces and the boys each grabbed a zip lock baggie for me to dump some candy into.

Rad holds out his bag like he is trick or treating and says "Trick or treat, I can smell your underwear, I don't care..."

He totally got the whole "Trick or Treat smell my feet give me something good to eat, if you don't, I don't care, I'll pull down your underwear" all kinds of confused.

Really, what a goofy thing to say anyway, but man did he make it worse.

We had a little talk about things that we don't repeat after hearing them in Kindergarten.

Hip Hop Hooray

http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/video/history-of-rap-3-102811/1365175



The other day Derrick was watching rc truck videos with the boys. One of the videos had some old school hip hop playing in the background. Cade throws his hands up and starts bobbin his head. It was the funniest thing. Derrick looked at me like what?

What can I say? A child after my own musical taste.

You should hear him sing "Hip Hop Hooray...".

Four days of Halloween

On Halloween night Rad decided to switch his costume from a "Black Spider Man" to a dirt bike rider. He said, "On this last night of Halloween I want to be a dirt bike rider." On this last night of Halloweeen... we celebrated this tooth decaying holiday for days.

On Friday night we went to the the Halloween Party that my Mom and Bob did the food for. It was the annual trunk or treat party. Rad said that he didn't want to trunk or treat. He just wanted to trick or treat. He thought that trunk or treating required swim trunks and water... haha.

On Saturday... brain blank...

On Sunday afternoon we went to the local slaughter house where the do an invite only trick or treat event. They brought home quite a haul from there.

Monday the boys went from being a "black spider man" and a football player to a dirt bike rider and a "black spider man" and we hit up the local high school for more trick or treating. Since Rad wore his riding gear, he wanted to use his helmet for his treat sack. Neat idea. Only in his excitement he kept swinging his helmet around and then flinging candy everywhere. The high school kids thought it was hilarious. Rad, not so much.

For Rad's classroom Halloween party I volunteered to teach the kids to make oreo spiders. It was a lot of fun.


So much candy and so much fun... sicknesses and all.

Farm Life

Derrick and I are still set on being pig farmers. Other than stinking like some serious stink, they are easy, and pretty darned fun to have around. We added one more to total six pigs as of now. But here in a few months our Mama's will be bred and those mama's will have about 12 piglets each birth. We brought home the "husband" last weekend and named him Thor. He is a cute lil guy.
We get the prettiest sunsets here too. When the fog rolls in with the sunset it makes for some pretty cool scenery.

Living on a farm creates the need for a lot of trips to the dump... especially without a garbage man to pick up our trash. The other day the boys and I took a dump run and came back with this cool hotwheels truck that we scavanged out of a trash heap. So cool and it runs!

School Boy Rad

Rad is really enjoying Kindergarten now. I love helping out in his class. In fact, I love it so much that as of November 8th I will be a substitute teacher for his school district. It's a fun change from banking for sure.
He went on his very first feild trip to the local fire station. Cade and I tagged along. The kids were able to hold the fire hose and spray a cone. They thought they were the coolest.


He has started his speech therapy. In his testing, he tested in the second percentile in comparison to his peers. He had a 42% accuracy on the words he was asked to say. The scored his with a severe speech problem and jumped right on it. He is working hard and doing great.
He is getting straight O's everyweek. That is the equivelent to straight A's and I am so proud of him.
He is standing out as a leader in his class and is not afraid to stand up for what is right. He came home the other day and told me that one of his "best friends ever" said a bad word. "He said Damnit mom. He says it all the time when he doesn't catch the ball." I let the word slide and asked him what he says when the friend says that word. "I tell him that it is a bad word and that he should not say it." Good for you Rad! What does this friend do then? "He says that it's not bad because he says it all the time, but I know the Troof!" What a good boy.
He loves to color and every night before bed he makes sure that we read the scriptures. He is really into the story of Nephi.

The many faces of Cade

Cade's Croup Catastrophe

Poor baby Cade has spent the last week being one sick little boy. Rad was sick first, he spent last week out of school and on the couch with a fever and a nasty cough. Cade started out with the same fever and cough but the cough just kept getting worse. On Tuesday he had 3 cough attacks before we left to take Rad to school. At the end of every cough attack it took him a bit to breathe again. It scared him to tears, which scared me, which scared Rad. So I decided to take him in. I scheduled an appointment with a local pediatrics office. We got to the appointment, and explained that without my job, I do not have health insurance anymore. They wanted me to pay cash. I did not have the cash. They sent me away. All the while Cade is hacking up both lungs and from the sound of it... could have been a rib for goodness sake. On the way out of the office they told me to take him to the ER as they are more likely to bill later. I was a bit embarassed. I have a nasty cold/cough myself and was a bit emotional. Cade has to be seen. So I drive to the hospital in tears. Some of those are sad tears and some of those are the darned tears that seems to be constant when I have a cold like this. I take him in to ER and explain that it's not an emergency, just a scary cough, and that I tried the Pediatrics first and they sent me there. The receptionist smiled and handed me paperwork and closed the window. I looked up from my paperwork to see the ER doc throwing a hissy about having to see a "kid with a cough". Which got me upset. My "kid" is sick, and nobody wants to see him. It's not like a was wanting someone to look at his runny nose or a scraped knee for goodness sake. He was having trouble breathing! When the receptionist opened the window I looked at her and said (with sinus tears a flowing) that if it was that big of a deal to see a "kid with a cough" in the ER then I would take him elsewhere. Then I handed her the papers and left. With Cade sacked out on my shoulder and coughing up his other rib and possibly his belly button at that point. I get out to the lawn of the hospital and the hissy throwing doc comes out to chase me down. He's standing there in his scrubs and his stethescope a swinging and yells "Lady! If you're kid is sick we will see him!" I replied (with the dang nasal tears still a flowing) that I understand that he was a busy and didn't need to be bothered with a cough and that I would take him somewhere else. He responded with "There are people in the hospital, in the ICU, with actual emergencies, your kid is not a priority and it will be a few hours, but we will see your kid if he is sick". Hack, Hack, Hack and out comes Cade's knee cap. "Nope" I say. If nobody else can see him then I will come back to you. Then I turn to walk away. He yells something else but I just keep going. Because now I am crying real tears too. I'm still sick, embarassed and worried. I take him to the the third doctor. An urgent care. I start to explain my predicament to the receptionist, lose it and she pats my hand and says "we will see him". Thank goodness. He was diagnosed with a bad case of croup. A bacterial infection that caused a nasty ear infection. Some swelling around his breathing parts and some bruising around his ribs from all the dang coughing. The doctor wanted to know why I took so long to get him in. Um... you are the third doc today that I have tried to see. Anyway, the gave him Tylenol with Codein and a steroid and sent us on our way. Ugh. Stupid day. But so thankful to have something to make him more comfortable. He is still coughing but it doesn't interrupt his breathing as much.
As for the ER doc, I understand that there are people with actual emergencies and I appreciate what doctors do. I never asked for anyone to stop CPR to see Cade or to move Cade to some priority list. I wouldn't have mind waiting. Just don't be a meany.

My Mom

My Mom is pretty darned fabulous. I consider myself a very lucky lady to have such a Mommy. She is one who has most definitely had her fair share of tough life experiences and she has always come out of those experiences as strong as can be. She is an outstanding grandma/GRAMERI. My boys adore her as does my husband. She works hard at all she does, whether it be organizing a church social, working with Bob at Auto Haus, keeping her home in order, and keeping up with her children and their spouses and their children. She is beautiful and kind and so very thoughtful. She recently gave me a box chalk full of school projects and letters and pictures and report cards, etc from my childhood that she had kept for all of these years. It has been so cool to have and look through and remember. She is so quick to answer my phone calls... frequent phone calls... daily phone calls... hourly phone calls and listens to me vent, or gets exctied when I am excited about something, or to hear the latest funny things that one of the boys said, or to hear my cry about some drama happening. I'm sure it must get annoying... maybe even overwhelming, but she continues to be there for me. While I was working, on those days that went on forever, she would send me home with dinner. She brought me holiday goodies to my work and I was so proud to say that she was my Mom making that special delivery to my paper piled desk. She is the best. She is my Mom and I love her.