Flu Shots

1 1/2 months ago everyone but Jon went to the Dr for a flu shot. This is the second time we have done this since the flu shots have been available. I have mixed feelings on them. The last time was about 4 years ago and all the kids were supposed to go back a month later to get another shot because this was their first time. Yeah, that didn't happen. So this year We did the flu mist. Let me tell you this is one of the best decisions I have ever made as a mom. Flu shot vs flu mist. Whinning crying kids vs. happy kids. The kids did awesome at snuffing that stuff up and didn't cry or complain at all. In fact Payton the worst of the all said that was it? They all agreed as well as I that all the shots should be made available in mist form. I would be the first one to sign them up. And this time the 3 that had to go back for a second mist (you have to be over 9 to only get one dose the first time)were happy to go. Since we didn't complete the 2 doses the first time they had to have 2 doses this time. I hope they keep bringing the mist back then maybe we will do it every year. As of right now, I will not be waiting in any long lines to for the N1H1 shot or mist.

Labor Day

This Labor day weekend we didn't have anything special planned. Brenton and Jon had to set up flags Monday morning and take them down again in the evening for a Scout fundraiser. How quickly things changed. As of Friday morning, we had no plans for the weekend. Then Jon's parents called and told us most of Thomas' family was either sick, just getting over being sick and Melanie was the only one who hasn't gotten sick yet and they were thinking she would be sick any day now. So they weren't going to be able to go to Callaway Gardens with them that weekend and asked if we wanted to come. They rented a cabin for Jon's parents and brothers family. They asked if we could join them for a day but since our passes just expired the week before we declined. So Saturday morning, Jon, his parents, Brenton, Payton, Kennedy, and Talmage took our big beast Yukon and headed down to Callaway Gardens. I stayed home with Connor and Hayden. It was a quiet peaceful day. I enjoyed every minute of it. Then Sunday morning, I drove Jon's parents car with Connor and Hayden to meet up with them. When we got there, we headed straight over to the bird show. We haven't seen the bird show in over a year since we usually go in the summer and the bird show is out in the open with no shade. It was still pretty sunny and hot during the show, but much more bearable than in the middle of summer.

ugly Vulture


Owl

Gretta

Grandpa Hansen

After the show, we headed back to the cabin and grabbed some lunch and our swim stuff and headed out to the pool. Jon's mom didn't get a good night sleep last night so we grabbed stuff and quietly left so we wouldn't wake her up. We ate lunch by the pool and then swam for a long time. After an early dinner (3:30 pm), we went to the Vegetable garden.

Connor, Payton, Hayden, and Talmage

Connor, Brenton, Kennedy, and Hayden

After the vegetable garden, the kids weren't quiet ready to head home so we went to the butterfly garden. Then we said our goodbyes. They still had one more day but we had to get back because Brenton had flags to do early the next morning. It was a fun day. Since Morgan was leaving for college the next day, we decided to celebrate her birthday 2 weeks early on Monday. She wanted to go one last time to the neighborhood pool and then to Steak N Shake for dinner. So our dull boring Labor day weekend ended up being fun and busy.

Four Eyes

Brenton has been complaining the last few weeks of not being able to see the overhead in Spanish class. He said he always has to move way up close to see it every time. So after a few weeks of complaints I decided to make an eye appointment for him. On September 1st, I took him in and sure enough he is near sighted (he can't see things far away). I am near sighted too and was a little older than him when I got my first pair of glasses. He had to wait a week before picking them up. He tried on all kinds of glasses. The silver and gold frames didn't look good on him. He looked much better in the darker frames. It was between the dark green and charcoal frames. He wanted wire frames not plastic. He went with the charcoal ones. They look real good on him. They don't look weird but very natural. He is excited to see clearly. He doesn't wear them all the time mainly in class. He has been taking excellent care of them so far. I think we may look into contacts in the summer. Sorry I don't have a picture of him in glasses yet because he doesn't wear them all the time.

Bowlopolis

About a month ago, I got a post card in the mail for a free bowling, pizza, and ice cream for your kids. So I called right away and signed my kids up. I also told my sister about this. So on Saturday August 29 from 9-11 we went bowling for freeeeee. The whole bowling center was reserved for this free party. After a while, they would call you by lane and you would go to a room and eat pizza and drink. They had a table set up with all their fall league info. It seemed like pretty good deals. I remember I was in a bowling league in middle and some of high school and had so much fun. Unfortunately, we don't have any extra $$ laying around or I would probably sign up one or two of the kids. The kids were able to bowl almost 2 games in the two hours. They got chocolate or vanilla ice cream. Brenton wasn't able to go. He was at a merit badge fair put on by another church nearby. We all had a great time and the kids loved every bit of it and mom loved that it was free.

Hayden
Talmage

Kennedy

Payton

Court of Honor

August 26th was a Scout Court of Honor. This is the first time Brenton got merit badges at the Court of Honor. The past year he passed off three ranks but none of those required merit badges. Now in order for him to move up he has to do some eagle required badges and some elective badges as well as service hours. Brenton along with the other deacons got lots of merit badges due to scout camp. These are the merit badges he got today. First aid, Law, American labor, Public speaking, basketry, art, space exploration, and leatherwork. Our goal is next Court of Honor he will get his star ranking. He is almost there he only has to finish up 2 more eagle required merit badges. They have been started so it shouldn't take to long.

Our goal is to have him done with his eagle before he turns 15.

Annual ward swim party

The day after the big Braves game our ward had its annual swim party (August 22). They rent the city pool after hours on a Saturday for 2 hours for our ward to swim. The city pool we have gone to in the past are no longer renting their pool out after hours so they switched over to our city pool. The plus is it is closer to our house and the pool starts out at 3 1/2 feet versus 4 ft at the other one (little to deep for new swimmers). The down side is we always go to this pool and the other one has a high dive. 1 1/2 hours before the pool party the Elders Quorum hosted a picnic dinner across the street at the playground. The Elders Quorum were supplying the meat, drinks and table wear and everyone else was asked to bring a side dish, and dessert was later at the pool party. Since Jon is the Elders Quorum president, he was in charge. He and his counselors did a great job. We had hot dogs and pork bbq. It was yummy. It was perfect the kids could play on the playground and come eat when they got hungry while the adults could eat and chat.

Payton and Sonoma

Talmage

Hayden, Could you guess we had kool aid to drink?

Kennedy

Lorin and Talmage

Kennedy, Sonoma, and Payton



Connor

Payton, Jon, Kennedy, and Sonoma

Gretta and Hayden

After 11 plus years I finally get to go!

The same day as our toilet overflowed (Aug 21) Jon surprised me with Braves tickets. Jon's business partner was out at a job and one of the contractors gave him 4 Braves baseball tickets he wasn't going to be able to use for that evening. Jon's partner couldn't use them so Jon snatched them up. We quick called a babysitter because Brenton was going to go with us along with Talmage. I have always wanted to go to a Braves game. Jon and Brenton have gone many times since we have lived here. They usually go with my family or his family and I stay home with the other kids because I would rather watch them at home than at a 3 hour long game with them acting up because they are bored and too young to really get into the game. I can't complain because many times I have gone with my family to the Fox theatre to see musicals while Jon has been home watching the kids. It's a fair trade. We decided to park as close to the stadium as we could. Each of our four tickets had $6.00 to use for food. We quickly found out that $6.00 doesn't get you much of anything, but we had already eaten dinner so that amount worked fine for snacks. The Braves were playing the Florida Marlines. The seats were pretty good. We weren't in the nose bleed section. I would say in the middle. It was very fun.

Talmage at his first Braves game. An older couple gave

Talmage the tomahawk which he thought was the coolest.

Brenton and Talmage

view from our seats

In the eighth inning it started to rain. I thought no problem I brought ponchos for all of us. We put our ponchos on after the rain started to come down more heavily. Then in the 9th and final inning of the game. I don't remember if it was the top or bottom of the 9th inning they put this on

a big humongous tarp over the infield. And all we could do was wait and wait and wait for the rain to let up so they could finish the game. I don't recall the exact score but I know the Braves were down about 2 runs. I think they should of just quick finished the final inning so we could all go home. Well we waited what seemed like forever but was probably more like 30 minutes and were out of there. It was around 10 or 10:30 pm. When we got home, Morgan, our babysitter had the channel of the game on and it was still delayed. I am glad we parked in the closer parking lot since it was pouring rain and there was no traffic because people had left before us, people were leaving with us, and people were waiting in the stadium. I still don't know what happened with the game. I know they were still waiting a few hours after we had gotten home and were snuggled in our bed sound asleep waiting for the rain to let up. I don't know if they ever finished or who won. I had a great time and am happy I can check that off my list after 11 years.

Can anything else go wrong???

It wasn't even 24 hours after we fixed our dryer that our downstairs toilet overflowed all night long. Yes, all night long. It makes me want to break out in that Lionel Richie song. I don't know why the toilet bowl was overflowing when the toilet tank was running. I stopped the water from flowing and figured the reason the bowl was overflowing was that is was clogged otherwise the water wouldn't overflow it would just keep running and draining. Well the toilet wasn't clogged so I'm not sure why it overflowed. Well after 10 hours of overflowing our bathroom floor was soaked and the carpet outside the bathroom was soaked and one of the closets next to the bathroom that floor was soaked and part of the hall way where the washer and dryer closet is was soaked. So Jon got the wet vac and started sucking up water while I got Brenton and Connor out the door for school. Then it was my turn to suck. I sucked and sucked and sucked till I got sick of sucking. I'm not sure if I ever picked out carpet padding again I would go with the thick stuff which=more sucking if it floods. Luckily under this bathroom is our garage so half of our garage was flooded. I just took a broom and swept and swept and swept the water out of the garage. It seemed like every time I swept the water out more water would magically appear. Later, Jon picked up my parents Dehumidifier to help absorb the water and dry up the carpet faster. That thing works awesome. We kept that thing running 24 7 for about 5 days. I wasn't looking forward to getting our water bill. We just got it last week and it was a little over $20 higher than normal. Which is about $5 shy of a months worth of water for us. So our toilet running for 10 hours is basically how much water we use in a month. And to think I had to suck it all up or push it out the garage. Not fun.

Busted

The evening of August 18, I found out our dryer had no heat. I quickly found out you can't dry clothes with no heat. So here I was with one load of wet clothes in the dryer and one in the washer. Luckily the kids still had some undies and clothes to wear to school the next day. Since Jon, Hayden, and I go to my parents house on Wed mornings to lift weights I brought those two wet loads and was able to get the small load of whites dried before we were done and was able to start the other load. When I got home, I washed another load at home and dropped them off at my parents house to dry while I went grocery shopping. Luckily my mom was out of town and wasn't needing the dryer. I guess all in all it wasn't too much of a pain. The big pain was trying to figure out what was wrong with the dryer without hiring and paying a bunch of $$ for someone to fix it. I love the Internet. I just typed in google what was wrong with the dryer and up popped up some great info. The only problem was it could be a couple of things. So what to try. We decided to try the most obvious one first. Of course that part wasn't cheap. So Jon headed off to Sears to buy the part. I can't really remember how much that part was but it was between $60-80 which to me seems like a lot for a part. Anyway, Jon put in the new part and we put some wet clothes in and let the dryer run for at least 10 minutes to heat up. Well over 10 minutes later nothing still no heat. So it was back to the Internet for me search for the next common problem it could be. This time Sears was out of the part so I had to search for another place that Jon could go to and pick up the part. I really didn't want to wait for it to arrive in the mail nor did I want to pay more than the part cost for them to overnight it. Anyway this part only cost $25. It worked. Now we are stuck with a expensive part we didn't end up needing. Oh well, I guess we will just hold on it. I am so happy we were able to fix it on our own and not spend who knows what for a guy to fix it for us.

One last time

I already posted about the first day of school about a month ago. School started on Aug 10. That Saturday Aug. 15th, we decided to hit Callaway Gardens one last time before our yearly pass expired. This was the only day opened to go since the next two Saturdays we had things going on.
Since we got there pretty early, we decided to do a few thing before hitting the beach while it wasn't too hot out. First off, those who wanted to go on the paddle boats went with Jon while I took the the others on the train.

Connor, Hayden, and Talmage on the train

Brenton, Jon, Payton, and Kennedy taken while on the train

We then did some miniature golfing kids style not keeping score and picking up your ball and placing it where ever whenever you feel like it. The kids were way to fast to get some good shots of them.

Hayden


Then the kids were asking for lunch so we ate and then headed over to the beach. I didn't bring my camera to the beach since I took lots of pictures the last time we were here and we did the same stuff as before. After over 3 hours at the beach, we decided to shower up and do some of the things we have never done here before. First off, we headed over to a log cabin. It was a little one room log cabin with a loft. I would hate to live in that small house with lots of kids like they had back then or even with the amount of kids I have. I need my space. Then we headed over to the Horticultural Center. This place was awesome. The landscaping and plants were beautiful. The kids loved feeding the fish.

Gretta and Hayden note to me for next time don't forget the comb and brush

Talmage and Hayden

Connor

Kennedy, Hayden, and Payton

Kennedy crossing a bridge

Payton


The starving fish. Thank you nice couple who gave my kids some quarters to feed the fish.

The back side of a water fall

Last we went to the lake to see a water fall (not the above picture) that was a joke but I did get this beautiful picture of the lake.

We stopped of for dinner on our way home. We will miss you Callaway Gardens. Thanks for the great times and the memories. I am so glad we finally did and saw everything there is to do there that isn't an extra price of course.

Ouch, he stung me!

Our neighbors went to France for the whole month of July. That is were she is from and her parents live there. We watered their veggie garden and flowers while they were gone. Since they were going to be gone a month and by the time they got home their grass would be 6 weeks long, I decided to surprise them by mowing their lawn while the kids pulled weeds. The kids did a great job at pulling the weeds, but were glad when they were done. Brenton also helped my weed whip around their yard. Jon was off working, but when he got home he helped with the blowing and the last bit of mowing.

While I was mowing I felt a sting on my calf. Sure enough there was a swarm of bees flying up from the ground. They had their home in the grass under ground. You can't really tell from the picutres but my calf was huge as well as my foot. Luckily it was summer and I could wear flip flops. I could barely put on and tie my running shoes. I felt like I had an elephant foot and I could feel my skin stretching and my circulation being cut off. What fun!!!

The neighbors were very happy and surprised when they pulled in 3 days later to a nicely mowed lawn. He was not looking forward to mowing the jungle.

This whole act of service happened at the most perfect time. When my neighbors first left my first thought was, why the heck didn't they mow their lawn before they left for a month. After all, it has already been 2 weeks and really need to be mowed now. I'm not doing it since they didn't care to do it before they left neither do I. Then a few days later my thoughts changed to I should mow their lawn. And a few days later my thoughts were yeah I will surprise them by mowing their lawn and I can even get the kids involved and make it a family effort. They can pull weeds while I mow the lawn. Then I started to get excited about it and couldn't wait till the day came when we as a family could do some service for our neighbor. After I decided all this, I was given 2 topics to choose from for a talk I had to give 3 weeks later. The first one was something on testimonies and the second one was on Selfless Service. I knew the second after I read these topics that I was going to choose Selfless Service. So on August 9 I gave my talk on selfless service. There are benefits to living in a large ward. People are always moving in and of course moving out. This is the second talk I have given since moving into this ward 6 years ago. My last talk was over 5 years ago. I was so glad that just a week before I had decided I was going to perform some selfless service for our neighbors before getting this topic. I only wish I didn't start out with such a negative feeling but am happy as the days went on that all changed. I really enjoyed all the research I did on this topic. I am also thankful for Beth Soelberg who had the most perfect quote to end my talk with. She posted it on her blog 1 week after I got my topic. I had the most comments on that quote. I also had someone call me on the phone that evening to tell me what a great job I did and that she really needed this reminder and love the ending quote. So here is ending quote to my talk.

I Really Lived
"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking the kids to Scout camp. I want to be there with grass stains on my shoes from mowing Sister Schenk's lawn. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived." - Sister Marjorie Pay Hinckley

Thanks Beth

Boating

The Friday before school started (Aug. 7) we were invited by a family at our church to go boating/tubing with them. The kids were all very excited because we haven't been on a boat in a long while and they wanted to try tubing. Brenton wasn't too upset because he was camping with the scouts on the same lake we were boating on and 2 of the scout leaders had boats and they were going to go water skiing the next day for those who wanted to get that merit badge. The original plan was to go in 2 groups since we had our eight and they had seven people. But then we found out Brenton had scout camp and slowly the numbers started to dwindle we still had seven people, but they ended up with three of them from their family (their 2 youngest 11 and 13 and their dad). It ended up working out perfect because then we could all go on the boat at the same time. We started out by picking a spot and letting the kids jump off the boat and swim around the boat.

Jon and Hayden swimming

Connor swimming

Then after a while of that the kids were ready to try out tubing. We had 2 tubes going at once (one large flat tube that holds 3 and one smaller tube with a hole for 2 small kids or one adult) so all the kids could have a long time. The first group was Jon, Talmage, and Jack on the large tube and Kennedy and Madeline on the smaller tube. Payton wasn't too sure about the whole tubing thing so she graciously let them go first.

Jon, Talmage, and Jack

Two tubes at once

Madeline and Kennedy

Talmage and Jack

Then after a while Payton got up the courage to give it a try and Hayden also wanted to give it a try. So we had all the girls on the big tube and Hayden and Talmage in the small tube.

Payton, Kennedy, and Madeline

Talmage and Hayden Payton, Kennedy, and Madeline

Talmage and Hayden




What do you think? Did they have a great time??

After a while of tubing, we let all the kids get back in the water mainly because Connor didn't go on the tube and he loves to be in the water. I didn't get to go tubing either but that's O.K. The kids were having such a great time. They were sad when they saw this

After that fun great evening, we all left wanting to buy a boat.

I am so glad my camera has a sports setting that worked perfect while the kids were at high speeds of tubing otherwise you would have looked at a bunch of blurs. I love my camera.