Starting Kindergarten

My baby started kindergarten today! I didn't anticipate this, but I had some mixed emotions. Yesterday with all the whining and complaining I was hearing, I thought that starting kindergarten would be nothing but great for all of us! Today as I walked her to her seat and said goodbye, she was nothing but excited and pleased. On the other hand, I was a little bit sad.

I guess that's always how it is when you enter a new phase of your life. There's no going back to that earlier time, for better or worse. Children need to grow up. They are supposed to become independent and I frankly work very hard to achieve that for them, but it's still a little hard to say goodbye. Fortunately she is only gone for a few hours every day so I still have lots of time with her. And I have BIG plans for the time she is gone. There is no way I can get everything done that I want to during that time, but maybe this blog will get a little more attention!

Soon I will have another child leaving the nest as he goes on a mission for the LDS church. We won't see him at all and will only talk to him twice a year for two years. Fortunately there's a weekly email! I have a ton of things still to do to get ready for that, but that departure will be bittersweet too.

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Do Dots Family System

The original post was written in January of 2015. I wrote an update at the bottom of this post in March 2021. A few months ago, a friend of mine told me about something she was doing in her family to help her family function better. Her teenage autistic son had been struggling a lot so they had been working with behavior therapists to help him and this "Do Dots Family System" had been recommended. As she described it, I was greatly intrigued since it sounded like something I wanted to implement at my own house. I looked into it and decided to purchase it right after Thanksgiving. Here is my review of how it has worked for us over the last six weeks or so. The basic idea of the chart is that children need to take care of their responsibilities before they get any privileges. It strongly reinforces the concept of "Work Before Play" . The chart helps children see in a very visual way that, until they have completed their responsibilities, they are on Le...

Hansen Family Reunion 2024, Thursday afternoon

For lunch on Thursday, Lauren and Kurt made Cafe Rio which was delicious. On Thursday afternoon, we had free time at the lake. Heidi and Aaron rented a pontoon boat and took people out for rides. This was very popular. Some of us went on the kayaks and/or swimming or just hung out on the beach.

2024 Hansen Family Reunion, Wednesday

Recently we had another Hansen Family Reunion at Bear Lake. We've been having these destination reunions since 2008. There were about 70 of us in attendance. Bruce and Michelle organized the activities and did a good job. I enjoyed myself! Hopefully lots of other people did too. We showed up on Wednesday afternoon and enjoyed a taco salad dinner, served by Neil and Kristie's family. We also worked on two mixer games: a word search with the names of all 100 Hansen family members as well as a Bingo card that involved finding people with different attributes like recent high school graduation, birthdays in certain months, etc. The word search was definitely the most popular. Also popular was playing Nine-Square and Sandy Pickle (a cross between pickle ball and badminton). Thys and Katrina might have won! After dinner, we had an FHE activity/lesson. Liz had made a book with stories of the first ancestors to join the church. She had selected different stories for us to act out in g...

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