Our First College Graduate

This last week our oldest son graduated from college! It's a great feeling to see a lifelong goal that you have had for your child finally achieved. His wife was able to walk with him through the graduation ceremony although technically she finished in August. She had not yet "walked" so they were able to do it together.

Sadly, this means that they will be moving far away, out to the East Coast, taking their sweet little girl, our first grandchild, with them. Because of the field my son is going into, there is little chance that they will be living near us again. But I didn't raise my children to live near me forever so I am glad that they will have an opportunity to really be on their own. We will miss them!

During graduation, President Uchtdorf of the First Presidency of our church shared the story of how 24 years ago he was in the audience with his wife watching one of his children graduate. Next to them were their twin grandsons. Now one of those grandsons was graduating and in the audience was his first great-grandchild. That could have been our story since we graduated 24 years ago with our first little boy.

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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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