Let's Get Ready to Rumble...

I love my kids. They are hilarious, creative, and energetic. I will give them that.




Last summer I let the boys take some of their own money to a few yard sales in Nephi. They picked out these lovely boxing gloves. I am not an advocate of fighting and really don't want to promote it, so I let them play with them a few times and then they quietly slipped away into the yard sale box.

That was until today. I got out the yard sale box to take pictures of. There's a group on facebook for an indoor yard sale, so I was going to post a few things. I took all the pictures while they were playing at their friends house. They came home and immediately went through it all. Before I know it, Little Man is yelling that they need to change into shorts. Not just any shorts, but shorts that match their boxing gloves. The fighting began. Before I knew it they'd recruited their sister to be the announcer. Next thing I know she's changed into a pair of blue shorts and has on a pair of boxing gloves while Big Man is doing the announcing. (Complete with a toy microphone from the yard sale toys) It was utter chaos. I finally convinced them to at least take the boxing downstairs so Baby M could sleep. When Baby M woke up she became a spectator and the boxing event continued.

They are creative and adorable (even if they are loud and a little rough and tumble).

Couponing

I have taken up couponing. I have wanted to for a while, but didn't know where to start. I found some awesome websites that post weekly deals and other information that helps me save money. My favorite site is http://freebies2deals.com

A couple of weeks ago I ordered two newspapers. I've also been printing out some coupons online. I've found some good ones on coupons.com. My first few weeks I saved about $30. Not too bad right? For a family of 6 that can add up to $1500 a year. This week I saved $50. That savings isn't all in coupons, it's store discounts too. I do a lot of my shopping at Smiths. In addition to the good deals, I'm also using my rewards points for fuel discounts. More ways to save!

I've learned that a successful shopping trip requires a lot of planning. So here's what I've done. Sometime after getting the paper on Sunday I cut out all coupons. Sometime after that I organize them into my binder. After the weekly Smith's ad comes out, I match up the weekly deals to the coupons I have. I've also learned to take my binder to the store in case I come across an unadvertised deal. It's come in handy a few times.

Here's a few of my favorite deals: Smiths was marking down their packaged Pepperoni. It was marked down to $.69 I had a coupon for $1.00 off two. This made each package $.19 Score. I had several coupons, so I stocked up. Now we can make out own pizza anytime we want for the next few years :)

Another deal was Trident gum. The coupon was for a $1.00 off three packs. Smiths had the big packs on sale for $.69 each. I had three coupons, so I got 9packs for $.36 each. Fun right?

I'm still learning, but I love saving money. My next step is upgrading my binder. You're supposed to have a zipped binder with baseball card plastic sleeves to organize it. When I got started, I didn't have that available, so I made my own. I thought it would work just fine-until today. I got to the store ready to shop-only to find my baby had fallen asleep. I carefully lift her out of her carseat and grab my binder. I grabbed it upside down. All of my coupons go flying. It was a wet windy morning, so half of the coupons are stuck to the ground, half are blowing across the parking lot. Ugh. I put Baby M back in her chair and went running after all my hard work. (I had literally spend at least an hour planning out this shopping trip and getting the coupons ready) Now it was just a jumbled mess. I made the most of it though and still saved a bunch.

Here's to saving more money in 2012!

Baptism in Boise

The first weekend in January we went to Boise for my nephew's baptism. He is the first cousin on Jeff's side of the family to get baptized.

Jeff took some random pictures before the baptism. Somehow we didn't even get a picture of A (the one getting baptized). Oh well. It was a fun weekend.



Big Man and his lego creating.


















No actual baptism pictures, but lots of pictures of Uncle Andy kissing his girlfriend.

Happy New Year

I feel like I missed most of January. It has gone by in a blur. The biggest reason for that is me and the kids being sick for TWO weeks. We're finally on the mend and things are looking up. I thought I would update what we've been up to in the new year.

The first weekend in January we went to Boise for our cousin's baptism. I will put those pictures in another post. It was a fun trip. It's always lots of driving, but fun to see everyone.

Last weekend Big Man got to go to his own Baptism preview. It was a cute program where the kids learned about what it means to be baptized and start Scouts. Big Man was ready to go right then. Unfortunately, it won't be until the end of the year for him.

Baby M started with a cold about two weeks ago and it turned into an ear infection. She was one sick, miserable little girl. Thankfully she is doing much better and back to being cute and fun (for the most part). Me and Little Man caught the cold as well and have been feeling pretty yucky for over a week now. Little Man missed a few days at school, but got to go on his 'space' field trip. It was a big blow-up dome where they projected different constellations and pictures on the wall. It was pretty cool.

I also visited the bookmobile for the first time. It comes to the elementary school every other Tuesday. We picked out some books and movies and had a fun time. Since there's not a library close, this is the next best thing.



My girls sharing some computer time.


Baby M also got some new teeth while she was sick. She now has 8 little chompers in there.

I found this picture on the camera. Jeff took the kids fishing over Christmas break at the local fishing pond. Fishing at the end of December-only in this crazy weather.

My Little Sunbeam

It's always fun when the kids get new teachers at the beginning of the year. The biggest change this year was Little Princess. She's now a SUNBEAM. That just blows me away. She's always loved church. She called nursery 'her class'. She was always so excited when she brought home papers or other handouts. She's growing up so fast.

Christmas 2011

We had a fantastic Christmas. We spend Christmas Eve at my parents house and then came home after the party. Grandma Susie and Uncle Andy spent the night Christmas eve to watch the kids open their presents. It was fun.

I took some random pictures. Most were videos. Here's what I have:











The funnest part of Christmas is celebrating Big Man's birthday. He turned 7 this year. I can't believe I have a 7 year old. Time really does fly. We've been celebrating his birthday in the summer so he can have an actual birthday party, but it's become tradition to have brownies in the afternoon on Christmas Day and sing Happy Birthday. We got to do that this year with our cousins in Hawaii via Skype.

Merry Christmas From the Hansens

Well here it is for all of our online friends. This is the picture that should've gone out with our Christmas cards this year. I messed up on the address the pictures were shipped to so they didn't get here in time. I ended up printing some off the computer. They were still cute.

We hope that you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
From the Hansens