Today we had breakfast, then went to the game room and the boys played pool with daddy. Then it was off to miniature golf. (where we once again had to leave early for lunch). We had lunch and then headed into town - our family and our friend and her granddaughter. It was fun to shop around down there again. Matt discovered these in a shoe store: http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/ (no, he didn’t buy any..) But I did get these… which have been on my Amazon wish list since Nov. 24, 2007… They are expensive, but sooo comfy & cute! The guy at the store tells me they will last 10 years… we shall see about that! We had a short rest and then headed to dinner.

After dinner we went to the evening session. Nick Vijicic was the speaker - incredible! The boys all went up and hugged him afterwards! Then there was a concert by 33 Miles. We just stayed for a bit of that. Of course while they were leaving (you could hear them outside because they were so loud of course) they started playing one of my favorite songs… Go figure.

Christian is feeling much better - pretty much back to normal and so far… no one else is sick! Still praying it stays that way! I hate having sick kids, but whenever we do have sick little ones - all I can think about is how blessed beyond measure we are to have healthy kids! It is strep throat… not a brain tumor or cancer like little Kate McRae and her family is facing right now. Please do keep them in your prayers!

Christine

-Christian was feeling much better. We had him rest for the morning, and then for lunch we let him “escape from his prison”. He went to lunch and did fine. Then in the afternoon Matt took him Miniature Golfing while Ryan & Dane went swimming with a friend. I went to town with another friend (& Annika came too). We shopped the little tourist shops and had ice-cream cones. Fun times!

We had dinner (seems like that’s all we do these days is play for a couple hours and eat!). It is college style buffet type food - not the best, but not the worst and they certainly do a fairly good job getting 1900 people in and out of there in a timely way.

For the evening, we let the boys play with our friend across the hall - they had a pajama Nintendo Party (according to them. LOL) and I put Annika to bed. Oh, got all the boys ran through the bath at various times and sent back to the party as well.

Then I had a good chat on the phone with my friend from home.

Then, the boys came in and woke Annika up… ARGH Finally everyone got to sleep (It took Christian FOREVER) and we slept pretty good as well. Annika didn’t even wake up to eat all night long!

Day 26

Another beautiful day here in the Rocky Mountains. Perfect weather - upper 70’s - low 80’s with snow to look at a bit higher in the mountains. They say it is the best weather they have had all summer!

We started out with breakfast and then headed to the park. The kids played on the playground for about an hour and then Annika & I went to the class Matt was teaching while our friend watched the boys. Then we traded and I took her granddaughter and our 4 kids and we went miniature golfing. I was planning on taking the kids to lunch around 11:30, but I totally lost track of time and on hole 10 realized that it was noon and there was a LONG line at the caffeteria. Such is life.. we stood in it and made it through. We have found Dane gets very cranky if he is hungry, but soon as he is fed he is good to go again!

After lunch we rested a bit and then Matt took the boys swimming while Annika & I napped for a bit. When Annika woke up I found out that a roll of toilet paper (the kind that is individually wrapped in crinkly paper) keeps a baby enertained for a good half an hour!

The boys came back, got changed, we rested a bit and went to dinner - shorter line this time. After that we went to the main service. The kids all did really good - I even “caught” Ryan singing a couple of the songs! He wants to go back tomorrow night! They weren’t very happy we made them go (instead of having another Nintendo PJ party) but in the end it was good. On the way out there was a huge elk walking across the parking lot! The boys LOVED that! Yesterday there was a deer that walked up to the playground I guess. (wasn’t there for that one) But when we drove through the Rocky Mountain National Park it was filled with Moose & Elk! So fun to see!

Tomorrow we plan to head to downtown again as a family. Matt wanted to do that. He is done teaching his classes so he doesn’t have any major responsibilities during the day except maybe meeting with a couple of the youth who have some questions.

We were going to take 3 days to drive home from here (it’s a 16 1/2 hour drive) but decided there really isn’t a ton we want to see on the way home, so we’re just going to do it in 2 days - so our road trip will be a total of 29 days - not 30. We should be home late Sunday night. I can’t believe it is almost time to go home! The time really flew by, and I am still not totally longing to be home, but I’m sure it will feel nice when we get there! I’m hoping the memories we made on this trip will be lifelong good memories for the boys. (Obviously Annika is too little to remember any of it.) It has been good!

Christian still had a fever in the morning, and I had a friend from church who is here also (and happens to be a nurse) look at his throat. She said we should take him to the dr. So we planned that for the afternoon.

In the morning, our friend took Ryan & Dane out for miniature golfing, and to the game room while Annika napped and Christian rested. Matt was teaching a couple classes. While Matt & the boys were at lunch Christian started throwing-up. Thankfully most of it made it into an ice-bucket and the clean-up wasn’t too bad.

After lunch our friend took Ryan & Dane swimming and Matt and I headed out with Christian (& Annika) to Urgent Care. When we arrived Annika was sleeping, so Matt took Christian in. It was the fastest Urgent Care I had ever been to! They were in and out in under 30 min.! He has Strep Throat - showed up right away on the rapid test. (He was also dehydrated) Then we were off to the pharmacy. (which took longer than the Dr. & we have to go back tomorrow because they didn’t have enough pills.) Then I ran into Safeway (the grocery store for those of you who don’t have those.) because I really had to go to the bathroom and Matt wanted some Gatorade.

We then drove back to the Y parked the car, were getting out, and Christian threw-up all over the car. (he had a bag, but didn’t get a chance to use it.) Lovely. Got that cleaned up, and got his first dose of medicine in him. He rested for awhile. He was very sad that his brothers were off having fun and he was stuck in the room.

Matt took the boys to dinner & got Annika & I dinner and brought it back to the room. Ryan and Dane continued to have fun with our friends. I then went to the evening session with Annika. Ryan, Dane & our friend’s granddaughter played in their hotel room across the hall, I took Annika with me, and Christian stayed with Matt. Christian continued to throw-up, but finally got to sleep. Once he was asleep he slept really well all night.

I got back around 8:30 and we got the rest of the kids to bed. We were all sleeping really well until 3:00 a.m. when Dane fell out of bed right onto his head! It was a loud bang - poor guy! He had a big goose-egg, but it is less today. That woke everyone up (except Christian). He’s used to sleeping on his little air-bed on the floor but since Christian is sick, I have him in the air-bed and Dane in the big bed… Annika had a hard time getting back to sleep. Our neighbors said they heard her crying, but it was okay.

Speaking of neighbors… There are 1800 people here - what are the chances… The friend from our church and her granddaughter are across the hall, friends from WA are in the room right next to us, and across the hall a bit further are friends from MN! It has been so fun to catch up with everyone!

C-

We left town around 1:00 p.m. and headed up to the Rocky Mountian National Forest. BEAUTIFUL! The top was around 12,000 feet. I made the kids turn off their Gameboy’s, we turned off the radio and just enjoyed the scenery. The roads are very windy (with no guardrails - EEK!). We saw herds of elk, & a couple moose & snow. It was 54 degrees towards the top where we got out. (so out came the new hoodies!) I went in the really fun gift shop while all the boys hiked up a huge set of stairs to the top of the mountain. I overheard one man say “I have never seen anything like this in the U.S. - reminds me of the Alps!” It was certainly beautiful! We were about 8,000 feet up and we could hear Annika breathing pretty hard… The altitude got to her a bit I think. We are now sitting at around the same (after going up and coming down a bit) and she seems to be doing okay. I got a bit worried for her.

We hit the YMCA in Estes Park around 5:30 p.m. or so. We hooked up with some from our church and had dinner in the dining hall. Then we spent some time tracking down our room & keys. (a bit of a long story… but we got them.) By this time the main session had started, so we headed over to that. Around 8:00 Christian said he wasn’t feeling well, so we headed out to find our room (we had the keys but hadn’t gone to it yet.) We got settled in and I took Christian’s temp. - 102.6 UGH! So we tylenoled him up and got him to bed. By 9:00 all the kids were in bed. We do not have a seperate room in this hotel - it is two queen beds side by side and then a small kids air mattress and the Pack N’ Play. So far Ryan has been talking in his sleep tons & snoring, and Christian has gotten up to go potty. Hopefully it is not too long of a night and we can actually get some sleep.

Apparently last year they had some type of programming for the kids, and this year not so much… It looks like the YMCA has some of their own programming for kids that we will have to look into. I’m praying Christian is better soon (and no one else gets sick) so we can actually enjoy some of the conference… It could be a long week if I am trapped in this room (with no TV) with 4 kids! I guess time will tell! Could be interesting!

C-

4th of July! I set the alarm for 6:00 a.m. and drug myself out of bed. I had to wake the kids up about 7:30. We grabbed breakfast and hit the road about 8:30. The goal was to make it to the Olympic Park in Park City, UT for the 1:00 p.m. Ski show they have every Saturday in the summer. We were tired, (and the drive was really boring in places) but we made it! We grabbed some lunch at Arby’s and hit the parking lot just in time (shortly after it filled up and people had to walk quite a ways to get to the show). The park is where the winter 2002 Winter Olympics were held. The show was really neat - Matt got lots of video, so maybe I will get a chance to upload it at some point. The skiers go off huge jumps, do tricks in the air and land in a big pool of water. I’m glad we got up early and rushed to see it.. it was fun! It was only in the lower 70’s, but I think when you are high in the mountains the sun hits you harder because we were starting to get burnt. I borrowed a lady’s sunscreen who was sitting behind us to put on Annika.

After the show we went and found our hotel - Hotel Park City. This was the hotel I splurged on for our trip (well, I wasn’t going to book it at all, but found a “deal” on Sam’s Club so we went for it.) They sent the bellman out to collect our luggage, and we parked in the underground parking. We made it to our room, and my first response was UMMM… this is not our room! It was BEAUTIFUL but not as big as what I had booked and it was missing what I was looking forward to the most - the hot tub on the balcony! So, Matt went back down to the front desk and asked what was going on. Sure enough - wrong room. So… bellman was back, loaded all our stuff into a van (& us) and escorted us to a “cottage”. This was more like it! It was so beautiful! It overlooked the golf course, a pond, and of course the mountains (It’s a ski town), had the hot tub on the deck, and had some grass for the kids to play in. (not to mention the absolutely beautiful interior).

We then went downtown to the cute little shops and shopped for awhile. Then we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some muffins, bananas & juice for breakfast since they don’t serve breakfast here. We got back to the hotel and planned to eat dinner at the bar & grill attatched to the hotel. They also had a Ruth’s Chris but we weren’t wanting to go that fancy. However, it was 7:00 p.m. and the restaurant had just closed! What restaurant closes at 7:00 p.m.? So we went back to our room and ordered pizza instead. The weather was PERFECT, so we ate our pizza out on the deck while watching the geese & ducks in the pond. While we were eating our hotel neighbors invited us over to launch off their huge box of fireworks, so we went over there for awhile. Around 9:30 I came back to our room & put Annika to bed. Then, when it was time for the big city display we hopped in our hot tub & watched from there. AMAZING! It was such a great day! (and I slept sooo good in that fancy nice bed!)

P.S. My review of this place was slightly better than Matt’s… He wasn’t too excited about the fact that we had to change rooms, that one of the 3 doors to the deck wouldn’t lock, that not all the jets on the hot tub worked, that we got charged for vallet parking (that we didn’t use), andthat Dane accidentally opened the $16.99 snack basket they left in the room that says “you must pay even if you don’t eat if you open it..” Thankfully we ended up not having to pay for the vallet parking or the basket.

Day 22

Annika got up about 8:45, the boys slept until 9:30! We hit the road around 11:00 - headed for Steamboat Springs, CO. I had booked us a room at the Trailhead Lodge, but I was a bit nervous about it… A couple days before they called (STRANGE) asking what time we were arriving because they only have office hours until 5:00 p.m. So I called back and they said that they would e-mail me directions on how to get in if we were later than 5:00. So, I got a code for the door and some instructions. So I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

Anyway, the drive was beautiful. A lot of Utah looks like home in Eastern Wa (but with more mountains). We drove off the beaten path a bit to Strawberry Resevoir as Matt had heard it was one of the top 10 Spring Break destinations and he wanted to check it out. Now we can say we have been there. : )

We stopped at a little cafe / drive-in in … I don’t know somewhere in Utah… LOL

We made a couple other stops for potty breaks, gas etc.

The biggest excitement was a HUGE Thunderstorm we drove through - there was some hail too and times when you couldn’t see at all where you were going. The lightning was pretty impressive too.

We pulled into our hotel (AKA resort Condo.) around 5:45 p.m. I remember when booking that we were getting an intro. rate because it was a brand new property. Well… yes it is! They are still working on the outside quite a bit, but the inside looks done. So, I use the code to get into the main door and go to the front desk. There is one packet sitting there - way behind the desk, so I reach over and grab it. We use our key to get into the underground parking and go find our room. Let me just say OH MY! First of all they upgraded us to a 2 bedroom / 2 bath instead of a 1 bedroom / 1 bath. I thought maybe we had the wrong room, but there was a note written to us in our room, so it was for us! So on the way to get our luggage we ran into another couple who had talked to the front desk when they were open, and apparently there are 5 rooms booked tonight. 5 rooms in this HUGE property! We basically have this place to ourselves - it is crazy! Matt took a video to show the place. I just looked it up… we paid $143 plus tax for this place… the same price we paid for normal hotel rooms for most of the trip. It looks like these rooms will be approx. $400 per night when it is all done. So we struck a deal! YEA!

Here’s the video:

Notice Matt’s opinion of last night’s hotel at the end of the video. It really wasn’t a dump….

Anyway… We went to dinner downtown at a Steakhouse… It was interesting. It was expensive and it works like this: First you make your own salad in the salad bar. Then, you go to the meat counter, and pick out your piece of meat. Then, you grill it yourself in the grill room! For the price we paid, I would have rather had them cook it for me… but it was good. Then we walked around downtown for awhile and then came back to our room where the kids took baths and got to bed.

Tomorrow we hit Estes Park, CO for the youth conference. We’ll be there until Friday.

Laundry - lots and lots of laundry. I think it was 6 loads (and I had just done some a couple days before). Everything was clean except the clothes on our backs. It had to be that way or we would run out of clean clothes before we get home.

Around 4:15 we made it to my parents house. We had a nice quick dinner.

Then, we headed to Royal Slope to see our pictures from our photo shoot. Here are the top pics: www.dorsingdesigns.com/portraits/hanson_family

We got back to Matt’s parents a little after 9:00, had banana cream pie and got the kids to bed. Matt & his dad then detailed the inside of our car while I packed. We hit the sack about midnight.

Day 20

On the road again! The kids were just in weird moods today - they went from crazy & hyper to crabby and back again. Annika slept quite a bit, so I’m curious how she will do tonight. She just fell asleep about 10:30 p.m. - we we’ll see how it goes!

We left Ephrata, WA (Matt’s parents) around 10:00 a.m. - but we were going to mountain time, so we immediately set the clocks to 11:00. We stopped in Pasco, WA for lunch. GPS said there was a Skippers, so we were excited… however, when we pulled up it was closed. Next sign - Mongolian Grill - okay, we’ll try that… also closed. Finally ended up at the Chinese Buffet that was far from yummy. Matt’s Mountain Dew came with a spider in it and the food just wasn’t very good. The kids wanted ice-cream from the ice-cream machine and I wouldn’t let them because I was scared it hadn’t been cleaned forever. Thankfully no one got sick!

Next stop - Pendleton, OR. Dane had to go potty, and there was that ice-cream I promised we would grab at some point as a way to bribe them out of the ice-cream at the Chinese Buffet. We ended up at a gas station. The boys used the restroom and I went in and bought them sherbet push-ups. The car outside temp. gage was changing between 97 - 100. At any rate, plenty warm! Annika was sleeping in the car so we left it running, but I made the boys eat their ice-cream outside, so they wouldn’t spill in the car. We were about ready to leave and Annika woke up. I grabbed her to change her diaper, and discovered poop all over her freshly cleaned carseat. UGH! What is it with poop and this child on this trip? Of course I forgot to put an outfit in the diaper bag for her and her suitcase was burried… So, 100 diaper wipes later (I did her, Matt did the carseat) we inserted her back into the seat with just a diaper on. I had jammies in the diaper bag, but it was far too hot out for those.

Next stop… I can’t remember - it was around 6:00 p.m. somewhere in Idaho. I was dreaming (another nap in the car) about bread bowl salads at Perkins. (Don’t ask me why… I haven’t had one in years!) At any rate, we GPS Perkins and it is less than 2 miles away! So we went there. Go figure, Perkins doesn’t have bread bowl salads anymore! Such is life… I had to get a regular salad. Matt ordered Prime Rib (their special of the night) Only to find out they were out. So he ordered Steak N’ Shrimp. His steak came back way overdone for his taste (and what he ordered) so he ended up sending it back and finally getting one he enjoyed. Oh, and remember, Annika was only in her diaper? We found the dirty laundry bag, and put her dress on that she wore yesterday… It worked.

We then had 2 more hours in the car, and the boys were totally wild. It was a long two hours. We arrived in Twin Falls, ID around 9:00 p.m. I put the kids in the whirlpool tub for about 45 min. and then tucked them into bed. Matt went and got gas and “Frazil’s” (slurpees) for us. The kids are now all asleep and we are playing online and drinking our yummy drinks! We need to go to bed though because we have to get up at 6:00 in order to leave by 8:00 tomorrow morning in order to make it to the Olympic Park in Park City, UT tomorrow by 1:00 p.m. so we can watch the Flying Ace All Stars Freestyle Show. (Looks like fun!)

C-

Later the boys went for tractor rides on Grandpa’s tractor - fun times!

In the afternoon we went to my parents house. Oh, and hit the Dollar Tree on the way - G’ma had given the boys $5 each to spend there. My Suburban got washed at my parents house thanks to my hubby, dad & Christian. You should have seen the pile of dirt in my parents driveway! The kids played Wii snowboarding and then went jet skiing on Moses Lake (which my parents house is located on). I went with my mom and g’ma to the fabric store and baby store (to say “hi” to my sister who works there.)

Next we went to Chico’s - Matt’s favorite pizza place of all time. Matt’s parents joined us along with some good friends. We had a good time chatting with everyone. We ended up talking in the parking lot until after 9:00. The kids collapsed into bed as they have been doing most nights.

Day 18

Clara (Matt’s mom) & I met my mom & grandma at the fabric store here in town. My mom is making pillowcase dresses to sell at the baby store my sister works at. So we got to go and help her pick out material! Fun times! We were there for almost 2 hours. Then we headed over to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple things and then headed home.

The boys (& men) then went out to see one of Matt’s dad’s friends. Then they took the boys out to ice-cream. I snuck in about a 20 min. nap.

Christian took a bath when he got home. He got some of those capsules that turn into sponge animals from the Dollar Store that he was dying to try out. They all could have used baths, but Annika woke up from her nap, so we were off to my parents house.

Today was the big family dinner at my parents house. In attendance were: My parents, brother, aunt & uncle, cousin, grandparents, sister, sister’s boyfriend and niece. (and us of cours). It was fun to see everyone!

We got home about 10:00 and got the kids in bed. I worked on my biz. a bit. I need to go pay bills now and collapse into bed myself.

On another note… I can not find my Flip Video Camera anywhere… and it is driving me crazy! Last time I saw it was at on of our first hotels… Matt thinks we packed it somewhere… but who knows where! I hate it when I can’t find things! Drives me crazy!

Talk to you tomorrow!

C-

First stop was Babies R’ Us - I had underestimated Annika’s ability to poop on our 3 day trip over the mountains, so we had to buy some more diaper wipes. (Even though I had just bought a huge pack at Wal-Mart before we left, but I only brought with us two traveling cases worth.)

Next we drove about an hour to Matt’s Uncle Bob & Aunt Shirley’s house - in Buckley, WA. We had a nice day there with Matt’s aunts/uncles, cousins & parents. The cousins have lots of kids as well, so our kids had playmates - they had a great time! The weather is perfect for us to grill out, the kids to play, and everyone to visit inside or out.

We left around 5:30 and headed back over the mountain to Matt’s parents house. We pulled off for dinner around 7:00. (the kids picked Quizno’s again) We didn’t really care where as we were pretty full from the BBQ - but kids… they always want to eat. We were glad we weren’t driving the opposite direction as there was lots and lots of traffic that way. Annika wasn’t too happy for a portion of the trip, so we made another stop to see if we could help her out, but we didn’t really ever figure out what the problem was. Thankfully she got over it eventually. We got back to Matt’s parents around 9:30. (So it wasn’t as late as I thought it was going to be when I blogged last night.)

I think the kids were in bed around 10:00. Tomorrow we head to the family cabin at Blue Lake. I’m not sure what we will do with Annika there, as she hates grass, and there are too many burrs and such anyway to let her crawl around. I’m sure we’ll figure something out. The boys are ecstatic to go! The older two remember playing there before we moved, and they all went the other day to put the dock in, but they didn’t get to swim. Should be another fun day.

Annika graced us with her presence at 4:00 a.m., but finally went back to sleep until 8:00.

Showered & breakfast.

We let the kids play for a bit while we checked e-mail etc. We headed out around 11:00 a.m.

Destination: Matt’s Aunts / Grandma’s house. We arrived around 11:30. They live in the most beautiful neighborhood. You should see the house that was just built next to them - it is HUGE and beautiful. It looks just about done… but I guess it has been sitting there for 3 years! The guy invested 3 Million into it, and then just kind of disappeared… WEIRD. We thought maybe we could take it off his hands for him if he cared to donate it… (of course we probably couldn’t even afford the taxes!) The kids walked down to the beach with Auntie Claire, (Matt, Annika & I later joined) and overall had a grand time. The weather was PERFECT - upper 70’s, a very light periodic breeze and sun to boot! We visited with Matt’s G’ma - who rested in bed the majority of the time. I felt so bad for her - she is experiencing a lot of pain, and she really wanted to be with us, but it was just too hard on her. Matt’s two cousins were also there along with the one cousin’s girlfriend and their baby girl who is 3 months old.

Matt’s brother arrived later in the day - around when we were getting ready to leave, so we only saw him for about 45 minutes unfortunately. The kids were looking forward to seeing “Uncle John”, but that’s the way the ball bounces sometimes. His significant other was not able to make it, so I guess we won’t be meeting her. They were supposed to be with us tomorrow - Tue. but that fell through as well, so they are two people we will miss spending much time with.

We had a nice meal, some quality sun, some interesting conversation and headed out around 5:00 p.m.

Next was Chuck E. Cheese. We had promised the kids we could go there sometime on our trip. Check, mission accomplished.

We headed back to the hotel around 7:00 and the kids promptly jumped into the whirlpool bath again Amazing how easy it is to get them to take baths when you have one of those around! Think we can convince them to install one in our parsonage? ha ha

They were in bed by 8:30, and two hours later, I am practically falling asleep typing this, so I am heading there as well. Tomorrow we check-out of this hotel, have a family BBQ and head back over the mountains to Ephrata. I probably won’t blog tomorrow night as it will be late late late when we get “home”.

C-