Family Pictures 2014

My fabulous sister Ali at AJ Photography took our family pictures for us again this year.  I have a wonderful family and some of the most adorable kids on the planet!

 

 

Halloween

This year for Halloween the girls were insistent on picking their own costumes.  I rather enjoy having themes to our family costumes, but when Lily decided that she just had to be Ella Bella Ballerina I knew that a typical theme would just not work, so we decided to go with story book characters.

 Lily is my little ballerina and she loves all of her Ella Bella books.

 Charlotte decided to be Alice the Fairy.  This little book fits our spunky little girl perfectly!

 She loved being Alice!

 Gideon's costume was harder to decide on.  I asked Tyson for his input and he suggested one of my favorite books, The Little Prince.

 I'm not sure that anyone knew who he was, but I loved his little costume and he didn't complain.

We had a great Halloween.  On the Saturday before Halloween we went to Boo at the Zoo and then on Halloween we went trick-or-treating with the Jenkins family and then spent the evening with them.

Lily's First Day of Dance Class

Today it was Lily's turn to start dance class.  Yesterday she was very good about letting Charlotte have her turn and today Charlotte was happy to get to watch Lily dance.  They are such happy little ballerinas!

 She has missed it over the summer and this year she gets to do both ballet and tap in her class.  

 She has been very excited to get to wear her tap shoes.

Those girls couldn't help by dance around the room and make their shoes tap as much as possible.

Charlotte took a lot of pictures today of Lily and her class, but they all turned out rather fuzzy.  She had a fun time doing it though.

Charlotte's First Dance Class

For two years now Charlotte has waited patiently in the lobby of the dance school watching Lily go to dance class.  Today was finally her day and Charlotte got to start taking dance classes.

 We are attending Canyon Dance Academy again and Charlotte's class is taught by Ms. Tamara, the same teacher that Lily has had for the last 2 years.  Charlotte gets to take dance with her cousin Grace which makes it so much fun.

 She went right in and paid close attention to  her teachers instructions.

 I love seeing little girls in tutus all lined up!

 Lily watched class from the doorway, asked to borrow my camera, and proceeded to take about 250 pictures during the course of a 30 minute class.  While most were blurry, some turned out really cute!

 When class is finished the girls get a pink star stamped on their hand and Charlotte was happy to get her first stamp.

First Day of School

Today was a big day of firsts in the Hansen household.  

Lily had her first day of Kindergarten.  She is attending the Idaho Arts Charter school in Nampa.  I'm very excited for her and I'm sure that she will just love her school.  I randomly met her teacher, Ms. Puga, while serving Jury Duty this summer when we were seated next to each other on a jury for a few grueling days.  We had back to school night last week where Lily was introduced to her teacher and her classroom to prepare her so this morning I dropped her off in front of the school and off she went.  After school she reported to me that they colored a picture, traced their hands, she sat at the purple rectangle table, and she hadn't made any new friends yet but the kids in her class were nice and no one was mean.

 Charlotte also had her first day of school today as well.  She has started Preschool and she is very excited for it to finally be her turn.  We are doing a co-op preschool with some good friends and there are 4-6 children in the class (depending on the subject being taught) and they are all her friends so it is a very comfortable environment for her.  I'm excited to see her enjoy her first introduction to school!

 No big firsts for Gideon today, but I had to include a picture of this happy, handsome boy because he is simply scrumptious.

Lily's Spring Dance Recital

May is a busy month for us.  It culminated in Lily's Spring Dance recital.  She loves to be on stage in her costume!

Memorial Day Camping Trip

Over Memorial Day weekend we decided to go camping.  We made it a simple trip close to home.  We went over near Payette and camped with the Jenkins and Miller families.  We love camping with friends!

Tyson got he chance to play with fire so he was happy, except for the stomach bug that hit him and laid him out for a day.  Gideon just chewed on sticks.

The kids just ran around the camp site together all day long.

There was a lake nearby and all of the kids loved going for rides in the canoe and kayaks.  

They were pretty sure that they could paddle those boats just fine on their own.

Gideon just loved the water.

He spent the entire time in the lake just playing with the sand and splashing around.

Charlotte was building in the sand.

Lily was exhausted after all that paddling.  Good thing she had her Avengers crackers.

Everyone was so dirty by the end of it all, but everyone was happy.

There was a little litter of fox pups that lived in the culvert near our camp site.  It was a lot of fun to watch them play around with each other.