One Month Later

I can't believe that James is a month old all ready. It has been an interesting month too. Being a mother of two is easier than I thought it would be. For the most part Wyler has really taken to James. At first he wasn't too sure about having someone else he had to share mom with. But now he seems to have no problem. He has tried to share toys with James, he wants to rough house (I have to keep a close eye on him when he is in a wild mood), and he has even offered to share crackers with James. When James is crying Wyler will find the pacifier and "offer" it to James, but it is more of a "you WILL take this" than an offer. The past few days Wyler has been asking to hold James, and has been trying to say James. It is really sweet to see.

When James was a couple weeks old they boys and I went to visit Grandpa and Grammy Richins for the day. It was a nice visit. Grammy got to hold James for the first time.  As soon as Grandpa was home for lunch he took over the rough task of holding James. 

At James's one month check up he had grown two inches and gained three pounds. 

Photo curtesy of Marquette Mower Photography

Wyler has decided that it is fun to find little nooks to climb in. 

Last Sunday we blessed James Riley Scott Hansen. We hadn't told anyone that we had added my Dad's name to James's name.  I wanted it to be a surprise for my dad. We made it so that he first heard during the blessing. Boy was he tickled at that. 

The next couple weeks hold a couple adventures for us. I get to have my gallbladder removed. And as soon as that is done Zach gets to finally leave Freeport and get back into the world of construction.  I am so excited for that change. We have been hoping and praying that he'd be able to leave his current job and get back to what he loves to do. And it is finally happening!

Hopefully I'll get back to posting a touch more often. 

James Rilee Hansen

He finally came! Thursday, April 4, 2013 at 5:40 pm James Rilee Hansen was born. He weighed in at 7 pounds 12 ounces, and 20.5 inches long. Both James and I are doing/recovering well.

Now for the overload of pictures... :-)

3 more weeks!

3 weeks 3 days left. Of what? My pregnancy! Unless this little guy comes as early as Wyler. Then it would be 2 weeks 3 days. Wow. Guess I had better get my hospital bag packed and ready... Also need to pull the bassinet out of the closet and set it up by my side of the bed... And get some newborn diapers, and nursing pads... Other wise I think we are ready. As long as I make it 3 more days. I really don't want to pay for a $10,000 helicopter ride to Tuscon.

Also my Mom's diagnosis of sarcoidosis has been changed to hypersensitive pneumonitis. Basically her lungs are so sensitive to something that it gives her pneumonia. So we are waiting on test results to see what is causing the sensitivity. Once that is discovered and removed from her life she should be back to normal! A much better diagnosis than sarcoidosis.

We got our front yard looking nice. We spread most of it with gravel so that it would look nice and be low maintenance. Now to get the rest of the yard looking as good...

Our start to 2013

So far 2013 has been a pretty good year for us.  Nothing grand or super exciting but good none the less.

Back in January my Grandpa Darrow E Richins passed away.  Though I miss him a lot I feel at peace.  I feel like it was his time to go be with Grandma Ruth again.  His funeral was very well done.  It truly felt more like a celebration of life than a funeral.  Another bonus to it was the impromptu family reunion.
Because of a visit with my cousin Missy after the funeral I decided to go buy me a kitchen scale.  A marvelous investment I would say.

We got a new fridge last Monday!  I love having one in the kitchen again.  And, to top it off it is my dream style too! The fridge is double doors on top, and the freezer is a drawer on the bottom.  So far I am loving the style.

It started to get warm here (according to my car up into the high seventies/low eighties), but then last
Wednesday we got a blizzard warning.  Sure enough it tried to snow here in the Gila Valley.  Since then it has been slowly getting warm again.

Last week my cousin Jennifer came down for a visit.  It was really good to see her again.  We just hung out at the house, since it was cold and Wyler decided to get sick.  But we had a blast despite those things.  Wyler decided he loves Auntie Jenn.  It was playing with her that I saw the first signs of pretend play.  At one point he "opened" a package (something he had pulled off a new DVD  and "fed" them.  Then a while later he initiated quite the conversation through the stuffed animals they had pulled out. He was doing quite the voices for his stuffed animal.  It was pretty fun to watch.  Here are a couple videos of them playing together.  He just had a blast with Auntie Jenn.

As I said Wyler got sick last week.  It turned out to be some sort of virus and an ear infection.  He did such a wonderful job at the doctor though.  He was so brave with the shot and blood draw he had to have.  Though when we went to my doctor appointment yesterday he was not pleased to be back at the doctors office at all.  He was very nervous every time a doctor or nurse even talked to him, took him a while to realize that we were at the doctor for me, not him.

This week my body is trying to come down with what ever the bug is that's going around.  I am fighting it as best I can though.  Trying to convince myself to stay healthy.  Lets see if I can kick this thing in the butt before it completely takes over.  I was laying on the couch yesterday, battling chills when Wyler came over with a Tupperware he had taken from the cupboard, with a too big lid.  He then removed the lid and started to "feed" me.  It was pretty cute, his being so careful to take care of me.

Today is Zach's birthday!  28 years.  Were gonna do pizza and death by chocolate brownies tonight.  Then later this week we might do a steak dinner with his parents.  I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, and all he said was to finish putting his cd's on the computer and bake him something along the lines of death by chocolate brownies.  Nice and simple.  I also bought him some mega stuffed Oreo's see what he thinks of them.

Zach was given a tool allowance at work, so he started to go shopping around online for the tools needs.  He had heard about a site called Tool Topia so he decided to check it out.  He loved it and ordered all the tools he needed for the tool allowance, and most of the were made in the USA (his goal is to buy tools made only in the USA whenever possible, even if they are a touch more expensive).  When the boxes came in last week he literally looked like a little kid on Christmas morning.  Ripping into the boxes, then opening/unwrapping every tool to get an even better look at it.  It was pretty fun to watch him.  He was not too please when he had to take all these nice new tools to work, that he couldn't put them in his own shop here at home.

Well, that has been our life the past two months.  Figured after a ton of posts about pinterest projects it was time to catch you all up on what is going on in the Hansen House.

Baby Step #1 Done!!

Remember my last non-crafy post?  The one that had nothing to do with Pinterest?  The one about money?  If not I don't blame you.  It has been awhile since I posted anything non crafy/Pinteresty.  Here it is if you want to go read it again.

When I wrote it we were just started Dave Ramsey's Baby Step #1, save a $1000 emergency fund.  As of today we have that done!!  I took just under a month, wich is a lot faster than I thought it would be.

How did we do it you ask?  Well first thing I had to do was set up a budget.  (Which is still kinda evolving, but I have the basics figured out.)  I calculated how much we need for food (about $500 a month), and gas (about $240), the minimum payments for all of our bills, and I then guestimated on electricity and water, (hopefully with enough wiggle room that would cover it).  Then anything extra went to savings and/or paying off our credit card.  (Yes I know, it should have all gone to savings until we had that emergency fund set up, but we wanted to start to knock out the high interest credit card asap.)  I made sure every penny was assigned a place to be.  I didn't want to have it dissappearing out from under my nose because it didn't have a job.  I didn't want to look at the bank account and go "ooo $__!!!  Lets go buy this or that!"  I wanted to be able to say, "Well every cent has its job, its own category.  If I spend this much eating out that means that there is this much less in my grocery budget, because everything else is all ready assigned a job, and I can't take from anything else."

Once the budget was done we set aside every available penny.  So between left overs from pay checks, gifts, and trying to sell stuff we were able to get the emergency fund built up pretty quickly.  It is so nice to know we have that part taken care of!