First Day of A New School Year

Monday, August 25th was the first day of school for the boys. Sawyer and Spencer are big 8th graders this year. Where have the years gone? Seems like yesterday, I was taking them to all day PRE-K in GA!!



Ethan is a big 5th grader. New school, locker, three teachers, riding the bus and responsibility!!! Bear and I are quite pleased with how he has adjusted to the schedule. It has only been one week so.....

Ebo and Ruger

It was a hot day on Saturday. Ruger had been given the "OK" to have a bath. He was snipped, snipped a week and a half ago and until the stitches came out, NO, bath!!! After we got home from the vet, I went inside and 10 minutes later, Ebo is yelling from the garage, "MOM, come take our picture!!!" So, I grabbed my camera, headed out to the garage, nearly slipped in the puddles of water in the garage and found the two by the water hose. Ebo had taken a Rubbermaid storage container and FILLED it with water. Or in his eyes, an opportunity to take a dip!!! 10 year olds don't have time to change out of their dry clothes and into their swimming trunks when there is a water hose nearby cuz that would waste too much time. So, I guess you can kill two birds with one stone or should I say WATER!!!

My BFF, Karen!!

What can I say, I am LUCKY!!! Karen has been my best friend for over 18 years!!! We met in college, Moorhead Tech, in class. Our instructor wanted the class to partner up with someone and go over our assignment. I turned around and Karen was sitting behind me and I asked, "You want to be partners?" And that is how our friendship started.

She being a city girl, Fargo, and me, a rural America girl, Milnor, there was a lot to learn from each other. There are many stories of how this CITY GIRL got a taste of the rural style of living. Yeah, sure city life is great....malls, movie theaters, restaurants but once you leave the CITY and head to the country.....it was a different world for her. Now, it wasn't like Karen never left the CITY. She went on those family vacations and road trips but to experience rural America, that is a different story.

I can remember the first time Karen came home with me to Milnor. Once we exited the interstate and hit good old Highway 13....her attention shifted from finding the right song on the radio to gazing out the window at the countryside. And that we hadn't met a car in 20 miles either!! Soon, there were questions of what was that? And OMG, what is that big bird? It's an owl!! JK!!!

Well, me being the wonderful friend I am, decided to do a little matchmaking!!!

Bill and I had been friends since childhood. Bill, who liked my hair ribbons and was always seated in front of me in class because the teachers always seated the class alphabetically, was available. So, I asked Karen to come home with me for the weekend for a bachelorette party I was going to. In a small town, as the nite wears on, bachelorette and bachelor parties seem to become one big get together. So at the BIG get together, I introduced Bill and Karen and then scrammed!! The rest is history....they ended up getting MARRIED!!! Score one for the BFF, Abby!!!

They will celebrate their 15th year wedding anniversary in September. We both were in each other's weddings. They have two kids, Drew-8 and Leah-5. And what cute kiddos!! They are very good kids. Very polite and well-behaved!! They even lived in Milnor for awhile. City girl to rural America girl. They make their home in North Fargo now.

Karen and I chat online everyday during the week. We talk on the phone. We giggle, we cry, we share!! We get tattoos together and get locked out of her car or house, TOGETHER!!! With Karen, there is always an adventure and a good story to boot!! BFF's...NO, sisters is how I see it!!

I love Karen to the moon and back and am blessed to have her in my life! She is coming to vist me in October and I can hardly wait to see what adventures we will have!!!

Love ya sista, RRIIGGHHTTT!!!! 10-4 good buddy. Over and out!!!

Scanning Away

I recently read an article online that told a story of how years and years, heck, decades of photos were destroyed by fire, water, or just time. Just GONE!!!

When the twins were born, the NICU let us use their Polaroid to capture those special moments. After years of the them in the "Gotta get these into albums" I made a trip to Target and had them scanned. Phew! Safe since Polaroids shouldn't be cut and yellow after time. But after reading this article, I am starting ANOTHER project.

For Christmas last year, Santa brought me a photo printer. Yes, Santa ROCKS!! It is also a scanner.

There is no way to replace those photos once they are destroyed but why not NOW scan them, save to CD or flash drive and be safe? We are now a TECHY generation and someday when my kiddos want to see where they came from, what Uncle and Auntie looked like when they got married, they can!!!

Yes, A BIG PROJECT but in the long run......my kiddos will have both.....picture albums and a back up, JUST IN CASE!!! I just hope that they will appreciate them as much as I do, MEMORIES!!!!

If you haven't already guessed who that sweet, adorable, kissable, little girl is, it is ME!! Taken in Belgium!! Goodness, I was so dern cute!!! Yes, I know, Cindy Lu-Who style hair!!!

Lake Country

I guess photography has always been in my blood. Growing up, mom, auntie or grandpa were always snapping pictures!! "Hold on, one more just in case it doesn't turn out." was said a lot. That was when FILM photography was the thing but these days, DIGITAL rules!! Yes, I say the same thing..."one more" but at least I can view it, decide if it is ok, upload, edit and then give final approval. I am no means a professional. I am a beginner and trial and error is how I learn. I love photography and I hope you like what you see!!!

Family Reunion

Family reunion for the Gilbertson Family was July 18-21st. This is my mother in-law's side of the family. We cleaned, manicured the lawn, chopped, cooked, marinated, grilled and entertained family and a few friends too!! And of course, lake FUN!! Great time was had by all!! Next Gilbertson Family Reunion will be in CA in 2010, I believe.

Nationals for Ebo

Ebo's baseball team qualified for Nationals. Nationals were July 5-11 in Desoto, TX. It was a great time and Ebo FINALLY was the one playing and not watching his brothers play.

Fourth of July 2008

We celebrated July 4th by tailgating before the Cats baseball game. We met up with friends who are professional tailgaters and had a blast!! The Cats won the game and Ebo enjoyed playing with the kids and watching the game. Sawyer and Spencer were up in MN at the lake for the 4th. After the game was done, we watched an amazing fireworks display. Some of the fireworks look kaleidoscope like. I put 3D glasses over the lens of my camera. Pretty neat!!!

I have A LOT to read!!!!

Copied this from a friend's blog. The average American has only read six of the following books. The BOLD ones are the ones I have read. I have A LOT to read!


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*saw the movie, does that count?
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling*movie
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott*movie
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell *movie
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald *movie
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery*PBS series
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert*movie
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker *movie
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro*movie
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl*movie
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I do read!! Really I DO!! Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series is my thing now.

Monday!!

So....my updating isn't going as fast as I would have hoped!! My first goal is to get the many pictures edited and organized. Then upload them to SLIDE!!! But it is so nice to be able to work on those odd/end projects that seem to never get done when the kids are home.

Oh, BTW, the kiddos are up north at the grandparents. They spent last week at the lake with Gramps and Grandma Hanson and leave today to meet Gamma Eileen for a week in Milnor. Then they are spending the weekend with Uncle Eric and Aunt Nichol. Baylee, Nichol's sister, turns "SWEET 16" so Uncle and Auntie are throwing a party so the boys can celebrate along with the rest. It sounds like a BLAST!!!!

Way Too Long.....

Goodness me!!! Where did July go? I haven't posted since July 1st. Good grief!!!! Where to begin.....?

Ebo and Mom.....published!!!

Here we go again.....first, it was a website and now a magazine!!! A friend spotted this and sent it to me. The magazine is called Sports Kid. I can't wait to show Ebo this.

Father's Day!!!

Baseball Mom!!

Love my FLOWERS

Here are a few pictures I took a couple of weeks ago. They are from my little "garden"!! It is more like an orphan garden with odd heights, textures and colors but I LOVE it!!! From annuals, perennials, to herbs, something new is always blooming!!!

Otterson's come to visit!!!

Rob, Amy, Chase and Dillon arrived for a visit May 22nd. This is the first night at the Hanson Hotel!!

Happy Birthday, Gramps and PaPa!!!

Gramps' birthday is May 31st. Here he is getting into the July 4th spirit for the annual boat parade at their lake in Minnesota.

Papa's birthday is May 24th. Here he is pictured with a Christmas gift from Nichol and Eric.

Happy Birthday!!!! Love~The Hanson Five!!!!

Oh My Goodness!!

Time flies when one is having fun!!! Or, should I say, live a busy life. End of school activities, Mom and Muffin day, Awards Night at Middle School, baseball practices and games.....the list goes on and on!!

End of school activities....Ebo...field day for 4th graders....as he said, "He so owned!!" on the races he was in and the blue ribbons prove it!!! Then there was "Play Day" for all of K-4th. Nice and hot for it.

Sawyer and Spencer's field day was more of a social event. GO figure!!! But they had fun!!! And yearbooks were signed.

Awards Night....Sawyer received achievement in basketball. WAY TO GO!!! Spencer was inducted into the National Juniors Honor Society. He was nominated by teachers and had to write an essay on "Helping the Community." He also received achievement in English and NJHS. We are so proud!!!

Baseball....practices and tournaments keep us hopping!!

Mom and Muffin Day with Ebo......blueberry muffins and Starbucks bottled Frapp.....Yummy. And strawberries too. And a very nice place mat and story to boot!!!

Dad and Doughnuts is this coming Friday!! Will update!

Summer Work Hours

(Taken at my mom's garden in ND~Summer 2007)

Well, I made it through the first week of summer hours at work. The days are long but the reward is grand!!! See, summer hours are for 11 weeks!!! Now, down to 10 weeks!!! Hours are Monday thru Thursday, 7:30 am ~ 6:00 pm with a 1/2 hour lunch. Long, huh??? But, the sweet thing is-I get FRIDAYS OFF!!!!!!!!!! I have all kinds of projects, household duties and naps planned but am not going to beat myself up if those things aren't completed. Ok, NAP is a must!!!! Let's see.....brush dogs really good (they are shedding up a storm), go thru ATTIC (it mocks me everytime I walk by), Ebo's room (company coming Tuesday nite), get new/used bookshelves from director's (from work) house (better take some Advil), put my clean clothes away(UGH!!!), start seedlings(remember to water), and let's see........oh yeah, send MOTHER'S DAY GIFTS(me bad)!!!!! I'll give you an update.....maybe!!!!!

Recognize anyone?

http://www.txpta.org/sls2008/Reg%20Packet%20Final.pdf
So, I received an email from Darla, a PTA mom and a baseball mom on Ebo's team, last night. She received this link for a seminar and as she was scrolling down.....HELLO, Abby and Ebo!!! LOL!!! Eileen, Hippie Girl, dear friend and secretary at work, is a picture freak!!! She has an IStock site and has been over to the house several times to take shots of the Hanson Five. If you are not familiar with IStock, here is her site http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&userID=922890. She is a great photographer!!! So, keep an eye out!!! You may see us next up on a billboard-bahahahaha!!!!

Ebo's New Wheels!!!!

Sunday...rain and car wash???

Rain, Rain, Go Away.....S&S's baseball tourney canceled due to overnight rains so fields aren't playable!!! Knight's Car Wash still on!! Walmart was nice enough to let the Knights have the fund raiser in their parking lot. Car wash 11-4. Slow to start but when all said and done, 40+ vehicles washed, scrubbed and buffed. $1200 for the team. Not bad for 9/10 year olds!!! And of course, the sun comes out at 4:10.

Saturday....Soccer, Baseball, Baseball, Baseball and Baseball

Crazy describes how Saturday was for the boys and I. Sawyer and I are up and at em and out the door by 6:30 am. Way too early for a Saturday in my book. Sawyer has to be at Keller Middle by 6:50 to ride the bus, get this, two blocks to the High School for soccer tourney!! Our tax dollars at their best!!! Drop him off and head back home. Spencer up and ready to hitch ride with baseball teammate arriving at 8:30am. Ebo and I then get ourselves ready to head to soccer tourney. Drive thru McDonalds for breakfast for him and a hash brown and LARGE diet coke for me. Arrive at soccer game. My first game to watch. And watch, and watch. Soccer is a very long game. Sawyer played all but the last three minutes. He was exhausted!!! Ebo was bored silly!!! Game ended 4/4. Sign Sawyer out with coach so I can get him to baseball tourney 45 minutes away!!! First home to have Sawyer change out of soccer and into baseball uni and get Ebo's baseball stuff too. Drop Ebo off at teammates since his game is at 1 pm. Drop Ebo off!! Hit the highway and Sawyer takes a snooze. Arrive at baseball tourney at 11:45 am. Outlaws lose 6/2. I watch start of next game which is suppose to start at noon. They start late!!! I am to leave at 12:30 to get to Ebo's game which starts at 1 pm. I can't leave til I see both at bat. So I watch, and watch, and watch!! 1 pm leave for Ebo's game. Arrive Ebo's game at 2 pm. Dallas/Fort Worth traffic for ya. Knights battle but lose 9/8. Check on S&S's game....ended tied 4/4!!! Second game for Knights!!! It is a stressful game and lose 14/13. First and second loss for the Knights. Time now is 4:45 pm. Head home. S&S staying overnight at teammates....Ebo went with team to eat pizza and I head home to do laundry, straighten garage and pull weeds. Bed cannot come soon enough. More baseball tomorrow........first game 10:00 am.