Good Friends, Good Fun

I know its been a while since I posted anything, so for all those of you who know the Gruwells (and for those of you who at least know OF the Gruwells) -- here are some pictures from Lucas' reception on Saturday night.

Lucas and Meagan

Paul and Scott

Jessica

Me, Esther, Missy, and Levi

Elle and Levi

Jessica and Eliza

Elle and Jessica

Cute little Mya

And now for a few candid shots from the reception:











And now here's one last parting shot for you:

Awwww-- how cute.

Chalking it up

The weather here has been really beautiful for the last week or so, and we've been able to venture outside more and more for a little freedom from the confines of our apartment.

Drawing on the sidewalk with chalk is always a fun activity for the kids, and as you can see from the picture above, sometimes I get into it a little bit more than they do.

Here is a portrait of my rugrats. Enjoy!

Three Cheers for Nursery!

So, my little baby's all grown-up! Here's Grace (with Ethan) on her first eligible day of nursery (hip, hip, hooray).




As you can see, Grace is literally jumping for joy she's so excited. Ethan is very excited to have her join him as well. After sacrament meeting it was so cute because Ethan says to Grace: "Grace, you're big now. You get to come to nursery with 'Niki' [this is how he says his name -- I don't know how he got it either]." I guess thats one perk of having kids 16 months apart. They're able to keep each other company in nursery for the rest of this year.




Fortunately, Grace LOVED nursery, and the only time they had to bring her to me was for a diaper change. The funny thing is, this is the first time practically since we've been married that Scott and I can sit with each other through all of Sunday School and to be honest I don't really know what to do with myself. Call it adult-onset ADD or maybe its just being around kids all day that causes my attention span to dwindle to the size of theirs, but today's Sunday School lesson was the longest 40 minutes of my life!

Okay, before I close, I just had to post one more picture. Ethan (and Grace) are notorious for their "rocking." They rock when they're sitting on the couch watching Little Einstein's, they rock when they're eating, and they rock when they're in bed. Ethan doesn't usually fall asleep for nap time anymore, but a few weeks ago he must have been really tired, and he rocked himself to sleep (this time in an actual rocking chair). How funny is that? Notice the death grip he has on the aforementioned watering cans I got at Wal-Mart (in case you can't see in the picture, his arms are looped through the handles). What can I say? My kids are crazy!

Sunday, Sunday

So, do any of you out there have 11:00 church? Because we do, and I never thought I'd be saying this, but it is way too late for me! Perhaps its because my children are up by 7 or 7:30 every morning and Scott is already at church meetings by the time they/I wake up, but there is just way too much down time before we can finally get out the door. And I don't know what it is about Sundays -- every other day of the week I manage to shower and get dressed for the day without Scott here to keep an eye on the kids. But on Sundays, showering and getting dressed for the day are monumental tasks!

I think I've finally gotten the system down. I've learned to get the kids dressed at the very last minute before leaving for church otherwise they're sure to spill something or get stained by something before we leave. I've also learned to take advantage of Little Einstein's on the TiVo to shower and start getting ready. And just to make sure they leave me alone for a little while, I ply them up with lots of snacks. Despite all my tactics, etc. we still have 3-4 hours of down time every Sunday morning with nothing to do!

I don't even know what I'm going to do when we switch to 1:00 church next year!

Snow Day

So, with Utah weather being unpredictable -- especially in the spring -- I guess we shouldn't have been too surprised when it snowed here the day after Easter. However, we still felt especially tricked by mother nature after the days of warm weather we enjoyed the week before. Being cooped up in the house yet again proved to be a challenge for us until I came up with a great way to use the sand buckets and tools I had bought for the kids before Easter.



Believe it or not, they ARE actually having fun. And in case you are wondering, the tubs are filled with rice (Grace's) and cornmeal (Ethan's). Quick caveat -- rice is very difficult to vacuum up in large quantities.

Here are a few more photos of the fun...

Fun pictures from Costa Rica

Here's my brother Freddie (or I guess I should say Elder Hansen) crossing a handmade rope bridge in Costa Rica.















Here are the people he was crossing the bridge to visit -- they really live in a tree house.

Don't you wish you were there?

Hoppy Easter (hahaha)

Here below you will see the progression of an Easter morning...






I opted against candy this year because they are still sugared out from our California trip. My family loves sneaking them treats.

Here are a few more Easter pictures for your viewing pleasure.




I got Ethan and Grace these little watering cans from Wal-Mart, and Ethan pretty much won't let his go. Here's a shot of him "watering" the flowers before Church.

A Day at the Beach

Okay, so we didn't exactly spend the whole day at the beach. In fact we spent the majority of the day cooped up in the hotel room. In an instance of too much family bonding time, here you can see Ethan intent on giving Grace what we in our family like to call a doyoyoing.

Notice the look of complete
concentration on Ethan's face and
the total lack of concern on Grace's.

And now for the beach shots...

Sarah, Ethan and Scott admiring the waves.

The Bobbsey Twins both enjoyed digging in the sand.

Here's a really cool shot I got of the ebbing surf. Lovely, isn't it?

And to end it all with a bang, here is our rental car. No offense to those of you who own a Dodge Magnum, but the middle back seat SUCKS! Especially being strapped in between two carseats with very active (and occasionally aggravating) toddlers.

More wedding pics

So, I think I ran out of room with that last post. Here are a few more pictures from the wedding and the reception.

Our Little Family

Sisters, Sisters...

Laura and Grace at the reception. Grace is a little sleepy. This vacation totally threw her sleeping schedule out of whack.

Here's Ethan in a showdown with one of Jeremy's nephews.

Notice how Ethan is trying to slyly edge him out? When I asked him what he was doing he said he was "blocking him."

Here's Grace hurting Sarah. She was very intrigued by the sling.

Here's the newlyweds arrival at the reception. We were right next to a marina (?) --it was beautiful.

Check out the view!

California here we come...

So, to continue the story. After the accident we didn't think we were going to make it to the wedding. However, the next morning everyone was feeling like they wanted to go, so we found some last minute plane tickets and flew into LAX that night. Talk about a whirlwind trip. We got to our hotel that night at 12:30 AM pacific time (1:30 AM for our poor little mountain time bodies) and the wedding was the next morning. Posted for your viewing pleasure are pictures of the Emily Hansen - Jeremy Curfew wedding. Enjoy!

The happy couple leaving the temple.

Don't they look beautiful?

The Hansen Family

The Curfew Family

The Crash

As many of you have heard by now, we got in a really bad car accident on Thursday, April 6th as we were driving to California for Emily's wedding. The roads were slushy and as Scott was passing a semi, a gust of wind pulled on the car and we started to swerve and fishtail. We ended up going off the road and spinning around 180 degrees and then rolling one and a quarter times so that the van ended up on its side.

I had just unbuckled to take off my jacket and was literally in the process of buckling back up when we started to swerve. As we went off the side of the road, the only thing I kept thinking was "oh crap I'm not buckled, I'm not buckled!" I had a death grip on the seat belt strap with my right hand, and miraculously the only physical evidence I have of the wreck are a couple of bruises on my arm. The kids and Scott were totally fine, and only my sister Sarah was injured. The window she was sitting next to broke and gashed open her arm. It wasn't until I saw her arm that I totally started freaking out.

Luckily Scott managed to stay calm and three cars pulled over almost immediately to help. "GPS Joe" was the first on the scene and helped Scott get the back door open and the kids and Sarah out. He also knew what to do with Sarah's arm until the ambulance got there. He wrapped it with a sweatshirt and got her into a car with a blanket to keep her warm.

We feel very blessed that we were all able to walk away from the scene of the accident on our own. The ambulance took us to the Fillmore, UT medical center and the doctor was able to stitch Sarah's arm and it appears that there is no muscle damage and that she'll be able to recover completely. Here's a before and after shot of Sarah's arm. (Just a warning, her arm looks REALLY bad).

Before

After

Like I said, we feel very blessed that everyone is alive and well and that nothing worse happened to us. Here are a couple more gratuitous shots of the totalled van.

Inside ...

... and out.

Okay, this is taking a lot longer than I expected. Stay tuned...next post -- Emily's Wedding!
(Yes we made it there after all).

The Blur of Fall 2002

In looking back at our early days, I'm realizing what a whole different world we're living in now!  As I'm trying to decode what exactly was happening in our lives during those first several months in Oregon, the only thing I have to go on is less than a handful of pictures {this was pre-digital age, of course} and a scant personal journal record.  And spoiler alert -- that's not a whole lot to go on!  Hahahaha.  It's really easy to forget that I didn't always carry around a camera/iPhone in my back pocket.  😂

It's funny how time and memory work, though, because it's easy for me to look back on those days with rose-colored glasses and remember all the happy moments we had while downplaying anything that wasn't quite so happy.  If I really stop and think about it, though, I can easily remember how lonely I felt for much of the time we lived there.  Being an introvert and quite reserved/shy by nature, moving to a brand new place where we knew NOBODY was really, really hard.  Especially since I've never felt like I've been super great at making friends.  Combine that with the fact that we were both working full-time and had only one car -- which Scott needed to use pretty much every weekend to drive to whatever sports events he had to cover for work, (leaving me stranded at home by myself a whole lot of the time) -- and I think I just had the perfect storm of a situation to leave me feeling sorry for myself and wishing I had more friends.  The situation was probably made even sadder and lonelier by the fact that the life we had left in Provo was filled with family on both of our sides and a few college friends who were still hanging around!  The good thing is that not having any friends in a new place makes you so much more grateful when you DO find them.  And thankfully we did find them! And there WERE happy memories.  Like this one...

{From a journal entry on October 31, 2002}

Well, it's 6:30 in the morning and I'm too excited to go back to sleep...we're going to have a baby! I'm so excited I don't know what to do.  I want to wake Scott up and tell him, but he didn't get in from work until 3:30 AM and I want him to get as much sleep as possible.  I'm so excited! We just found out on Tuesday that Scott's sister Kristin is expecting as well!... I guess I should try to go back to sleep,  I don't want to be tired today -- it's Halloween and I know the kids will be wired.

In case you couldn't tell from the journal entry, I was so excited to find out I was pregnant!  Hahaha.  Once Scott finally woke up and I shared the news, he was excited as well.  :)  

As the blog post title says, the fall of 2002 was a bit of a blur.  Work and church and getting through my first trimester are the main things that stand out from those months.  {A fun little piece of trivia from my first trimester is that my morning sickness caused me to OD on both Wheat Thins and the Dixie Chicks.  Hahahahahaha.  Seriously, though.  I think it was close to 5 years before I could stomach wheat thins again.  That and the Dixie Chicks album "Home" (which was the only CD I had in our car at the time) were so intrinsically linked to my morning sickness, that I couldn't handle either one of them in subsequent months and years without feeling like I was going to throw up again.  Fun times.  😉}  That and our first Thanksgiving as a married couple, where Scott saw first-hand how  quickly the Hansen family finishes dinner.  We had driven down for the holiday from Oregon to Fresno, CA where my family had moved a few months after our wedding and I'll never forget how startled and dumbfounded Scott's face was when he looked around and realized that while he was still eating his first course of salad, the rest of us were all basically done with our meal.  I don't know if that's something necessarily to brag about, but it's certainly something to record for posterity.  Hahahahaha.  😊

And that's all I've got for the Fall of 2002...