My Grandma Hansen

Every other summer, my Mom would pack us all up and take her five daughters south to visit her parents in California.  Grandma and Grandpa lived in La Mirada, a suburb of LA, and seeing them was always a delight.  We would go to Disneyland and the beach.  We would swim in the Evans's pool.  Sometimes we would take side trips to Las Vegas, San Diego, or Bakersfield to reconnect with cousins and second cousins (and sometimes they would come to us for our beach and Disney trips).  It was kid heaven.

Apart from those "big" things, just being at Grandma and Grandpa's house was fun.  Coming from Seattle, the warm nights felt exotic and magical.  We would paw through my grandfather's various stamp and coin collections while admiring his various bells and cactus plants.  We would go through photo albums (Grandpa was a photographer, so they had a LOT) and read their Herman comic books.  We watched movies like Hello, Dolly! and West Side Story that Grandma had taped off TV, as well as the most recent news stories by my Uncle Bob.  We would sit on large pieces of cardboard to slide down the hill in their front yard (every time I go back to that house, I'm shocked by how small that hill is.  I swear it was a real HILL when I was a kid but really it's barely more than a bump)!  Some lucky souls would get to sleep on the hide-a-bed, which seemed full of wonder to me at the time, since it was the only home I knew of that had one. 

Visits to California epitomized everything a magic summer vacation should be.

I know Grandma and Grandpa came to see us on the years we didn't visit them, but those memories aren't as clear in my mind.  We have pictures of us getting ice cream and visiting the fish ladders, so I know we had fun together.  But California burns brighter in my mind, probably because it was such a completely different place from home.

My Grandfather died when I was a freshman in high school, and I don't remember our trips as well after then, although of course we still went.  I do vividly remember that when my junior year turned sour, my Mom sent me to LA and San Diego during spring break.  I had tons of fun with my cousins in San Diego, but my best memory from that trip was laying in a hammock on a gorgeous summery day, smelling orange blossoms and appreciating to myself that right at that moment, I was experiencing perfection.  My Mom was wise to send me there-- it didn't fix my problems back at home, but it gave me exactly the respite I needed to get through one final year of torture high school.  (And, actually, my senior year was much happier, so that was nice.)

But I'm getting way off track here.  This is starting to sound like a love letter to California, when really it's a tribute to my grandmother, who passed away on Wednesday.  In my mind, Grandma and California are inseparably linked: I so rarely had one without the other, and the two have such similarities for me.  They were both places of comfort and delight, where California always had perfect weather and my Grandmother was always sunny and happy to be with.  In the same way that I can't remember it ever raining in LA, I can't remember my grandmother ever being anything other than sweet, charming, and gracious.  I'm sure she had her bad moments just like the rest of us (and I know she was more trying as she got very elderly and helpless).  But not when I was with her.


The morning that she died, I happened to read a line written to Galileo by Cardinal Barberini which summed up exactly how I felt about my Grandmother.  He wrote, "I pray the Lord God to preserve you, because men of great value like you deserve to live a long time to benefit the public."*  Grandma didn't make any great scientific contributions, but she spread kindness and joy everywhere she went.

At her death, she was 93 (a month shy of 94, actually), and had been a widow for twenty years.  She had been cared for by my Las Vegas family for eight years, and bedridden for the last several.  She was the last of her ten siblings to still be alive, which feels like the loneliest thing in the world to me.  And for the last couple days of her life, she had been unable to eat.  So in many ways, her death is not tragic at all-- it was time for her to move on.  Which is why I'm not exactly sad for her death, but I am sad to have her gone.  Because the world needs more kind people like her, and I feel like we are all missing her wonderful influence now.  My Grandfather once told us that she was the sweetest person he ever knew, and I agree whole-heartedly with him.  It has been wonderful to read the notes and memories that people who knew her have been sending in to my family.  Her sweet influence truly spread through generations of people.



The only pictures I have on my computer of Grandma are from my wedding...  But isn't she lovely in every single one of them?  That's what happens when you're married to a photographer for long enough-- it was almost impossible to capture a picture of my Grandma where she isn't smiling perfectly!

Outside the temple (also pictured are Leah, Jeni, Lindsy and Kamryn)

With Tracy and my Mom

Chatting with Carla and Kerry Curtis (my other Grandma's best friend)-- I love how Grandma looks so interested in what Carla is saying here.

With both my Grandmas!

Holding my bouquet for me

Thank you for always being such a kind and wonderful person, Grandma.  I will miss you.  And the world may not know it, but it already misses your sparkling influence.

I love you, Grandma.




*Galileo's Daughter, by Dava Sobel, pg. 44.

Birthday Season: CLOSED.

All five of my kiddos are born within six months of a calendar year.  Bentley begins it at the end of September and then we have Ryder in November, Camille and Kendra in February (nine days apart) and we wrap things up with Colton in March.  Then we get a bit of a breather for the next six months!  (Craig and I are both July birthdays, but I don't find our special days nearly as stressful, probably because we don't require parties...)

I don't feel like I'm very good at birthdays.  I want them to be wonderful and special days, but buying gifts gets complicated, trying to coordinate between two sets of grandparents and myself, and trying to figure out when to celebrate as a family and when (and if) to have a party all sort of overwhelms me.  And even when I do manage to have parties, I don't do any of the awesome theme ideas that some people do.  I pretty much invite people over (which is super complicated now that my kids have school friends who I don't know how to contact) and make a cake for the occasion.  We try to have some games planned, too, but in this Age of Pinterest, my parties are laughable at best.  I tell myself that I'm just setting the bar low so everyone else can feel awesome in comparison.  Such a service I'm rendering!

Anyway, I don't think I ever managed to blog about ANY of my kids' birthdays, so I'm doing that now, in one long photo-riddled post.  Enjoy!


For Bentley's birthday, we let him invite a couple of kids from our neighborhood to a trampoline park!  This turned out to be very complicated, because the park was super close to Craig's work, but about 20 minutes from our house.  So I drove everyone to Craig's school with the idea that then Craig would take the boys jumping.  But I forgot to grab a change of clothes for Craig (in hindsight, that should have been HIS job), so then I got to drive home, get the clothes, and drive back to the trampoline park, before returning home.  So that made for over an hour of driving for me and the other kids.  Fun!  (Craig took lots of videos at the trampoline park, but no still photos, so you don't get to see that.  Blame Craig.  And his love of taking slow-motion video!)

Craig grabbed some pizzas for everyone after that and we all met back up at Carter Mountain, where it was their last Thursday sunset with Live Music for the season.  This meant that all of Charlottesville was trying to get there, and we spent at least 20 minutes just getting into the parking lot and nearly missed the sunset!  But we made it and even found a spot on the grass to sit and enjoy our pizza and the music.  We got peach doughnuts and peach ice cream, too, while we were there, and it turned out to be a lovely (if exhausting) evening!

Sunset on Carter Mountain

Charlottesville at night

Presents from Grandma and Grandpa!

Ryder's birthday was a little more low-key, since it was just a couple days after Thanksgiving.  It is nearly impossible to get up the energy to make a birthday cake right after Thanksgiving.  But we had a friend come over to play and I dutifully made him a cake, even though we were still working our way through all our pies.  We did get him an enormous teddy bear from Costco which he'd been begging for every time he laid eyes on them, so he was pretty excited about that.  Following in my family's tradition of coming up with the lamest names ever for things, he has named it Big Bear.  He insists to me that Big Bear is his brother.

Big Bear was too big to wrap, so we just stuck a bow on him and propped him up in our room.  Ryder likes to wake up incredibly early and then come wake us up and demand that we get him breakfast.  So we knew this way Big Bear would be the first thing he saw and we wouldn't miss it!  And that plan worked perfectly!

All ready the night before

Look at that sleepy smile!

And celebrating with grandparents

For Camille, we enjoyed getting to give her her first cupcake.  She wasn't too sure about the whole thing.  Then a week later we did it again with grandparents and she was much more enthused the second time around!  I was totally lame and bought her new sheets for her crib.  But I figured we were due some after eight years!  I really should have bought her some new sleep sacks, instead, since she still loves those so much...  Maybe when the weather gets hot she'll finally stop needing those to sleep...

Round 1

And Round 2!

Modeling her new dress from Aunt Leah

Scoping out the bathtub (one of her favorite things to do)

Kendra got a full on party this year: six extra little girls running around the house giggling plus a piñata.  I was terrified of how it would all go down, but fortunately Craig managed to come home early and help out.  (This was especially fortunate since Ryder spent a good chunk of the party in his room sobbing and Camille insisted that I carry her everywhere I went.)  Kendra wanted her theme to be "nature" and wanted to go on a nature walk, so I had to explain that the middle of February was not an ideal time for nature walks.  Instead we gathered all the stuffed animals in the house and hid them for the girls to find-- sort of like an Easter egg hunt-- and called it a "safari."  It turns out stuffed animals are a LOT harder to hide than Easter eggs, but everyone had fun anyway!

That's a LOT of little girls in our house!

Pulling strings on the piñata (I didn't want to try for the baseball bat kind...)

Also, Kendra got a desk and chair from Grandma and Grandpa, which she was hoping for.  They were a huge hit, and I love how they look in her room:

Why yes, IKEA does rock my world!

And then Colton's birthday was pretty low key, again.  We'd ordered a spaceship toy by Imaginext and he opened that on the actual day and enjoyed everyone calling and singing to him.  (If they didn't sing right away, he'd say, "You going sing me?") and since his birthday was on a Sunday this year, his nursery leader had brought cupcakes for his class, which I thought was very sweet of her!  At church, Craig wished someone a good week and when the man responded with, "You, too!" Colton immediately corrected him with, "No, I three!!!"

The next week, we celebrated again with Grandma and Grandpa and more presents.  We tried to eat out, but apparently the Red Robin in Charlottesville is terrible, because we were there for over two hours before we finally got any food.  (And, my guacamole burger didn't have any guacamole on it, but by then I was too hungry to complain.  I didn't even noticed until I was nearly finished...)  Next time we'll just order pizza.

So those were the birthdays around here!  Nothing super amazing, but they were happy and we're glad our kids are growing and thriving like they ought to!

Now I can relax until September!

Poetry Corner

A Haiku (based on personal experience)

The futility
of vacuuming while baby
munches Ritz crackers

Getting My Snob On

For Christmas this year, my in-laws gave me tickets to a couple of the Metropolitan Opera's live broadcasts!  In case you're not familiar with this (and in case the name didn't explain it enough), you go to a regular movie theater and get to watch a live opera being performed at the Met!  I was pretty excited-- I used to go to operas with my Mom in Seattle and always enjoyed it.  But I was also a little bit nervous.  I hadn't seen an opera in ten years (and the last one I saw was atonal and I think Craig and I were so bored we left after the intermission).  What if I'd lost my love for opera?  What if I didn't like it any more???

I shouldn't have worried.  The first one I saw was The Pearl Fishers by Bizet (of Carmen fame) and I LOVED it.  There are several big choral numbers in it, and also a very famous lovely duet sung by two best friends, and especially during those parts, I sat mesmerized by the beauty of it all (and, truth be told, enjoyed not having to worrying about keeping little children quiet and/or happy!).  It was all so very lovely.  I left energized and refreshed, and excited to see the next one!

I convinced Craig to go with me to see Turandot.  This was perfect because it was a huge elaborate production, and during the intermissions, the broadcast featured Renée Flemming interviewing various stage hands and props people.  (We saw her perform with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for their Christmas Concert back in 2005 when we were first married, so we're basically old friends.)  All the backstage stuff is Craig's favorite part-- he was originally signed up as a theater major, in fact-- so we had a great time with that.

Next I saw Manon Lescaut, which was great, although probably not my favorite, mostly because I wasn't as familiar with it.  And finally, I knew I had to see today's production of Madama Butterfly, since it's so well known, but I'd never seen before, which sort of embarrassed me.  Like any respectable humanities major, I know "Un Bel Di" and couldn't wait to hear it performed in the context of the whole opera.

There are several more productions in the season still to go, but this is all I'm going to see this year.  I'm starting to feel guilty for ditching Craig and the kids for five hours on a Saturday.  But I feel very renewed by the whole thing; it's nice to get back to my humanities roots and the snobbery my Mom (and sister Leah) instilled in me growing up!  I'm already looking forward to next season!


Thanks, Tom and Donna, for such a wonderful, thoughtful gift!