Well, I am the one who suggested this blog, and I haven't contributed since the first week. So, here goes.

As you all know, my job with State Farm entails supervising a unit of people who handle workers compensation claims. Thursday and Friday of this week, I had the opportunity to attend a conference in LA (at the Sheraton, on Century Blvd) put on by the California Department of Workers Compensation. It was a good conference, worth the time and travel. It was also good for me to mix with people from different environments who deal with the complexities and jargon of workers compensation. I've been in work comp for a little over four years, and I have been continually frustrated, wondering if I was ever going to feel comfortable with the ever-evolving work comp environment in California. As I experienced the conference, I realized my understanding of work comp is as good as most, and those things I don't understand perplex others, as well. I feel better.........for now.

Two weeks from tonight, Master Works Chorale and the Liberty High School choir are performing Dvorak's Te Deum with the Bakersfield Symphony. I've been told, with the two choirs, there will be close to 200 singers.

Last Tuesday, the Masterworks rehearsal indicated that, with some minor fine tuning, we are ready to perform. It should be a good concert; I'm looking forward to singing with the Liberty High choir. Their director used to direct Masterworks Chorale.

Teresa and Nathan are spending the night with us tonight. They came over this afternoon. Teresa helped harvest oranges and prune the orange tree, and during dinner, we watched "Horton Hears a Who."

Nathan watched me mow the lawn, and at one point, he would run across the lawn, in front of me, like he was playing the came of catch-me-if-you-can, with the lawn mower. Of course, he took no chances and kept at a safe distance, probably at least 20 feet in front of me. He would also pull grandma off the lawn if he thought I was getting too close to her.

Well, that's enough for tonight.

My love to everyone. What a great family you are.

Sick 'til Spring

We have been plagued with coughs and sore throats around here. Poor Nathan has had it for almost a month. But I think today he's finally showing improvement. I haven't had to wipe his nose once and he hasn't really coughed - Yippee! It helps that the sun is out and the weather is pleasant t-shirt weather. I'm itching for a trip to the beach or a picnic in the park. I know, two very different events, but if I can't have the beach, a park day will have to do :) I have the beach to look forward to, I've already booked a hotel in Morro Bay for Spring Break. We hope to see lots of tide pools. Alas, that is still several weeks away.

In the meantime Teresa is working hard on a piano piece for the School Talent show auditions next Thursday. She also plans to read a ton this weekend. The quarter is ending and she needs to finish Inkspell(200 pages to go), and a small book to reach her reading goal. She's not worried, and she shouldn't be, she's a fast reader. I'm trying to knit this really cute sackboy from a PS3 game. Isn't he cute? I'm using pink, because it's what I had, if it turns out I might try a brown one, or my hands might hurt to bad. For my brother-in-laws B-day(Ty) I am going to try and make a cake of this little guy. His wife Michelle will have just had a baby(March 14th) so I offered to make the cake. Should be fun!


So that's us in a nut shell. If we're lucky we'll get started on preparing a garden too. But that depends on the weather and health :) OH, I can't forget. Teresa and Nathan get to spend the night at Grandma and Grandpa's on Saturday. Almost better than that, Jonathan and I are going to a Rock Band Birthday Party, just the two of us. Thanks for that mom and dad!

Elise Lily Tiner

Oh, and here is our new niece, Elise Lily Tiner. Born Feb 2. She is a very content little baby and Alina Rose loves being a big sister.

The Children-less Sproul Family Update

Well, I suppose I will put an update on Amanda and myself. There isn't much going on, so it will be short.

We are both still teaching tiny children, which has its good days and bad of course, like all things. But at least we have jobs and that is something these days.

We have several different plans but they are all up in the air as we await decision letter from doctoral programs, which should be coming anytime in the next six weeks.

So in the meantime we are having fun looking at dream houses, as buying a house is plan B if the schools don't work out. So that is filling up the space that getting portfolios together for the last six months had taken.

For Amanda she is doing well, but her father was diagnosed with Lung Cancer a few weeks ago, it is small and they are confident they will be able to operate after a brief bout of Kemo and Radiation. So he is in everyones thoughts and we are hoping for the best. He is in good spirits.

For myself, I had a piece performed in October up at CSU Stanislaus as part of a conference, the same piece is being played in Oklahoma, at my old school, on the 27th of Feb. for yet another conference, so I am taking a trip out there. It is also being played two more times this year (april 4th and 9th) by the same people who did it up in Stanislaus as part of a "crossing-genres" concert that will feature everything from indie rock, to modern classical to chamber ensemble arrangements of two Radiohead songs that they asked me to do, which has been an interesting project.

Other then that, we are just in the waiting game and counting the days until summer.

Hope all is well with everyone.

J & A

The Hansen Family update

I'm just going to give a general update on everyone for the first post.

I'll start with Nathan, he is quite a character. You should see him on the computer, he surfs between his sites and plays all kinds of games, all by himself. His fine motor skills are pretty amazing for his age. His speech is getting better, he has a lot of words, some don't have endings. Like cake is ca. He has sentences he uses on a regular basis, I think my favorite it "Oh, I get it!" . He's in that part of life where he wants to know what everything is, so he's always asking "what c that be?" or What's that?" He likes to identify sounds. He doesn't have any activities he does yet. There's a kids gym I'm going to try soon, see if it's something he likes.

Nathan likes to help cook and clean (not his room though). He loves to read books, either with me or sissy or by himself. He likes to tell me "no" a lot these days, but doesn't usually throw a fit, he just keeps telling me no as he is doing what I ask. He's funny about certain things being in particular order. Yesterday we went in his room and he was telling me it was clean, but then started tucking things into his closet, some toys were over the line, and that just wasn't acceptable to him. Right now Nathan is getting over a cold. He's been sick for over a week -fevers, cough, runny nose, slight ear infections and pink eye. But I think he's on the mend now, I'm hoping.

Okay, I should move on to Teresa. She is 4ft 10in now and very excited to be taller than her teacher. She is and has been entering that stage of life that brings so many changes, but taking them in stride. We talk a lot about the physical and emotional changes that are occurring. We don't get enough time just the two of us, but we try. Last weekend we went over to Michael's crafts to do a free craft and then got some Jamba Juice for lunch, it was really nice. She is doing very well in school, she just got a progress report with all A's. We don't expect all A's, we expect her to try her best and learn. And she does a good job. Last year was so hard, it's been great to have an easier year. Last year she barely had time to do her homework let alone practice piano and be a kid. She is doing well in piano too, it's not always fun to practice, but she does love knowing how to play. The school is having a talent show in April and she wants to learn Fur Elise(the first part). She still loves to read, I hope that doesn't change. Right now she's reading Inkspell(the second to Inkheart) She's loving them. They have a reading program at school with tests and points, she said she has 70pts of 100. To give some perspective a Harry Potter book gave her 32 points last quarter, and her goal was 40pts. She has read so much her teacher upped her goal. She is a great big sister, she puts up with a lot and plays with him but is glad her door has a lock, for those, "I need my privacy" moments. She just got her second appliance in her mouth. They took the expander out and had to put something else in because while expanding the back of her mouth got too wide, so this device will pull the back in a little. So that sits there for another 5 weeks and then she gets her top 4 brackets on. She is very excited about it, which is great. She's always been so good about taking things in stride, nothing too dramatic. We're always telling our kids they're dramatic, but then I spend time with other kids and realize we don't have a lot of drama :)

This is us after our Jamba juice and craft at Michael's

Jonathan and I are doing great. He's showered me with lots gifts these last few weeks. It's been nice ;) We are playing the tour in Rock Band 2 and just ran into a set that is 84 songs long. Are they serious? We haven't tried it yet. occasionally we break away from tour and play hard, it's funner for me. I play the drums which aren't as hard as the guitar on Hard. We also downloaded Tetris for the Wii, so we're trying to beat the challenge where we are both filling the same grid. The goal is 150 lines and we can't get past 83, it just goes too fast. It's fun trying though :)

Things I'm doing...I'm decluttering my house, we need more room to live, so we're condensing the things we have on display. I'm loving my new lens. Jonathan goes to play airsoft next weekend, so I'm going to get together with the other wives and we're going to learn to knit. And then there's the cake thing. Which is way fun. Sometimes I wish I had more reasons to make cakes for other people, because I don't want to eat them.

That was really long, but a good start. Your turn!

Starting Out

I'm taking a look at this BLOG stuff to see if it could be a good medium to facilitate family communication. If it works, I think it could be a lot of fun to post weekly (or as often or as little as you like) updates on what everyone is doing. The posts don't have to be a big deal, just ordinary stuff will do.

Test

It's not hard, everyone can post their letters here and then they are archived and easy to read when you have the time. They won't get lost in email and you can add pictures. Also, if we label our posts with our names in it, someon can pull up all the posts from that one person.