The Day's of 47 Youth Parade

Our Stake was asked to be in the youth parade this year. Craig and I were asked about a month ago if we would be on the committee. We had a great time. Our theme was "Let their Courage Light your Way. We made this float and then had the primary kids walk behind the float carrying a huge ballon. We have six wards in our stake so each ward was assigned a color of the rainbow. The kids each brought a name of a pioneer in their family or one they had read about and we wrote that name on the balloon. We were hoping for about 3o kids from each ward but we had a huge turn out. We ended up with about 270 kids walking. (this didn't includes the parents.) We were quite the site and our picture of the kids ended up in both newspapers here in Salt Lake. I have included some picture so you can kind of get an idea of what it looked like.

Craig and I were purple with our ward. Anna, Zach and Kayla were yellow because we had one ward that didn't have as many kids as some of the other wards.
We had one little glitch at the parade. We were supposed to arrive early to start blowing up these balloons before the kids arrived but the end to the helium tank got left so we weren't able to start until a half hour before the parade started. With lots of help from parents we got the last balloon done as we were signaled to start marching. This is a view of the ballons from just behing the float.
This Zach and his friend Andrew. You can kind of see Anna behind the boys.
This is Kayla waiting for the parade to begin.
Our ward was purple and the last of the balloons.

Glen Hanson Family Reunion

This year for our reunion we went up to Colter Bay at Jackson Lake in Wyoming. This was not a very well attended reuion. The only ones there were Mom and Dad, Kim and her family and us. Although we missed Kerry, Kathryn, Kristine and Jarom we managed to have fun anyway. I have a ton of pictures. I have included a few of my favorites.

These were the cabins we stay in.

This was back at the picnic site by the lake. The kids had been swimming in the lake while we were cooking dinner in the dutch oven.

This was how Mandy preferred to see Yellowstone Park. Here is Kim and Jeff and some of our kids waiting for the others to catch up.

This is my self portrait with Mandy. We were waiting for Old Faithful to erupt. I try to include one picture of myself just to prove I was there.

This is one of my favorite pictures. It is also the picture that makes me wish I had a better camera. We were walking around the board walk at Old Faithful. There is a geyser there called the beehive that only goes off once every 48 hours. We just happened to be there when it went off. This picture is actually the boys getting wet at the geyser. Everyone else moved away but Zach, Spencer, Carter and Parker where right under it. They were totally soaked. It looks like they were in a huge rainstrom. We are standing about 40 feet away where we wouldn't get wet.

Here are all the kids at Old Faithful

This is Jeff playing with the kids in Jackson Lake. This is Jackson Lake at sunset. Let just say my picture doesn't do it justice.

We had a great time!!!

Kayla's Birthday

Kayla's birthday always seems to get a little overlooked because it falls around father's day. This year we combined father's day and Kayla's birthday and celeberate them over at Kim's.Happy Seventh Birthday Kayla!

Dive Lessons

Just about as soon as Zach started taking swimming lessons he wanted to learn how to dive. Finally this year he was old enough to take dive lessons. The funny part was that Zach likes to go flying through the air were as the goal is to go up and straight down with as little splash as possible. This is not a concept easily grasped by Zach.....I think we are going to have several more session of dive lesson.

Just as a side note. Mandy came one day to watch Zach's lessons. I thought the pool look was entertaining.

Daddy Daughter Pinewood Derby

Craig and Anna built this Car for the the daddy daughter pinwood derby. Craig built it and Anna decorated it. It was called the Aloha Car. Anna went with a Hawaii theme. Much to everyone's surprise Anna won. She didn't lose a single race although the last one was really close. No one was more surprised than Craig. Now we are just trying to convince Zach to use it in his next pinewood derby.....but he doesn't like all the flowers.

The Trip

Craig and I had the opportunity to go to Sweden with my parents the first week of June. This was really exciting for us because we had never been outside the country before. I first stop was New York. We flew in late Monday night and our plane for Sweden didn't leave till the next afternoon. So we saw as much of New York as we could in 4 hours. This picture is Craig in Time Square.

We decided that we wanted to see the Statue of Liberty and Ground Zero. This picture is mom, dad and Craig down in the subway trying to figure out where we are going. The subway in New York is a very interesting place. When we were on the train this guy who was having a very heated conversation with himself sat next to mom. It was funny just watching mom. The guy was very upset and kept swearing at himself or who ever he thought he was talking to. Mom was very relieved when he got off.


This was as close as we were able to get to the Statue of Liberty because of time.
Thanks to Dad's frequent flier miles we were able to fly business class from New York to Amsterdam. I must say this has pretty much ruined flying in coach for me!!!
This is Goteborg Sweden. I of course have many pictures but I will just included a few to kind of show what it looks like. This is the canal that goes through the city and ends in the harbor. Goteborg is the biggest habor in Scandinavia.

This is one of the fortress that they used to watch the harbor for enemies.

This was one of the more interesting traditions. There were many of these truck full of kids driving around the city. Evidently we were there during the University Graduation week. This is like one week of parties. Every afternoon these trucks would hit the streets. The would have music blasting and they would honk the horns with the kids in the back would be drinking... some just with wine glasses but most with the whole bottle. It was kind of funny to watch. I kept thinking that one of the kids would fall out of the truck. As the trucks would drive past the kids parents would be on the side of the street holding sign with picture of the child when they were little. And taking picture of their kids as they drove by on the trucks.

Anyway that is a quick update of our trip. It was really fun to see somewhere new....but is also great when you land back in the USA.

I am Back

We finally got cable internet. It was becoming next to impossible to down load pictures on to my blog. My computer would freeze almost everytime I tried. Anyway now we have that fixed. Anyway I thought I would just do a quick update with what has been going on. These are the kids at Easter. I went with the green/blue theme. You can't tell but Anna got bands on her braces to match her dress. It is all about style.