Dulles Air and Space Museum

On Saturday Josh wanted to finally go to the Dulles Air and Space Museum. We've been the one in DC and have yet to go to the one practically down the road. It's free admittance but parking is normally $15 but when we got there it was FREE!! woohoo!! So that just made the trip that much more better!! It was quite amazing. Basically it was like a hangar (a huge one) filled with every type of flying contraption. We saw a plane called a Blackbird, it's like the fastest EVER. On its final flying day it went from LA to Dulles Airport in 1 hour 4 min and 20 sec. Don't you wish that you could travel that quickly? So cool. There was also the space section where they had all kinds of satellites that were once up in space and an actual shuttle. Pretty neat. They also had a portable planetarium. Very beautiful. The girls loved it. There was an actual space suit out on display and you could touch it and put on the gloves. Zoey was very afraid of this "spaceman". She didn't want anything to do with it. The kids did great. There were a couple of meltdowns ( I've got 2 girls, I was happy with the amount) one was while we were waiting to go on the elevator to go to the observation tower, Zoey just freaked for a bit and we let her. She was on the ground, face down, and the she proceeded to lick the floor!! Disgusting and slightly embarrassing since we had an audience. Needless to say that she now has a cold.

Here's the blackbird! Very sleek looking huh?

See how Zoey won't even look at the suit?

Wow, it's been a while!

I was just going through my blog and I noticed that it has been a lllllloooooonnnnnnnngggggg time since I last blogged. Man, facebook makes me lazy! It's just so easy to post something quickly on there and have everyone know right then and there. But I'm going to try and do something here more often. So there has been halloween, thanksgiving, christmas, a birthday and new years since I last blogged... Since I live so far from most family we didn't really do anything.

• Halloween we went trick or treating with some friends from church.

• Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve was at Aunt Dani's house, which was AMAZING!! It is just such a blessing to be able to spend those wonderful holidays with this family. P.S. I made the shirts! Aren't they adorable?

• Zoey turned 2!! My big girl. She is just the sweetest, chubbiest, most loving little girl. She LOVES to give snuggles. She loves her big sister and would do everything she wants to do. She's already completely potty trained (I know it's crazy). She brings so much joy in our lives. Kids sure are wonderful.

• Josh had to work New Year's, but the girls and I were invited to our friends house to bring in the new year and it was a blast. The kids even stayed up the whole time!!

So those are the past things that I didn't really blog about, but deserve mentioning. Ginger LOVES going to school. Last week school was closed for most of the week because of the snow and Ginger didn't like that one bit! Especially since pajama day was that week. But she got to do it on Monday. She loved wearing her pj's to school.

Austin is living with us and we love having him. Especially the girls. They love their Gunkel! And we love having a live in babysitter. ;)

I'm active in church again. Which is wonderful. I now teach the CTR 7 class (7yr olds) last year I taught the 9-11 yr olds. They are so sweet. I also play church basketball and I love it. It feels good to "work out" at least once week. We might start doing some Zumba on fridays to get an extra work out in the week.

Josh and I are doing great. We love living in Virginia and have loved exploring all of our surroundings and enjoyed getting to know the Kynaston Clan (who are one of the most amazing families EVER). But we feel a change a coming. I don't have the details, which is frustrating. But prayers for guidance and clarity for us would be more than welcome.

I'm crafty!

I'm totally feeling like a crafty lady this month! Check it out!!


My halloween house!

Below are my projects from my Super Saturday at church. It was so much fun!

A tile with vinyl stuff, super cute. I totally love it.


These mummies took for ever, in fact I didn't get a chance to finish them Saturday so I finally finished them today! Super cute!

Micron Celebration

So Josh's work had a big celebration a couple weeks ago for hitting a goal. They were to make so much of something in so much amount of time (that's all I know). They threw a huge bar-b-que at this beautiful ranch called Marriott Ranch. There was tons of food, balloon animals, face painting, popcorn, games, wall climbing, pony rides, ice cream, rodeos, you get the idea. It was fantastic. The kids had a wonderful time. So did I but I enjoyed watching the kids have some serious fun. We got Ginger's face painted. Zoey's too, but just a small butterfly on her cheek. We had to wait in line for almost an hour. But it was worth it just for her pure look of joy while it was getting done and then when it was finished. The kids loved the fact that they could eat whatever they wanted to and mommy and daddy didn't care. Ginger LOVED the pony ride she thought it was the most coolest thing ever. The rodeo was kind of a bust since 10 min into it one of the cowboys horses tripped and the horse rolled on him and kinda squished him sooo.... we left. But Ginger did get some candy from them throwing them out in the crowd.

Here is her beautiful face!

And this what it looks when you have to wash it off. It was very traumatizing for her.

School

Here we are on our way to school!!


Oh my...

On our way in....

Waiting for class to start. She could hardly stand it.

I don't really know why she's upset here, but, I do know that it did not last long!

Getting ready to start her very first school work

Here is Ginger's cubby. It's the bottom one.

This was after school, as you can see she had a wonderful time!

Ginger has officially started pre-school and she LOVES it! So do I. Not only does she get the learning she needs it's preparing her for kindergarten. And while she's in school Zoey is napping the whole time that she's in school. So I have a solid 2 hours with no children running around and screaming at me. So peaceful. She was so excited to start going to school. She didn't even cry when we had to leave her leave her there. I didn't either (yeah me!). Apparantly Ginger assigned herself a seat cuz' when another kid sat in her seat she freaked out! Normally the teachers will wait till they assign seats so they can see how all the kids interact with each other and make the necessary switches but the teachers made a mental note to make sure that Ginger's seat remained her seat. I thought was hilarious.

OBX

The beginning of September we went to Outerbanks, North Carolina. It was beautiful. Even the drive was pretty and it was 8 hours. We camped on the beach, of course! I guess I must look like some stuck up housewife. Cuz' the park ranger checking us in looked in the car took one look at me and said that this was a simple campsite with no showers, just bathrooms. Ooookkkaaayyy, and I care because?? I'm camping at the beach!! The ocean will be my bath... So I was totally expecting outhouses and to my surprise there was running water and no stinking outhouses! Alright! And there was showers, cold ones but showers nonetheless! I was at the 'Hilton' of beach campsites. :) The girls couldn't wait to go play in the ocean. Even Zoey seemed to finally enjoy all the awesomeness of the beach. We were at the ocean playing in the water three times a day, the girls were exhausted come bedtime. The best part about the East Coast beaches is that the water is warm. There is no shock factor. We saw dolphins, lighthouses and even a drive-thru just for drinks. We took a ferry to another Island and enjoyed looking out in the water and seeing all the sandbars. On our last day there, there was hurricane Earl coming in a few days so the waves were HUGE! We boogied boarded till our arms couldn't take it anymore. It was awesome.

Amanda and Ginger Hansen's Page

This is Ginger's very first fundraising event and we are pretty excited about it! Our goal is to earn $400, a hundred dollars for how old Ginger is. Ginger's school goal is $1500. Any donation would be wonderful. Thank you! Amanda and Ginger Hansen's Page