the northtown mall

so we have a kind of trashy, but really awesome mall RIGHT by us. it is only about 2 minutes away. it is so awesome becuase of the fun thing it has for kids to do.

first...

the fountain.

i think the girls could hang out here and throw money in ALL DAY! it is so cute. mallory even throws money in. yesterday all she really wanted to do was hold it in her hand. but she is getting the hang of it. big sis, olivia helps her and shows how the pros toss money. i think we probably put in a whole dollar worth of pennies yesterday!

livy really wanted to have some money in her pocket, so i gave her some pennies. then she couldn't get them out of her little pocket. if you look in the picture below you can see her trying to get the money out. she was so excited to have her own money.
yes, we are friends with tina faye.
second cool feature of the mall...

the pet store.

this is one of the puppy breeding stores that you saw the oprah about. just kidding. actually it could be? anyway, they always have the cutest puppies there. all different kinds and they are sooooo cute. they also have fish, birds, mice, bunnies, rats, cats, frogs and more dogs. the girls LOVE this place and livyy always wants to go see the puppies.

third...

the breakfast food play place.
well, i meant to get a picture of this but, brett met up with us here and we were all so excited to see him that posing for pictures went out the window! i don't think i can do this play place justice without pictures. he goes, it has bacon slides (no higher than your knee), waffles you can climb on, eggs you jump on and a bowl of cerel (shredded wheat to be exact) to get IN. it is really different, but gets the job done. livy will usually find someone to play tag with and runs around like crazy. mallory loves to get in and out of the cereal bowl. this is where me and the girls spent MANY below 0'F days this winter and the rainy ones now. i am so glad we live near such a great, free place for the girls to see stuff and play!

life with pinky!

well, this cast thing has been interesting.

picture below is mallory ready to go to the park. poor girl, i make her wear pants and i triple wrap her cast with a sock (we have found that my socks fit PERFECTLY over the whole thing), a ziploc baggy and then tape. i know, i'm crazy, but i am worried about sand and wood chips getting in it!! that would just be gross. her little toes already stink and it would just be gross if there was sand in there!! yuck!

sand and wood chip PROOF!!
this kid gets DIRTY. i have never noticed the bath water being "dirty" or "brown", maybe it is because there is so much of it when you are in the tub. but now since mallory has her bath in the sink, i have realized how dirty she is. the water actually turns a gray/brown color. thank goodness she is still so little and fits in the sink or i don't know what i would do! she did not like these baths it first, but now she is getting use to them. she is such a good girl.


mallory really is being a champ. she doesn't seem to bugged by the cast anymore and has begun to walk with it now. she still bangs everything with it, especially shopping carts. in the morning though, when she first gets up, while i am changing her diaper she will look at me and grab her cast. she seems to still be asking "please mom, can you take this thing off!"
only 3 weeks left!!

anything can be cute if it's tiny and pink!

yes, that's right, it is the cutest little cast you have ever seen!!

mallory broke her leg at the park on friday. we just got the cast on today. she was such a good girl while they were putting it on. her bigger bone in the lower leg is broken right above the ankle. they call it the "toddler brake" so that makes me feel alittle better. the only problem is that mallory doesn't even like to wear socks the whole day much less a cast for 4 weeks. yikes. she was so cute, when the nurses got done putting it on, she started shaking her leg trying to get it off. we went to target right after and she kept on banging everything with it, especially her sister!! the nurses were great. they were very gentle and told me before they started if she cried it wasn't because they were hurting her!! lol. the nurses let olivia help and gave her some gloves to wear. olivia LOVED it and wanted to help with everything

i feel much better now that we know it is broken and she has the cast on. so, moral of the story...make sure all legs and arms are tucked in BEFORE you go down the big, big slide (as livy calls it). brett can't wait to get home to sign it!

happy mother's day!

what a great mother's day. brett made the day really fun. he got me a little package from sara ehlert (fundrasier for camp). it had 10 chocolate covered strawberries, a card, a bottle of sparkling grape juice AND a rose. it was really cute. the strawberries were sooo good. the girls loved them too! brett had to work lunch at the olive garden so us girls went to church. liv and mally were surprisingly well-behaved and as you can see from the picture, we all looked quite cute (it is so fun to have girls to dress up! i love sundays). the best part of the day was yet to come...we got home from church and my fabulous husband had cleaned (i mean really cleaned, vacuumed, dishes done, everything picked up) the whole house and dinner was almost ready!! i didn't have to clean up the whole day or make any food. all you mom's reading this know how nice that is. our little family just hung out and played the rest of the day. it was a great mother's day. i hope each of you had a great day. what did you do on your mother's day??

astronauts, curly hair and shoes

this is mallory's newest look. she loves to have this bucket on her head! it is so cute. the first time she came out of her room with it on i about died. we are really starting to see her little personality come out. she is quite a jokester.

we LOVE her!

olivia has all-of-a-sudden gotten curly hair. isn't it cute! sally, i knew you would love that! what should i do with it? how can i make it more curly?
what a sweet girl. olivia is such a great big sister and loves to help mom with everything. her and brett make dinner together every tuesday and thursday (whoo hoo!). it is so fun to see them together.
these are the two pair of shoes i got for $2.48 each!! i bought the next size up for mallory too. i almost bought one pair of shoes for MORE than these four pairs i found!! yes!!

coupon clipper!

i have decided i want to clip coupons...only because through my friend jodell i have found some AWESOME websites/blogs that have done all the work for you. they find the deals and you just look at them, print the coupons and go! i have some of the blogs/websites listed on here. i don't know what it is, maybe i get it from my mom, but i love me a good deal. the better the deal the better i feel. why get 1 $50 shirt when you can get 5 $10 shirts!! so... on that note i printed some coupons and just saved my first dollar at target when buying some toothpaste. i figure, i was going to get it anyway, why not save a dollar. maybe i will put all the money in a saving account and see how much i can save.

what do you think? do you use coupons? do you have websites/blogs you go to?

did you grow last night?

do you feel like your kids literally grow at night while they are sleeping? you put them to bed and then just the next morning they seem taller, just plain bigger? i do. this just happened with mallory. she is getting so big i just can't believe it. she is almost walking. she will take tons of steps and walks between things but has yet to WALK all the time. mallory is going to be our daredevil. she is fearless and will try to do everything olivia does and then even go further. she hasn't starting talking yet but knows EXACTLY what she wants to "yells" at us to get it for her.
here are the sweet sisters. it is funny to look back and remember how surprised and scared we were to have mallory...now, i don't know what we would do without her!

our own room!

after a whole year of having mallory in our walk in closet, yes, that's right, our walk in closet we finally decided to move the girls into their own room....together!! first picture is our room before the move.... the girls room now.
looks a little different! we tried to have mallory and olivia in the same room, they did great with not waking up when the other one was crying. but, the real problem was mallory getting up at 5 AM because it isn't total darkness like in here closet. if papa (my dad) was here, that would be no problem, but it's only me and brett and 5 AM is a little bit early for me.... so we moved her back into the closet and olivia stayed out in the room. brett and i still have our own room and are enjoying the many freedoms we forgot about...like talking to eachother before bed, watching movies in our room and some others! i am trying to get all the decorations i want for both the rooms together, the walls look pretty bare, ok, totally bare. i will post some updates when we get it all together.

sweet sundays

here are the girls a couple of sundays ago. aren't they cute. i love having 2 girls to dress up! especially on sunday!! what fun. we, meaning olivia and i, found this dress at target for $8.98! holy cow. pretty dressed are always fun, but when they are only $9, it is even better!! she LOVED it, she loves anything pink, with flowers and if it is a dress. she could hardly wait for church and nursey to wear the dress. liv is so cute and getting to be so smart. everyday she says something new and i know she is "getting" more and more of what brett and i say. i guess we better start being a little more careful!!

sisters?

what do you think? are these two related? they are both right around 14 months. i can't believe how alike they still look. i guess my girls are going to take after the phil sandberg sisters. olivia 11/15/06 mallory 4/16/08

experimental starfish

well, on one of our random shopping trips to michaels craft store i found a "plastic" starfish that claimed to get 600% larger just by putting it is water. i tolk olivia all about it and her and daddy put it in the tub in some water. that was tuesday night. i didn't think liv would even remember it but boy was i wrong. she wants to go look at the starfish every 5 minutes. it is really cute how interested she is. it is getting bigger, but they instructions say it could take up to a week to get that big. a week it an ETERNITY for a 2 year old. here are some pics of the girls looking at "the starfish". it really is getting bigger and i will keep you all posted on any further developements!

lions and tigers and bears!

the girls and i went to the minnesota zoo with some friends. it was so much fun. since it's spring the zoo has a special "farm babies" thing you can go to and see all the babies. we had a really good day weather wise, it was a little windy, but it was nice and warm. we got to take off our sweatshirts it got so nice! what makes the trip even better is that i used the pass from the library here and it was FREE! yeah. here are adam and olivia holding hands! aren't they cute. we had to help them be able to hold eachothers hand. they haven't mastered that skill yet!
livy was very brave and fed the goats. she was a little worried at first but i ended up spending alittle money on the goats! mallory even did it too. she loves to do everything that sister does.
i know you can't really tell but the black things behind the fence are the cutest little baby lambs! we loved them. liv, mal and adam all got to pet them.
that face says it all! cows are HUGE! i don't know when the last time i was that close to a cow! they are pretty big. liv and adam tried to feed the cows too.
**this is a little pig statue. no animals were harmed in the taking of this picture**
mallory climbing on another pig statue.

us posing with the super cool tractor.

both liv and mal were out before we even got out of the parking lot. i really tuckered them out. livy actually did really good and walked the whole time. she is a trooper.

i was so excited that we got to go outside that i forgot to take any sunscreen as you can tell by mallory face! i also have a really neat tan line!

HANSEN NEWS

no mom, no babies coming.... but brett joseph hansen is offically a college student. horray!! he will be starting at our local community college in aug. he is trying to decide between business admin. and marketing/sales. we are so excited for him and so proud of him. the girls and i had a little party to tell him the good news when he got home from work. streamer, a sign colored by the girls and then a little "going to college" present.

outside!!

there have been several nice days amid the blizzards the past couple weeks. we have tried to take advantage of all of them by going on family walks (dad, are you so proud!) and going to the park. brett helped olivia make her first snow angel and we had a family snowball fight. it was so fun.

this was a really nice day when we didn't even have to wear big coats. we went to the park just around the corner and played with a friend from nursery, tommy. i think we stayed out for a whole hour. a record time this year so far.

children's museum

here is olivia doing some grocery shopping. they had a store and a restaurant at the museum. she could've played there for hours. she put just about everything she could get her hands on into the cart. it was so cute. she is momma's good helper when we are at walmart too. mallory and olivia are now rockstars! the girls were on that stage and there was a camera taking video of them. it looked like they were in a music video. it was so funny. brett can live his dream through them!!
olivia being a doctor. i am trying to start the brainwashing so she can support me and brett in our old age.
here olivia and mallory are playing in the dirt. liv even has little gloves on. then, i turned my back for one second and ...
mallory had eaten some dirt!! i guess the old saying is true, like mother, like daughter. i loved dirt when i was young.

we had a great time and even decided to get some passes to go for the year. they change the exhibits and right now it is sesame street. so it will be fun to go atleast every month.

FINALLY

finally, mallory gail hansen took her first steps!! she walked 4 steps from brett to me this morning. she was so cute. we clapped and hoorayed and of course wanted her to do more, but she was done for the day.
we got to have some friends over to play on wednesday. this is mallory with emily. emily is 2 weeks. older then mallory and they seem to know eachother and play well together.

this is olivia with her friend adam. they are so cute. he is almost a year older then her but they did go to nursery together and got to be very good friends there.
this is olivia doing her new favorite thing! we got a new vacuum and she loves it. everytime i bring it out she wants to help. she also helps put the dishes away and helped brett make some bread pudding the other day. just a little bloggin note: you can tell i am new at this and need some help. how do you turn your picture? like the one above so you can see it without turning your head?

**also some hansen news**brett's little brother josh got his mission call and is going to sacramento, ca. he goes into the mission home on may 28th. we are 99% sure we are coming!! yeah!! so first of all, any of our utah family/friends want to babysit so we can go out for our 5th anniversary?? second, we are so excited to come and want all of you utah people to plan on seeing us that week!

easter festivities!

we had a fabulous easter. the easter bunny came. he brought candy, toothbrushes, toothpaste and several fun games. what a great bunny! he also hide many eggs for the girls to find.

good thing brett is so tall. he had to help olivia with this egg.

olivia was great at finding the eggs. she would find one and run back to her basket and put it in and run to find another one.

mallory on the other hand found out with the first egg that candy was inside and then didn't want to find anymore eggs but just wanted to eat the candy. both girls had alot of fun.

we went over to wendy's house for a "family" dinner. ehlert's had a full house with us, greg and karl and kimberly sandberg. it was so fun to be with family and we had some good food. greg made the ham, wendy the potatoes, green salad and dessert and i make the jello (sally's recipe), deviled eggs and homemade rolls. i was so proud of myself because it was the first time i tried rolls and they were great!! we made extra because streets will be here today and we are going to have leftovers!!