tulip festival.

  it's  going on right now until may 7th at Thanksgiving point.
today was the first warm day of spring and it was beautiful!  

summer and i took our little ones to the cafe for lunch and then to look at all the beautiful gardens.

they have waterfalls, ponds, and plenty of beautiful flowers for lots of picture taking!  

it was gorgeous!

 mckelle and ivy, little buddies.

it's another 'giveaway'...

My super talented and very creative sil made olivia's darling headband for easter sunday!   She is also a fabulous photographer, and takes most of my family pictures... click here and here , here!

she is giving away another customized headband of any color & size to one of my readers. 

all you have to do to win is become a fan of snapdragon photography on facebook and leave a comment on snapdragons facebook page!

super easy...

winner will be announced monday!  hurry and stop on by.

my darling little niece mya wearing  the same hair bow she made for my livi.

happy birthday jenn...

i Love everything about this girl...

except that she lives so far away from me in hawaii!

i share many fabulous and hilarious memories with jenn, and love talking about 

them while we giggle uncontrollably!  

still laughing about some of them {caden's comment in the car}

bahahahaha!!!

she inspires me to be a better mom & wife and always has the right things to say! 

 she can pretty much talk me into doing anything, and then continue 

to teach me and encourage me along the way. 

i love that we are as close today as we were when we met almost 10 years ago. 

Nothing has changed!

Happy Birthday my jenn! 

xxoo

luckily we got to have a birthday dinner while we were in maui at Kimo's and celebrate with some delicious mudd pie!

Boston, Massachusetts

 my boston is having a year of "Boston" and he is loving it!

i never imagined when we named him almost 12 years ago that it would become
such a popular name and that it would ultimately be his favorite sports teams of all time!!   

We have always been Boston fans so of course our boy would too.  but he is learning more 

than just the sports teams.

this year not only is he playing baseball  on the "Boston Red Sox" team,
but he also picked {out of a bowl} the state of Massachusetts to do his state report on!

  how cool is that??  

 so we've been busy researching what has been like a 6 week project.  

they had to work hard on learning famous people from their state, write a report,
bibliography, learn about tourism, draw the state flag, license plate, bird etc, etc..  There is tons
of history in Boston.  we have loved watching him learn so much about the
wonderful state of Massachusetts!

when his school had the "state fair" last week,  you could dress up, make a float, bring 

food samples and more for extra credit.

so we made "Boston's famous Clam Chowder"

i think it turned out AWESOME!!  now my Boston can't wait to go to Boston...

 {recipe below}

recipe~

{So delicious}

Boston's Famous Clam Chowder

1 cup onions, finely chopped

1 cup finely diced celery

2 cups diced potatoes ( i use quite a bit more)

2 cans minced clams and juice

3/4 cup butter

3/4 cup flour

1 quart half & half cream

1 1/2 teas. salt

Pepper

2 Table. Red Wine vinegar

Drain juice from clams and pour over vegetables in saucepan; add enough water to barely cover and simmer, covered, over med heat til barely tender.

In meantime melt butter; add flour and blend; stirring constantly (in larger pot).

Add undrained vegetables, clams and vinegar and heat through.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

hoppy easter...

after they got their bunny ears out of their baskets they kept hopping around
and singing to the tune of the song "feeling hot hot hot"
 but changed it to "feeling hop hop hop."

I heard someone a while ago say that their 'easter bunny' brought Springtime! 

I loved that,

 so i have gone with that theme ever since.

 I want my kids to know the real meaning of Easter is about Christ 

and his ressurection and what a beautiful thing to know that HE has risen just
like he prophesied!  i didn't want the easter bunny to take over the holiday.

 so our bunny brought all sorts of swim/sand and outside toys, hoping that spring would come soon. ;)

 i love that every child of mine is totally obsessed with the Cadbury creme egg.  that is pretty much the only candy they eat in their basket.  this year they got M&M's personilized with their names on them. 

they thought that was so cool...

hayes wanted me to take a picture of his finger ripstik to show how small it was next to the m&m's.

our easter sunday was wonderful, filled with family, stories of christ

 and then a big easter dinner at the Taylors. 

everyone looked precious in their 'easter best' 

boston was off to church before i could take a group picture,

{dont worry i grabbed him right after for another shot}

  I love that ivy is giving me a 'thumbs up' haha 

Hansen family "egg-stravaganza"

the taylor and fowler families were in charge of our annual 'Hansen family easter party' this year! 

 we hid so many eggs at the hansen farm, for all different age groups! some eggs had numbers on them and you got to spin the wheel to pick your prize!  we had a yummy bbq along with plenty of side dishes and desserts.  It's always a blast with so many cousins to play with.

spring in utah is always unpredictable.  some years it is so warm and others we are still

 in our winter coats.  well this year it was freezing and almost about to rain, but it

 didn't stop us from having fun...

ivy looking for her easter eggs

aunt camille has the most fun and creative games for the Hansen parties!  

they had a race to see who could hurry and eat the fruit by the foot the fastest, with 

their hands behind their back. 

 when the little kids did it, i was surprised to see these kids pound their fruit by the foot!

 so funny...

then it was the adults turn, with a blindfold!! totally hilarious!

Ivy was so cute cheering on her dad, she was yelling "go daddy go, go daddy go"

left to right... {boston, randall, jaxson, alex, witney, cory, lacey}

  boston & randall

we had a surprise visitor for the kids!
 olivia and ivy loved the "Easter bunny"  ivy kept waving
to her and olivia couldn't stop hugging her... she was really soft!

our cute grandma hansen with the easter bunny

the partaay keeps going and going and going... haha

now onto the "pinata's"...

i love gavin and camden's face in the background.  hayes was freaking out on the pinata!

boston

lacey and ivy

kindergarten egg hunt!

our kindergarten teacher is amaze-ing!  

she always has such fun parties and is so wonderful to the kids. 

 she never complains when i bring Ivy every week to class when i come to help.

 so she didn't mind that i brought 6 extra eggs for ivy to find  while the kids were hunting for eggs.

  She's the best!

we hid so many eggs!  and the weather was beautiful for that 30 minutes of fun...

i love how hayes treats his baby sister.   everyone was running around crazy 

searching for eggs and hayes kept grabbing his own eggs out of his basket and would place it on 

the ground right by ivy so she could find one!  

I love that kid!  he has such a tender heart!

livi and her friend avery

hayes with ivy

easter treats!

are these not the cutest easter basket cupcakes ever?  well i saw these on 'sugardoodle' 

and had to make these for my kids after school treat!

it's easy and you probably already have all the ingredients and supplies at home!

easy peasy...

bake your cupcakes and let cool.

i took cream cheese frosting and then added food coloring to make the fun easter colors.

 in a seperate bowl to make the grass, you add coconut and a couple of 

drops of green food coloring and stir it around.

*frost the cupcakes 

*dip the cupcakes in the coconut and then add little eggs on top.

*the holders just go on top.

super super easy.  and fun.
 my kids loved seeing this after school.

of course my little helper loved eating the frosting.

Easter eggs...

 we loved jammin out to "here comes peter cottontail" and "Eggbert the easter egg"

  while coloring our eggs...

I used the vinegar/lemon juice combo with warm water for our egg

 coloring this year.  I think it worked pretty dang good!  

my kids always love decorating easter eggs... i only wish i was more creative to help them out.  

 Ivy was a disaster,  every time i turned my back she put someones 'finished' egg in another round of color.  but she loved eating all the eggs with hayes.

olivia was so into it this year.

we bought her the glitter set so she could do all different eggs in glitter and she loved it.

  I think they turned out awesome!

livi waiting patiently...

hayes was really into it and then he decided he wanted to 

eat all of his right then.  

 still wet!

Olivia with all her "glitter eggs"

Maui {spring break}

I should probably warn you... PICTURE OVERLOAD!

i can't help myself... my family, besties, and Hawaii how could you not take a ton of pictures!

anyway, we had a blast! 

 kids loved being together!  Husbands played to exhaustion, and so did Jenn and I!

 Thank goodness for days in the treme's at 'Spa Grande' 

 It was so much fun to be with our best friends and surf and swim and just play all day in the sun.

fabulous vacation... can't wait to go back!

Boston & Cory Paddle boarding

this boy was either skim boarding, paddle surfing, body boarding, or surfing the whole time!

  He was in heaven.  Chase & Boston were non stop and loving every minute of it!

total best buddies!

 go bos go...

so sweet!

Cory & boston both caught the same wave 'paddle surfing'.  

caden cruising olivia around on his board.  I

 could watch these granum boys surf and body board for hours. They are all SO good, even Crew.

Jenn & I coming in from paddle surfing. 

 She is a great teacher,  It's a sport that i would love to try more

 when i feel like i am NOT in everyone's way.  Plus it's alot harder than it looks.  

lots of work to get out to the waves {standing up} 

 we ate at some of our favorite spots... 

Fred's {below}, Kimo's, roundtable, maui taco & flat breads. 

But the best food after a long day of playing in the sun is bbq teriyaki chicken

 and rice and chillin out on the lanai.

love my jenn

the waterslides & rope swing at the "Grand Wailea"

hayes & liv's & crew's favorite.

they were non stop coming down all the waterslides. My kids loved it! 

we got to play with the gleeds too.

these two giggled like crazy every time they went down the slides... pure happiness.

 ***Carve boarding***

  while the boys {and jenn & i } were carve boarding at night the littles

 were serenading us with the "ukelele" ... not annoying at all x3. ~wink wink

***Crab Hunting***

we took the kids at night to go crab hunting!   they loved it.  well most of them. 

afterwards we went night swimming and did the waterslides at the Grand Wailea.  

The  Ho'olei pool is pretty much my favorite place to swim.  I love that my kids ALL of them love to swim and they did it all day everyday!  Livi & Hayes are swimming so good now, and Ivy started swimming so good a couple days before we went home.  She loves it!

"the three amigos" played so good together.  with ivy as their tag a long.  

Look at how she put her darling sunglasses on.  Love her!

***Big Beach***

my favorite beach!  

it's so beautiful and the waves are so BIG!

***Wailea beach***

best beach for paddle boarding and just lounging around while the kids make drip castles!

i loved that Ivy loved to go out in the ocean with me, she sat on my paddle board while we cruised around out in the ocean.  We saw huge turtles and one turtle even popped up to breathe right next to us. 

 but still ivy really wanted to see Ariel... so jenn jumped in and pretended she was ariel.  haha

good times!

loved this! My twins wanted nothing to do with
 going out on the paddle board but my little ivy girl was all over it!
 she is her momma's girl,  we love the ocean!
we even saw a huge turtle {crush}.. he popped his head up to take a breathe right next to her.
It was amazing! 

more waterslides, this time with ALL of us!

one night we all got dressed to go out to Lahaina to have dinner and shop.  

We are quite the group now...

Best friends for almost 10 years! we've grown quite a bit in size since we first met.
Jenn blogged some awesome pictures when we took our first trip to hawaii in 2003.
click here to see.

my hubby makes me so happy~wink

  

 Best buddies...

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
Jenn's birthday dinner!!  one year older than me and wiser too.
  Best 'mudd pie' ever!

*** Glow in the dark, egg hunt***

jenn hid all these glow in the dark easter eggs out on
 the beach and the kids just had flashlights to find them.  It was so much fun! 

she is always a party!

SO. MUCH. FUN.

i swear we could start our own "kids club" while on vacation! haha

apparently this was a big swell day to be surfing.  so we loaded 

up the kids and off to do some more paddle surfing!

 ***The Ritz Carlton***

besides running my favorite run every morning with my best friend... this was my favorite day!

 Ivy loved the kiddie pool especially because their was a playground right next to it. 

Kapalua is beautiful!

then back home for some night swimming and "roundtable pizza"