Shade Structure

Pretty much Gunnar is turning into Pa Ingalls. Or my dad. Or Bob Villa. Or maybe even Tim the Toolman Taylor. In any case, his handy man skills have hugely improved since moving out to the country. Well, technically, he did not use much lumber before we moved here, so I am not sure if his skills were just hidden or if they are recently acquired. Pretty much the only thing left are a good pair of suspenders, as it is a well known fact, that in order to be a good handyman, you need a good pair of suspenders. I could go on and on about my feelings about suspenders, but I think instead I will share with you Gunnar's latest house project.

One of the down sides of Valley Center, is that is gets HOT. Although we are in December, it has still been hot. Our back yard unfortunately, has no shade. We have planted a bunch of trees but they will take time to grown. So Gunnar decided to build a shade structure for the cement pad off the garage. We hope that this will make this space more user friendly and conducive to socializing and spending time together.


I didn't manage to get any pictures from before he started, but I got their pretty soon after he began.
He has the beans laid out there, and is attaching the brackets to the garage.
At this point, I headed to the mall with Grace to meet up with Ann and Elena for a fun day of sister/cousin time.

By the time I got home, Justin, a teenager from church, and Alberto, one of the deacons, were over helping out, and a lot of progress had been made!

I really like this picture of Gunnar. There is something so manly about standing on a ladder and pounding nails.

Gunnar and Justin worked nailing the slats on, while Alberto handed them the level, and supervised.

Lastly, as the sun was going down (so I didn't get any good pictures) they added the shade cloth.

Finally all done! The whole thing went up in around 4 hours. Here it is the next morning. Gunnar sat there and did some of his morning reading.



That night we lit a fire in the old Franklin stove that is down there to be used as an outdoor fire pit. It was warm and beautiful and we drank hot chocolate while the sun went down. Gunnar and Grace sat down there and read while I got dinner ready.
I look forward to many happy times together in our backyard patio.

Belated Birthday Cupcakes

I was supposed to make Gunnar cupcakes for his birthday. But then the people from church surprised him with donuts. And who wants to eat donuts and cupcakes in the same day? Not me. So I didn't end up making cupcakes.

My memory isn't that great when it comes to things like that, plus I am not really into desserts. Gunnar on the other hand has the memory of an elephant (that is good, right?) and enjoys desserts. Plus, I think he secretly enjoys guilting me into thing. So after a particularly painful guilt trip Saturday I went ahead and made Gunnar cupcakes.

So I am proclaiming it loudly, here on my blog, so there is no doubt. I made Gunnar cupcakes for his birthday. And I was only two months late.

Working with daddy

Grace loves going to work with Gunnar. The other night she was already in her PJ's but tagged along anyways as he wasn't going to be too long.

They are so cute.

Birthday Celebrations....

We celebrated Gunnar's birthday kind of like a turtle race....slowly and surely. Nothing too exciting, but a lot of little stuff here and there.

Monday we met my father-in-law out at Warner Springs. It is a hot springs resort that splits the difference between our houses. We had lunch, walked around, saw some horses and Grace and Gunnar went in the pool.Dick brought his dog Linus, who waited in the car for him.

Grace found this rocking horse by the real horse stalls. She was a big fan.

The sky was beautiful on our walk over to the pool. So blue with white fluffy clouds.

Thee generations of Hanson's

Gunnar spent most of Tuesday (his actual birthday) at Pastor's meetings. Tuesday evening as we were getting ready to have dinner, a bunch of the leadership from our church surprised us by showing up with coffee and donuts. They sang happy birthday, Grace blew out Gunnar's candle, and they hung around and talked for a while. Gunnar had to go do some stuff after they left, and by the time he got home Grace had already gone to bed. He did open his presents then, but I didn't take any pictures.
Wednesday evening we had his birthday bbq (that we were planning on having on Tuesday). We had stake and corn on the cob and hung out together outside. Gunnar watered his trees and Grace and I played with chalk. It was fun and relaxing being together.All in all, it was a nice couple days. I think Grace and I were more excited about Gunnar's birthday than he was. I hope he felt appreciated and loved, because really that is what birthdays are all about.

Happy Birthday Gunnar!

Thirty-four years ago today, the world was forever changed.

Nine pounds and four ounces of blond, blue eyed cuteness entered the world.

Gunnar as a baby with his big brother Bart and his dad

After some deliberating a name was given to him that would be a conversation piece for years to come: Gunnar Jon. And no, it is not a nick name, and no, he is not Swedish.






My path did not cross with Gunnar's until shortly before his 26th birthday, but my life has certainly never been the same.



Gunnar, you are the love of my life and I can't imagine where I would be without you. As time goes by I find that I appreciate more and more what you do for me and for our family.

Thank you for being such a godly man. Your love for the Lord and your diligence to the Word are such an encouragement to me.

Thank you for taking such good care of Grace and I am making sure all of our needs are always taken care of.

Thank you for working so hard so that I can spend my days with Grace.

Thank you for loving Grace so much, I love the way her little face lights up when you walk in the room.

Thank you for all the work you do around the house to make the yard and house look nice. Thanks for taking care of the plants, becuase we all know if I was in charge of them, none of them would have lasted this long.

Thank you for taking studying so seriously so that your messages aren't boring.

Thank you for being so cute and always bringing a smile to my face!

I love you so much and am so thankful you were born.

I hope you have a wonderful birthday and I am so glad we get to grow old together (well, technically you will grow old first, but still....) :)

When you wish upon a star

We had a wonderful time at Disneyland yesterday. As I mentioned previously, we got free ticket's to Disneyland from the Hugh Hewitt show so that Gunnar could challenge "Generalisimo", (aka Duane, the shows producer) to a new shooting game/ride.

Gunnar ended up being on the air a lot longer than we were expecting. He also got beat really bad my "Generalisimo", the shows producer on the "Midway Mania" ride.

If you missed it yesterday, you can hear an excerpt from the show here. That is the clip of him talking to Gunnar.

Also, if you want to hear the whole show (he mentions Gunnar a couple other times) you can do that here. It is the one that is titled "Stacia Martin" from Tuesday July 15th. He talks about Gunnar some at the beginning and again from around minute 17 and on.

I took a gazillion pictures, so be warned, the rest of the post is not for the faint of heart!
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We got there a bit after noon (when we could pick up the tickets). Our first order of buisness was to figure out where we needed to be for the show. Once we did that, we had a couple hours to kill before we had to be back there. Neither Gunnar or I had been to Disneyland as adults so we didn't really know what to expect. We also didn't know what Grace would make of it. Of course, she loved it.

The first thing we did was the carousel, which was a big hit.


From there we headed to the area themed after the movie "Bug's life". There we rode a couple more rides. Fun stuff like the little train that looks like a catapillar, and the boxes of take out that fly around in the sky. Grace loved them both.

There are Gunnar and Grace in front of the little train ride, and below are a couple self portrait attempts while on the ride. They didn't really work out like I had hoped, but how cute is Grace?


Pretty much from there we walked around for the next couple hours. Wandering around and seeing the sights.
Oh, and getting dehydrated. It was really hot.


We found an area that was supposed to be like the forest in California. It was really nice and shady and cool.



There were a bunch of walking trails and little park like things. The lady gave Grace a pin for going down the slide, which we promptly lost. Oh well.

Apparently, we aren't the only ones with feral cats. Who knew there would be kittens at Disneyland?

So Grace loves my dad to tell her a story about when they had a baby skunk in their backyard. We tried to get a picture of her pointing to the sign about skunks for him, but as you can see, we did not have a lot of luck with that.



Grace was a little unsure about crawling through the swinging tube at first, but by the end, she was all smiles.
Finally, 3 o'clock and time to head back to the radio show. It was on a patio from one of the restaurants in the park. We were a little unsure at first as to what we were supposed to do.

Gunnar introduced himself to one of the guys working there, and he introduced us to Hugh Hewitt. I was impressed at how nice and friendly he was. He talked to us for a bit and then as the show was starting, he went on the air. Gunnar headed off to go on the ride, and what did Grace and I do? She passed out on my lap, apparently she was worn out. For anyone who listens to Hugh Hewitt, I also go to meet Tarzana Joe and Emit of the Unblinking Eye. I know, I know, you are jealous.
When Gunnar got back from playing with Generalisimo, Hugh put him on the air. It was really kind of weird because although I was sitting only feet away from them, because of the noise and the way they were facing I couldn't hear then at all. Yet people all across the country could. Gunnar was on for a whole segment, which was neat. He was a little nervous at first (as you can hear in the segment), but once he got called a "baby faced killer" he loosened up a bit. I mean, really, who isn't more comfortable after a compliment like that?

The lady in the middle was a Disney expert who was also on the show that day. She was really sweet and drew Gunnar a Mikey Mouse and Grace a Donald Duck.

We hung out there for a while. Hugh would come over and talk to Gunnar during a lot of the brakes. What can I say? I pretty much married a celebrity. There we are with Hugh Hewitt. Can you tell Grace just woke up?

He then gave her an oatmeal cookie, and she liked him a whole lot better after that.

Finally we headed back across the lot to Disneyland. On our way across we took pictures by the large letters. Mostly because everyone else was doing it, and that is always a good reason.



Disneyland was lots of fun. There was so much to see that it was hard to figure out what to do. I figured taking a picture by a castle seemed like a good idea.


When we were at California Adventure, we "saw" Alladin and Jazmin. Gunnar asked if I wanted to go take my picture with them, and I said "pssh, of course not. Now if it were Mary Poppins, that would be someone to get excited about." Well, what do you know? Mary had shown up that day too. I don't think Grace was too sure about the whole thing. I think she was suspicious that those rosy cheeks might have not been natural.
Toon Town was really cute. Grace enjoyed a snack in Minnie's house.

And broke out of jail.
and drove Mikey's car. I really could relate to her driving experience. Both in her barely seeing over the dash, and the wondering why the pedals have to be so far away. But so you know, the tongue thing is totally from Gunnar.

She insisted we "ride the ponies" again. Apparently she was a carousel fan.


We went on the jungle cruise. Grace sat there with pretty much that expression on her face the whole ride, and then wanted to ride it again. So I think that must be her "taking it all in face" or maybe "I am really tired face".

After the jungle cruise we had a snack, while Gunnar returned some phone calls and basked in his celebrity-hood.



Grace tired to ride on the shoulders of the Indian. To get in touch with "her people" as my dad would say. It really wasn't as comfortable as it looked. I think she should stick to carousels.

All in all, we had a fabulous time. From the rides to the radio show, lot's of fun.