Easters

Easter is a holiday filled with secrets, deception, and surprise. At least it is with my family. 

My parents were driving down from North Carolina to spend the week here in Florida. When my mom got to town, she needed to make a big shopping trip to Wal-Mart. While she was there, she got a beautiful spring bouquet. 

Pretty, huh? She got more than she bargained for, because attached to the bouquet was her first born daughter! My older sister Kourtney and her husband Juan made the trip over from Texas to surprise her!

 I love that they had to hunt her down in Wal-mart. And so began our fabulous Easter holiday.

Friday night we hung out and watched "classic" movies. I'm not sure if they're classic to the general public. In fact, I'm positive they're not, seeing as Juan, Tayna and Cory have never even heard of them.

We have begun to compile a list of "Hansen Classics", that all new family members must watch in order to understand a great deal of the Hansen family humor and thought process. So far: The Shakiest Gun in the West, The In-laws, Singin' in the Rain, The Music Man, and Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang. I'm sure the list will continue to grow with time, as we begin to realize just how many of our jokes our spouses don't get. It little things like, every time I hear the name "Pierre" I cannot resist the urge to say"Oh Pierre! You shouldn't have come!"(Singin' in the Rain).

Fun fact: if you say that phrase in the presence of one of my family members, they will respond with "YES, YES, YES...NO, NOO, NOOOO..." Every single time.

Saturday we all went thrift shopping in Tallahassee. We found the BEST thrift store! I got a sweet retro lamp for Cory's desk (only $15.00!), and a ceramic ear that I thought was hilarious. For $.50, I thought it was worth it.

Cory has not been very amused at my constant requests for him to "lend me his ear." Whatev. I'm hilarious.

We started Sunday out right with Belgian Waffles. Yum.

My mom brought out the traditional Easter scrabble blocks.

It's like they're trying to tell us something. 

But what is it???

Oh. That makes more sense.

We also broke out the permanent markers and did a little egg decorating. If you must know, the fumes were a little, tiny bit strong.

Okay. The fumes were really strong.

Cory wanted to make a "Chuck Norris" egg. It quickly started to take a turn for the more "Homeless Vagrant" look, so he decided to run with that.

Daisy was not amused. 

Here we are with our masterpieces:

And here they are, being the master peices:

What a bunch of egg heads. Am I right?

After our little eggstravaganza, my parents sent us out into the wilderness for a bit so the Easter Bunny could stop by and hide our eggs and baskets.

Yea...we still do Easter egg hunts. They get more intense every year. My parents really, really enjoy hiding things from us.

It was hot in the wilderness. I tried to look brave for the camera, but Cory couldn't even fake it.

That is the opposite of his excited face.

 The wild flowers were very scenic though.

Eventually we caught up to Tanya and Jesse. But not before taking some very stalkerish pictures of them. They didn't even know I was there!

I'm still trying to decide if I should be concerned about the thrill sneaking around in bushes while taking pictures of unsuspecting people brings to me. 

My Dad helped the Easter bunny hide our baskets and eggs this year.  It took us, six fully grown adults, over  thirty minutes of vigilant searching to find the first one. Eventually we had to give up and beg for hints, and at that point he came up with riddles to point us in the right direction.  Our egg hunt lasted the better part of three hours. And even then we had to give up the search with one egg unaccounted for. Easter really is my parent's time to shine.

Of course, there is a lot more to Easter than eggs and bunnies. I love the opportunity to remember the sacrifice He made for us all. It was a much needed reminder for me.

I just loved this weekend. (Now I'm even MORE excited to spend a week with my sisters and Mom this summer! We missed you Jackie!) It really was too bad that it just happened to be the weekend before Finals week. Not that I let that tiny little detail interfere with my plans...

In other news I turned in my last final today at 6:05 PM!! I can't believe I'm done! I promise I'll address the question I'm sure is burning in your heart now: "What next?" in my next post. It's gonna be good.

Pinterest. It's so hot right now.

Hey you guuuuuys!

I can't say that without channeling The Goonies. Which is interesting, considering I've never seen all of that movie. Also, it kinda scares me.

A few weeks ago I heard about this thing called Pinterest. And I was intrigued. If you've already heard of it, good! If not, you really need to look into this.

It's pretty much the equivilant of tearing pages out of magzines and putting them in folders for future reference. Except with the internets instead of paper. And the ability to link back to the original source every time. And see other people's inspiration, and then claim it as your own inspiration.

I was only mildly interested, until I found out that you have to either be invited by a current member, or request to be a part of it! Once they got all elite on me, I desparately wanted to be a part of it. Those sly dogs.

Anyway, I sent in my request a while back, and a few days ago I got accepted! And it has seriously blown my mind.

Anytime I see something I like that I might want to remember, I just click a "Pin It" button on my toolbar, and viola! It's saved, categorized and linked back to the original source for easy peasy referencing!

Seriously. I love it.

This is what a board looks like:

This is my "Kitchen" board. I've got some serious plans for our new place!

 If you wanna check it out, click here to see my boards and get a feel for it. It's a little addictive, but definitely one of the most useful bookmarking tools I've ever used.

You can request to join yourself (it takes them about two weeks to acquiesce to your request), or I can send you an invitation! You won't have to wait as long if I send you an invite. I think. If I can figure out how to send invites...hmm.

Also, I like how I'm calling them "invites." Very casual.

Anyway, I like it.  And if you've ever seen an amazing idea on a website, but then can't find it ever, ever again fwhen you try to tell other people about the awesome idea you found, you might like it too.

Now...back to school work. Only 15 days and one monster final paper stand between me and my undergraduate degree! Where did the time go?

Graduation pictures and reflections coming soon. Look forward to that. I know I am :)

White and Nerdy

One of my favorite thing about this little blogity blog is the ability it gives me to look back and remember exactly what I thought was significant  during the past few years. It makes me laugh to read the things I wrote about, and I know I wouldn't remember most of the events if not for this documentation. History is made by those who write it down, people.

 My other favorite things are funny comments, and stalking people. But that's another post, for another day.

When I look back on April 2011 in a few years, what would I like to remember?

 Possibilities: Work was stressful. Finishing my bachelor's degree in English Literature has never seemed so close, and yet so far. I actually cooked dinner three times this week. All are true, yet none seem to really encapsulate what my life as truly been about recently.

What has taken precedence?

Yea. That's right. 

I'm blogging about Avatar. 

I'm not going to do a huge post about this, mostly because my friend Becca did one a year ago that says it all. Click here to read about her family's experience with the show, and her astute review of the plot lines and character development. (Yes, Becca. I creeped your archives.)

I've been watching it pretty regularly for the past week and half. And by "regularly" I mean, "every moment I can. I'm starting on the third (and final) season now.  All the episodes are on Netflix Instant Play, which has proven to be irresistible to me. I take my laptop around the house with me, washing dishes, cooking dinner, and....watching Avatar. I'm pretty cool.

Cory refuses to join in. He claims that he's not interested in a silly cartoon. But really, its because he's been a little preoccupied with his own nerdy little RPG love:

To each his own.