Six Flags

no pictures today.
just a tiny story.

Sometimes you need a crazy spontaneous out of the blue trip.
sometimes you need to cross of something from your "I've never done these things because they're crazy" list.
Sometimes you need to ride a roller coaster.

I've never ridden a roller coaster before, so it was awesome. I went with my Brothers Donny and Derek, Donny's Girlfriend and too of my good friends; Rory and Trey.

I've never had such a carefree happy trip. We all woke up early, my brothers and i laughed the whole time we were getting ready. the car ride there was a blast and the whole time at the park, we never fought or got (visibly) angry. Beside the 2 hours in each line, the trip went silky smooth!

I Love my brothers.
I love my friends.
I love my fanny pack.
I love in-n-out and WATER.

I love roller coasters :)

p.s. because we had Christmas Adam and Christmas Eve, Derek decided to continue the Christmas "days" and the day we went to six flags, the day after Christmas, is now called, "Christmas Seth"

Christmas

Every Christmas morning all the kids sleep in one room. This year it was donny's room. We woke up to this

and every morning before we go get our santa stockings, we watch this

to remind us what Christmas is really about.

then we open our stockings from Santa!

our stockings are mostly candy, then an orange and a small present.

Behold our early morning glory:

We had 10 o clock church, so we waited to open presents until we got back.

we didnt really take pictures of opening presents. We just had a lot of fun and laughed a lot and i wept inwardly over my failed attempt at ceramics presents...

thrifty wrapping.

After presents we had a family dinner and sat smiling for a while. taking funny pictures with grandpa and and reading new books

ignore our awkward fces and focus on that fact that my grandpa is sticking out his tongue. ha!

 the missionaries came over for dinner and we helped them build their own gingerbread/graham cracker  houses

Merry Christmas!

Love, the Hansens

Christmas Eve

 On Christmas Eve we have a Christmas pageant! We act out the nativity story found in the New Testament. It's always really fun and it's a good way to remind us what Christmas is really about.

This year we only have half of the kids at home so it was a little harder to fill all the parts, but we made it.

Derek was the Angel Gabriel

Mom and Dad were Mary and Joseph

Donny was the Shepherds Jenae was the Wise....woman...

And I was the innkeeper, in stunna shades...

 Merry Christmas!

Christmas Adam

 For a long time we called the day before Christmas eve, "Christmas eve's eve"

Then my wonderful friend Gina told us that they called it "Christmas Adam"

cause you know...adam....came before...eve.

yeah, i know, she's clever, right?

So now, our Christmas Adam traditions consist of caroling to the neighbors, making gingerbread houses from graham crackers COVERED in delectable candies and watching a Christmas movie. our first choice was home alone. But we only had it on VHS and our VCR no longer functions..haha.

Jenae and her legit gingerbread temple

 Donny's wonderful girlfriend Christine joined us for the festivities.

My house is actually my heart. It's mostly gold and red. For Gryffyndor, obviously.but a tiny corner had two pieces of green candy...because a tiny corner of my heart is Slytherin. Slytheryn. slither-in. I have no idea how to spell that. anyway, the two green are only for Draco Malfoy, because he's beautiful...

Derek was his cool engineering self and made his own house without the milk carton helper underneath.

just look at that face...

My grandpa Hansen, bless his heart, is the cutest little old man ever to walk the face of the earth. One year, we watched Home Alone with him, and he cried from laughing so hard, and his whole body was shaking with laughter. I love his laugh, it makes everyone else laugh.

More and more lately, my Dad has slowly been transforming into his dad. My grandpa Hansen.

It's hilarious.

and cute.

last night my dad made it very obvious that Elf was the very last movie on his list of Christmas movies that he ever wanted to watch in his entire life.

We put it on anyway.

He sat back, and relaxed and died laughing the entire movie.

Oh, Dad.

It just makes me excited for Jonathan to come home!

40 more days, whaaaaa?...

Happy Christmas Adam! and Eve!

and Merry Christmas!

Leaf Monsters

Donny's home!

how do you say that?

because "Donny's home" sounds like: the home belongs to Donny

Donnys' home sounds there are multiple Donny's that own the home...

anyway, Donny is home!

Monday morning Donny did some leaf raking

then Donny and Jenae did some leaf jumping.

I just took pictures because i never have, nor will i ever jump in a leaf pile.

don't ask haha

They landed

throwing leaves transforms teenagers into little kids again:

Then... Donny had an idea

put him in the leaves

wait for mom to drive up, and scare her.

hehehe

so we hatched our devious plan and then just waited patiently for mom to come home.

And this is what happened:

feel free to watch this several times, because my mom's face is priceless.

goodbye fall, hello winter!

p.s. my mom would kill me if she knew this video was on here...shhhh hahaha

Secret Santa

I'm in the leadership class at my school. We plan all the events and hang all the posters. it's pretty sweet.

We had a secret Santa gift exchange on Thursday after our final.

My secret Santa didn't want me to know that she was my secret Santa so someone else gave me my present.

pause.

If you've read my posts on my old blog, 

you know that there is a group of boys that have been my best friends since kindergarten. 

And that those three boys are like my brothers

And you'll also know that i have a close friend name Travis. 

I haven't known Travis for nearly as long, but he's still like a brother to me as well.

These boys have been there for me for EVERYTHING. literally. they've been there longer than i can remember and have always always always backed me up and defended me 100%.

I've never been in a real argument with any of them.

I've never been mad at any of them for more than 5 minutes.

I've never been ashamed of them.

I've always looked up to them

I've always been very protective over them, like they are of me.

I've always been jealous of their coolness

I'll always love them. 

basically, these boys keep me sane, they make me happy, they are my oldest friends and some of my best friends. So even though you dont read my blog, thanks guys :)

okay, now back to our original story.

so, secret santa comes along and mine was actually a secret, my santa didnt want to reveal themselves, so our Teacher Mrs.Larrivee gave me my present. 

I opened it just a crack and started crying.

I hate crying in front of people.

Especially boys. 

but this was the happiest of happy cries. if that's possible.

I love my secret santa, for actually thinking of what I, melissa, would want. 

And not just guessing, 'oh, she's a girl who wears ugly sweaters, i'll get her a spool of yarn so she can knit her own'

I opened my present and there was this nice framed  print of the picture below. And it was signed with a note by each of my 'Berenda Brothers' as i affectionately refer to them. And travis. Whom i refer to as my brother when he's not making sounds that kill my brain. haha.

I took this picture! haha it's not the best picture of these handsome guys, but it was a tender moment right after our last playoff game.

So thank you secret secret santa for giving me such a thoughtful, meaningful gift!

And thank you Jason for  helping my santa give me such a wonderful gift, even thought it was your birthday!

Temple Walk

So i realized that i never blogged about my temple walk on my old blog

so i'll tell you about it here. :)

I heard a talk by Elaine S Dalton during a session of General Conference in which she told this story. It made me want to do the same thing! Since i'm in the middle of Personal progress, i decided to do a temple walk for one of my Value projects.

I planned the safest route from five miles away from the Fresno Temple at a church building.

I invited all the girls i know in my area, set a date, volunteered some parents to walk with us and were on our way.

 the whole point of the activity was to show our determination to be worthy to be sealed (Married) in the temple and to compare our walk to the temple to the time span of our life. 

We stopped about every mile and I prepared several spiritual thoughts, taken from stories of saints giving up everything just to go to the temple.

When we were around the corner, we all held hands and walked together the rest of the way.

the feeling was incredible. knowing how hard we had worked to get there, and thinking of everyone who has come before us and sacrificed so much to go there.

when we got to the temple, I invited my wonderful friend Amanda Reyes

to speak to us about how she prepared to attend the temple and about her temple marriage.

Then all the other girls and I had a few minutes to read our scriptures, and write in our journals and reflect our feelings toward the temple.

I'm SO grateful for all the girls who joined me on my walk. 

I love them all so much!

I hope their testimony of the Lord's temples was strengthened, because i know mine was. 

I also feel like all of us girls made a silent deal with each other day. We're all going to the temple. We're all gonna make it. We're all going to each other's weddings. We all love each other too much to do anything that would distract from our goal of eternal marriage.

I love to see the temple.

I'm going there someday to feel the Holy spirit, to listen and to pray.

For the temple is a House of God, a place of love and beauty.

"I’ll prepare myself while I am young" this is my sacred duty.

The temple is a holy place where we are sealed together.
As a child of God, I’ve learned this truth:

a Family is forever.