The Picture Game

hi, my name is melissa hansen and i hate throwing parties. hahahaha. SERIOUSLY. i'm really really bad at hosting. i get anxious and i feel like i HAVE to ensure that everyone is ALWAYS doing something or having fun. so i automatically assume that down time = boredom. which is not always true, but i just get overwhelmed. But i force myself to invite people over once a year so that hopefully i can get better. never do. examples:
wienie roast of 2012
Game night 2013
tonight's fruit pajama pizza party.

it's a rough life, haha.
people always say they had fun, but i don't believe them, haha.
But i did legitimately have fun tonight, and i'm glad people came. shout out to mah main gurl Mal who got there early to help pump me up for human interaction, which i have lost all skills at. haha. AND she wore pajamas. she's perfect.

anyway, today's happy is the picture game.
I SWEAR my brother Donny invented it. YEARS AND YEARS AGO. maybe not invented, but coined it, made it a thing, whatever. I ACCREDIT IT TO HIM, AND IT IS CALLED THE PICTURE GAME AND NOTHING ELSE AND WE PLAYED IT FIRST. DEAL WITH IT, DANG IT.
anyway.
the picture game is like my favorite thing EVER because A) i can show off my wittiness. yes. B) you can find out a lot about people senses of humor from this game! C) i can show off my cartoon skills.
HA. so maybe i'm super conceited. judge me.
It's the best party game.
and today it made me happy. pretty sure i have 2 new abs from laughing so hard.

thank you Curtis for writing "That one time Ryan Nelson came to my house and i blushed..." as your opening sentence. #outed. hahaha truth. because i did definitely did take on a particular shade of pink when i answered the door and behind Curtis, Ryan Brodo Baggins Nelson was standing there with black berries, raspberries, his swoon worthy hair, and raised eyebrows. and i was wearing old lady pajamas and a giant red headband that held a card which read "CAT LITTER" (we were playing Hedbandz. i love that game.)


anyway. it was a good night despite the hostess anxiety, haha.

The vineyard

Today the vineyard made me happy.

I spent almost all day out at the farm helping my dad clean his office. His boss is coming tomorrow and it's a big deal, so i scrubbed and scrubbed! and threw away some old nasty paper cups while he wasn't looking, haha. i didn't take before and after pictures of the office but i SHOULD HAVE because it looks like a remodel. especially the bathroom.

but i just love the vineyard. 

Today was one of those days where the Sun and the Clouds are in a perpetual Tango, and every five minutes the lighting changes dramatically. I like those days, they remind me of elementary school recesses and light sweaters and hoping for rain. 

and clouds are pretty, so i snapped this before i left around 3.

100 Happy Days

So I'm doing a challenge. to be happy for 100 days in a row.

 i'd already made the decision to write 3 good things at the end of each journal entry. and lately i've been taking lots of pictures of little things that make me happy. not particularly for my blog or anything, just for me. to remember. because i'm all about remembering.

also, i was talking to dear Patrick the other day about snow, because i miss it. and i joked that if he sent me some snow in the mail, i'd send him some sunshine, because he's in rainy cold Rexburg and i'm in sunny California. And obviously, both of those items are practically impossible to actually post someone. So instead, he describes the rain and puddles around my second favorite city and i tell him good things about home. because good things are like sunshine, right?

So i've been in the habit lately of recording happy things everyday. and then i happened upon this challenge, .
perfect.
The point is to post a picture somewhere everyday of something that makes you happy, so that hopefully you'll start to notice happy things more often. which is what my journal was already helping me do. so maybe this will double my efforts :)

here's the website if you want to join me! :)
100happydays.com


Here's thing #1:

I got a letter today from my best friend Janelle who is on a mission for our church in Chicago.

Dear Future Husband

yo dawg.

we've already discussed on this blog the fact that you'll have to be the one who teaches our kids math, because i am not good at that. And that you'll be the one preparing the red meat, because i get unreasonably queasy around anything that looks even remotely like blood.

today i have three things to tell you:

A) if we could meet soon, that'd be great. we don't have to wed soon, but if this process could get under way, i'd be happy.

B) I've always kind of had the idea in my mind that boys don't want tons of kids. (which is strange considering the fact that my father wanted twelve BOYS. and the girls in between.) But i hope you want kids cause i do. lots of them. with chubby everythings; cheeks, legs, bums, tummies, and wrists. And i wouldn't mind if they had freckles, or curly hair, or dark skin. actually i would love all of those things but obviously, I'll love our kids no matter what they look like. ANYWAY. the point is i want a whole bunch of babies and i hope you do too. we don't have to have all of them ourselves, we can adopt. heck, i'd love to adopt.

C) this is what i really wanted to address. the other day i was talking to Rebecca about choosing baby names, because she's expecting! (yay!) and i really hope we have similar tastes. which might be impossible because my tastes are out there. but hey, i'm hoping. Also, I've had the same baby names picked out since i was 12. (except 'Jenna', which i swapped out because i have a niece named Jenna now and i'm not too keen on same-name first cousins) So i hope you're not too strongly opposed to any of them. i will win the war, my friend. i'm not afraid to beg, haha. but i guess i'll change one or two if the reason's good enough ;) haha.

and that's all for today.
also, i'm trying to cook more to work on mah skills for ya. trying.

see you soon
xo
mel

Sister

"... because there's some people who use the word sister, but it doesn't mean anything. And they go off to college and they never see each other again, and they only call when it's time to put their parents in a home or exchange Christmas cards and that's it. but that's not the kind of sister i want to be! i wanna be the kind that you call all the time and we laugh about how crazy mom's being. and your kids look a little like me and my kids look a little like you and we all go to King's Island every year and wear matching t-shirts."
-Sue Heck "The Middle"

Amen.

Journal 15

So i have this obsession with journaling. 

I finished my most recent journal this morning, so this happened:

yup. those are all of them. so i decided to take some stats. 

12 journals over the past 10 years

7 handmade(decorated) 5 from a store

3 gifted:

•  The little black one with a picture of Jesus was from my fifth grade Sunday school teacher, Jennifer, I still love her.
•  The Deathly Hallows one was a Christmas present from Jonathan 2012, so thoughtful!
•  The little Gold one is second favorite. From my mama as a keepsake from the “Time Out for Women” where I helped Usher and register young girls.

and these are the decorated ones:

 oh, what's that there on the upper right side of my 2006 journal? a worn-out picture of Shaun White? hmm.
worn out with love and time,  i guess.

the other night Mallorie and i had a gooooood laugh at how i decorated these. haha. soooo cheesy.

and i wanted you to see the back side of this one, because it's cool, too. the day our pool opened!
 anyway.

10 normal journals 2 ‘blog books’ [one ordered online and one handmade,( the giant black one)]

Average number of pages per journal: 150

Average number of pages used for daily thoughts: 141

Average number of pages used of organization (table of contents, index, image pages, etc): 9

Most pages: 297, little gold journal (Mar-May 2013)

Fewest pages: 11, lime green (Jan 05 – Jan 06)

Average amount of time spanned in one journal: 1 year 9 months

Longest amount: 2 years 6 months 7 days (November ’09 – May ‘12)

Shortest amount: 2 months 16 days (March ’13 – May ‘13)

And some things about this journal specifically:

pages in journal: 158. 150 for thoughts and 6 for organization. which means there were two empty pages but there is no way i would mess up a number as nice as 150. tut tut.
Time spanned: June 03, 2013 - February 03, 2014. 8 months exactly.

I got the journal on May 18, 2013 in Nauvoo, Illinois on my Midwest trip to remember my experiences and the promises i made to myself that week.

it was "my 15th journal as Melissa Michiale Hansen" but only the twelfth journal i still have. unfortunately i don't know what happened to my teeny kid journals. what a shame.

And it's an interesting journal. haha. really happy and then devastated, and then barely legible scratching for confusion and comfort that turned into resolve. and then healing. and over time, content. and then finally happy again. It's bittersweet to look back over journals for me, because they're such personal journeys and i relive it all again when i brush through the pages. *sigh*

hahaha!
but shutting this one feels good. because it ended happy, and it's full of small acts of love that got me through a wild 8 months, haha.
It's a good story.

and in case you're wondering if you should start a journal: YOU SHOULD. no question. and if you don't know where to start, just list 3 simple things that made you smile that day.

1. The Sherlock series 3 Finale
2. playing the guitar
3. my mom came home from he store with strawberry greek yogurt


here's to new pages!

Dusty Socks

Little known fact about Melissa Hansen: I love gospel music. loooove it. 

i know some people who are uncomfortable with with religious music, i am not. 

but i'm also not against people who are. 

anyway, this:

- i'm almost done with another journal and that's bittersweet.

- summer 2012 i was obsessed with the Brave soundtrack, but i lost the CD in my move to Idaho. sad. but just found the soundtrack on Spotify :D ""if ya hed the chance ter change yer feat, wood je???"

- had an asthma attack yesterday and it freaked me out. i haaate asthma. It's usually only exercise induced, and because i'm exercising, i know i'll have trouble breathing, so i'm prepared for it and i bring my inhaler yadda yadda. but this was literally out of nowhere, and i totally made it worse by freaking myself out. I haven't had a random asthma attack since like my junior year of high school, so i psyched myself out, which only made it worse. but hallelujah for a level headed mother and medicine. 

- I maybe have a crush on a boy in my ward and i don't know whether to embrace it or sweep it under a rug because i'm going back to school in April and he's staying here. (insert anger toward rack-system here)

- I love Jenae and i wish she was home more. i kind of feel like she's the one who went away to college and i'm the baby sister, because she's never home and when she is i totally suffocate her. haha. 

- I am happy, for no one particular reason, and that's good. 

- I'm gonna start an etsy business, and i'm not going to talk myself out of it like i do every other project where i would be subject to criticism. "criticism can be constructive, Melissa." - logical part of my brain

- just because i'm not good at math doesn't mean i'm not intelligent. I'll kick your butt on any history test, yo. 

- it's okay to stop reading a book series in the very middle because it's historical fiction, and you know, because you know the true events, that no one survives this specific attack, so you know that this sweet wonderful character is going to die. but months later, when you decide to suck it up and continue the series, that's good too.

- as cheesy as it sounds, reading the scriptures every day honestly just makes me happier. It keeps my perspectives in focus and my mind where it needs to be. 

- apparently, feeling conflicted between my post college life/friends and my pre-college life/friends is normal, and okay. and i don't have to feel bad about it. 

- if you use a dusty, dirty sock from under your bed as an emergency kleenex in the middle of the night, your allergies are going to flare up and it's going to be miserable, but a little worth it because your mom will make you chicken soup for dinner :)

AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRANDON AND JAYLENEY. you're both wonderful.