First Week of School!

First Day of School 2008

The Hansen Family is now officially a family of school-aged children! On August 19th, Quincy started first grade and Grace started kindergarten at Silver Creek Elementary School. They are both excited to be back at school and the first week seemed to go smoothly, though the main topics of conversation about what they did centered around recess, lunch and P.E.

Quincy is in Mrs. Kiefer's class. She is a first-year teacher at Silver Creek, though she taught in the Adams 12 School District last year. Quincy thinks school is great and he's looking forward to "trying to be the smartest kid in class."

Grace is in Mrs. Frankenfeld's full-day kindergarten class. We were very pleased with this teacher assignment, as we had seen Mrs. Frankenfeld several times over the summer at the grocery story, and Grace was already telling everyone that she was going to be in Mrs. Frankenfeld's class. Her neighborhood friends Ella and Riley are in her same class, which also makes her very happy. Grace was very worried that she would forget and call her teacher "Mrs. Frankenstein" so she was also quite proud to have made it through the first week without making that mistake.

We are also very pleased to be hosting Silver Creek's Chinese teacher this year. Mrs. Lihong Wang will be staying in our home through November. The children have enjoyed having her here very much, and so have Erik and I. We enjoyed watching the Olympics together where we got the "inside" scoop on what it is like in Bejing. Lihong has also been teaching the children Chinese. Quincy is very excited to also have the opportunity to talk via web phone to Lihong's 5-year-old daughter who is back in China.

Quincy and Grace are also both taking karate classes at Thornton Mile High Karate. They are "Gold Belts" and soon will be promoted to "Orange Belt." They work very hard at karate, and it involves so much more than punching and kicking. They also must work on memorization of the Black Belt words of the month and must earn "stripes" for graduation by doing things like reading daily, practicing karate, and using good self discipline.

The summer came and went very fast. I spent a lot of time working on my campaign for the Colorado House of Representatives. Each Saturday, and many days during the week, I am walking door-to-door to meet as many voters as possible. I am in a little big of a "David vs. Goliath" situation, as my opponent is the incumbent representative for this district, but I have so far received very good feedback and it looks like it will be a very close race. This weekend, my campaign commercial debuted on cable TV, which was very exciting to see. It was produced and paid for by an outside organization, so I saw it for the first time at the same time as everyone else. There is a quick shot of the family, and the kids are very excited to be "TV stars!"