August - October 2015

 PLEASE CLICK ON THIS LINE FOR TONS MORE PHOTOS FROM THESE PAST FEW MONTHS.
(I will post Disneyland separately)

We had a VERY BUSY August!  It began with the arrival of these little paleontologists!

Bennett can tell you the name of about any dinosaur out there, and Carter is picking up on them as well.  Yes, Bennett is younger...reminds me of some other boy in this family (Austin!)

So, one of the first outings was to the BYU Museum of Paleontology where we had a great explore!

We also went hiking up Rock Canyon on a beautiful summer day.

 The entire Taylor family was in town for a REUNION so we all met up in Almo Idaho and just had a ball!


We all got family photos up on the cool rock formations of CITY OF ROCKS.

 Another day we all headed over to GROUSE CREEK to Jay Tanner's ranch for some horseback riding.

Carter has a go of it.

And Brooklyn.

And Bennett.

Hats...on the Jensen clan.

And the grand-kids with Gma and Gpa.

And the cutest little baby Klay with smiles galore!!

Back home we had fun with the TEE-PEE in the yard.

Lots of busy kids all day long!

 Auntie Bre made the coolest "sensory bins" that the kids really loved playing with.

 On Sunday we all went to the MTC for Sacrament meeting and got some photos afterwards.

We enjoyed having Dad and Carolyn over for dinner.

And for Gpa James to get to hold Klay.

For FHE we made a pretty cool banner for Braden's arrival at the airport.

It was patterned after tapa cloth made in the islands.

Bre was master designer and Jenna and I helped her paint.

The kids made cool tiki masks that we then made into face masks that said "WELCOME HOME UNCLE BRADEN"

(Whoever has those photos...please send them to me!  I am missing some from the airport)

HUGS from Braden was just THE BEST!!!
It seems like a dream now that he was even gone...it is just so normal having him home!

We are so proud of who he is and how much he learned about love through service!

 You can see it turned out pretty great!  And just having Braden home was the best gift ever!  We were so grateful that all the kids could be there!



The kids just could not get enough of him!  And he was happy to oblige.











Ty arrived that weekend and FAMILY PICTURES were in order up at Castle Park in Provo.

OUR FAMILY "ROCKS!" 

 Having GRANDKIDS is the BEST!!

 One fun activity we did was our own "CHOPPED" TV show...if you have not heard of it, it is a chef contest where 4 chefs are each given a basket of ingredients and a time limit to make a certain part of a meal using what is in the basket...then they are judged and one chef is "chopped" from the group.  This goes through 3 rounds till there is one chef left...the winner.

 Our baskets contained...chicken breast/an apple/ rice krispies/ spinach.



It was SO FUN to see what everyone came up with.  I was thinking we would all do the same thing, but all were totally different!


JENNA AND BRADEN made delicious sweet and sour chicken.

SCOTT AND I made spinach and cream cheese stuffed chicken breast with homemade applesauce.  YUMMY!

AUSTIN AND LAURA made incredible wrap sandwiches using all the ingredients...so good!

The judges TY AND BREANNA got to taste them all and did not actually chop anyone, but awarded Scott and I as best dish overall.

We actually had a side dish that was amazing using spaghetti squash and italian turkey sausage...YUM and a dessert by the grandkids using crescent dough, trail mix and cream soda!  It was pretty darn good too!

I had a visit from two of the cutest SAVE THE WORLD little guys one afternoon after they saw my little green pumpkins trying to grow under the playhouse...Jenny helped them make a big banner telling us all to HELP SAVE THE LITTLE GREEN PUMPKINS!

You will see in a couple photos that it WORKED!

We loved that Austin flew back to Utah in September to go to the Boise/BYU football game.  Lucky for him, it was an incredible win for BYU.  The boys had a wonderful time together!

We hosted TWO reunions this fall again.

First was up in Rexburg at BYU-I

We took the quilt up this time, realizing it really was a reunion for this group.

We saw about 60 returned missionaries and significant others.

 The next day we went to do sealings in the Rexburg temple on the first Saturday after being closed, and with the Idaho Falls temple still closed...lets just say it took quite a while, and it was a blessing I scheduled our group!

The next weekend we hosted our Provo Reunion at our stake center.

We had over 100 RMs and lots of significant others again.

 It is such fun for them to get together and we love hosting this.

We are so blessed to have these great kids in our lives!


We are also blessed to have our own group of friends that served as Mission Pres/Wives in the N America Southwest alongside us.  All live in Utah so we get together a couple times a year and see how we are all doing!  This fall we met at Crawfords cabin in Millcreek Canyon by SLC.  We love these people!

 

Speaking of people that we love, here are some photos from a hike Jenny and I took the boys on in Rock Canyon.


I brought magnifying glasses so they could look at things on our hike.

I love this photo of their faces!

They were mountain goats!  Serious rock climbers!


















And Jenny is truly SUPER MOM to keep these two busy and so happy!  She is always taking them places for great experiences!

OK, this is really ugly...feet are ugly in general, but this month I also fell going upstairs and may have broken my big toe.  It looked really bad for a few days and still hurts when I move it.

Halloween we got the pumpkins from the garden...remember the little green pumpkins we wanted to save?  Well, they grew pretty darn big for the most part.

We had giant pumpkins this year!  Carved 3 and left one as a fall decoration on the porch.

Scott did the upside down head and the huge grinning pumpkin...



...Braden did the New Zealand style turtle!

I just wanted to share a few photos of Nathan and Daniel from school this year.  They have been so fun to have in class!  They are learning many great skills!


This one is Nathan "dusting" a fingerprint.

 Both boys playing with goopy green GLURCH!

Daniel with his paper plate pumpkin he made by gluing torn orange paper all over a blank paper plate!  Lots of work!!

 And both boys checking up on a patient (Braelyn) with a stethoscope and some other surgical tool.  She was loving being the patient and was truly "patient" with the poking and prodding and fake shots etc.



And Nathan inside our very own Patrol Car that we built and decorated during our police unit.
ADORABLE!

OUR SUMMER: MAY - JULY 2015

I had no idea I had not posted since last APRIL!  Lame!

Not that we have not been busy or anything!


So,  I will do some catch up posts over the next while!

May was Preschool Graduation after a great year back teaching!



We also celebrated Lori's birthday by going up to THANKSGIVING POINT GARDENS to see the beautiful flowers!






May 5 brought us our CINCO de MAYO GRANDBABY,

KLAY RYAN JENSEN


This meant that right after school was out, I was on a plane to New Jersey!

I spent almost a month there.

For MY birthday, we went to a little New Jersey town to lunch and to walk around the little shops and lake area.


I loved being with Bennett and Carter too!

Mother -Daughter pic by the lake.

And the best birthday present of all was a FIRST SMILE from Klay!!

Reading the bag of dinosaur books I brought was a nightly thing too!

Jenna and I took the boys to FIELD STATION DINOSAURS for a grand adventure!



Animatronic dinos galore!

This photo was in honor of Breanna and the TRICERATOPS SONG!!!

Speaking of Breanna...May also brought us the news of Breanna's car crash that she miraculously survived!

We were so relieved and feel so very blessed that she walked away from this!

ALWAYS WEAR YOUR SEATBELT!!!

Jenna and I went from one project to another the whole time I was there!


We took down the boys car beds and built new ones for them!

We also made a guest room in the basement that turned out pretty darn cute!

Carter graduated from Preschool with honors!  That was really fun!

We went on lots of walks and runs.

And when Grandpa Taylor arrived, we went to the lighthouse!

And he got to help wrestle the little busy bodies!

This was our crazy beach day!

Crazy Bubble Day!

Rainy Philadelphia day! Where we met up with 4 of our returned missionaries!

And got a special tour of the old Federal Reserve Building by one of their Dads.

We all went with the Jensen clan to a Phillies game!

And we got to be there for Baby Klay's blessing day.

And his new baby check-up where he weighed in at 10 lb 11.5 oz

 Back in Provo we were happy to have visits from old friends...the Williams who served with us in Phoenix.

 We went on a few hikes including up the Y Mountain with some RMs

 And to several weddings and receptions.

The bulk of the summer was spent helping Breanna run her SUMMER PROGRAM!

18 days of CHAOS that I would have LOVED to have had my kids participate in!!


It was so much work, but so worthwhile!  It was a very popular class once people found out how fun and creative it was!

 These are just a few photos of the activities that we did with the kids.  This was for space day, making rockets and doing watercolor filter art.

 And introducing the kids to THE PLANET SONG!

 Then taking them to the park to ACT OUT THE SOLAR SYSTEM!
And this was just ONE of EIGHTEEN CLASS DAYS LIKE THIS!


It was truly a great program!

 Another one of our hikes this summer was to DONUT FALLS and that one was really really fun!

We did some serious hiking up the middle of a river to get to the source of the hike name...the donut hole!

 And...of course there was the CRAZY CAT LADY pants that Breanna found for us to wear as we helped with a youth activity called WHERE'S WALDO over at the mall.  Yes, we went looking like this!

And we had so much fun that we got pants for Jennifer and we all wore them at the TEMPLE TO TEMPLE 5K race on July 24!

We figure we made people smile when they saw our signs!

And we were very proud of ourselves that we could run together!


WE LOVE OUR FAMILY SO MUCH!

It was a great summer!!