Merry Christmas

Here is our 2011 Christmas card. I hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

Dear Family & Friends,

The fabulous Christmas season is here again! We feel blessed to have so many wonderful family members and friends in our lives. We always enjoy letting you know about the changes life has offered us within the passing year and look forward to hearing of yours!
We’ve been in Pahrump for three years now; oh how time flies! We enjoy living here and being surrounded by so many wonderful people.
Danny has been serving as the Bishop of our ward for almost 2 years and his love continues to grow for our ward family. Even though Danny’s business has not been in the colleges for over a year now, his company still manages the concessions out at the Henderson Pavilion. He has also been a huge help in managing our home; by taking over a lot of the cleaning, patiently rearing children and even paying bills. Danny is an entrepreneur and continues to amaze me with his brilliant business ideas, one in which he is currently working on putting to action.
Jenny keeps busy of course! Between running a preschool (with 2 full classes), being a Webelos Scout leader, couching girls soccer, expecting Baby #6 in March, helping Danny manage our home and taking care of 5 children she finds it hard to take a breath some days.
We are all very excited to meet our baby boy at the 1st of March. It has been a long time since we’ve had a sweet new spirit in our home and we all can’t wait to meet him.
My mom is thankfully still living with us and has been a big help in my school and with the cooking!
Max is 8 and enjoys: T.V., Computer/Wii games, P.E., Scouts, Guns, Knives, Camping, “Collecting” & Money.
Hanna is 6 and enjoys: Reading, Spelling, Coloring, Soccer, Receiving money from the Tooth Fairy, Kissing on Walt & Making Friends.
Van is 5 and enjoys: His Pre-K Class, Playing Memory, Building Cup Towers, Computer Games & Making Everyone Laugh.
Daisy is 3 and enjoys: Her Blankie, Thumb Sucking, Preschool, Dolls, Dress-up, Playing Fashion Star (a computer game) & Bossing Walt Around.
In February Daisy started to get extremely sick. Her tummy was always blotted and she was throwing-up daily. After a long 5 months of tests and dealing with her sickness we found out she has Celiac Disease. Thankfully, with just a change of her diet she is back to her old feisty self!
Walt is also 3 and enjoys: His Thumb, His Dad & Going Bye-Byes. Him & Daisy ask when baby Clark is going to be here almost every day. Thankfully, Walt has managed to stay out of trouble this year, for the most part!
We feel so blessed to have our crazy lives with our five beautiful healthy children. We wish to extend our reverence and love to the Savior as we commemorate his birth at this time of year and at the same time extend our love to you. We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Love, Danny, Jennifer, Max, Hanna, Van, Daisy & Walt Jensen

School Play

Max and Hanna had there school play last week. I was so excited about it until the night of and neither of them would cooperate with my fine ideas! Max could have dressed up as a tree, but wouldn't, he only would wear a green shirt. And Hanna could have dressed up as an elf, but wouldn't, even though I had an elf costume. These children would not have fit in with my mom. I still have hope with my other children :)


It was still fun to watch them sing. I love that Hanna always knows all the words to the songs and lets just say singing is not Max's passion.

Live Nativity

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is to see the Live Nativity Play. This is performed in South Las Vegas at the Opportunity Village put on by the L.D.S. Red Rock Stake. It is so fun to watch and remind our children of the true meaning for Christmas, the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. Sadly, I forgot my camera this year, but here is a photo from last year.

Santa Train

We went to Boulder City yesterday and rode on the Santa Train with, Grandma Susan, Dee Dee and Tom and Becky's family. It's a fun train ride and Santa walks through for pictures during the ride. We enjoy visiting Boulder City, it's a cute town were Danny's Grandma Roma Jensen lived until she passed away 8 years ago.

With Grandma Dee Dee.

With Grandma Susan.

Cute Walt.

Grandma Susan, me and Daisy.

Dee Dee with grand kids.

Family Activities

I need to take some pictures, but here are a few things we've been enjoying doing around the house lately.
Building paper cup towers.

Roasting marshmallows over the fire.

"Fighting": either pillow fights, fighting with dad or jumping over/ducking under the pillow. One of these games are played almost nightly and if the kids break the "Law of Respect" they don't get to play the game that night.
Playing Memory. This is because of Van, it's his favorite game right now and he plays it a couple times a day.

Decorating

The kids had a great time decorating for Christmas yesterday. Not sure if it was a great idea though, because they've already begun asking, "When is Santa coming?"

Thanksgiving 2011

We had a lot of fun visiting "Danny's" family in Las Vegas this Thanksgiving. We actually always spend Thanksgiving with his family, but this year we stayed the night at his brother Jeff's house for 2 nights. Which consisted of eating lots of food, staying up late, playing games, watching movies, talking, shopping and enjoying being with family.
Oh and Uncle Jeff had to read the kids his favorite Dr. Seuss book, Sneetches of course!

I didn't take any pictures on Thanksgiving Day, oops. Here are some pictures at the Jensen Family Reunion we had on Friday evening at Danny's Cousin Greg's house.

Andrew, Tanner and Haley.

Ruby and Hanna (both missing a few teeth).

Olivia.

Van, Zachary and Max.

Having a great time in this fun ball area.

,

Baby Ella

I was able to go to AZ this past weekend with my mom and meet my brother's new baby, Ella Grace Gravell. She is such a good baby and oh so pretty. My sister even flew in from CA to meet her as well. It was a nice relaxing trip and we had a lot of fun enjoying each others company (with no kids to distract us).





Danny on the other hand was home with our 5 children and had a very busy weekend, which only gave me stress. Danny had a temple service to attend, 2 soccer games, a birthday party, scouting for food drive, Bishopric meetings early Sunday morning and as soon as I walked in the door Sunday evening he ran out for a Stake meeting. Thank goodness it all worked out with just a few mishaps, with the biggest one being no Sunday dinner. Sorry kids, but thanks for letting me go and enjoy my little vacation.

Moms Retreat

While in AZ this past weekend I also was able to attend an uplifting Moms Retreat. My friend Melissa had told me about 71 Toes blog a couple years ago and I've been following it ever since. At the same time I found her sisters website, Power of Moms (which inspired me to start a Learning Circle) and led me to her blog as well. Each are amazing with great ideas that have been helping me along the journey of motherhood. When Melissa told me about this retreat (I've only dreamed of attending one) it just worked out so perfectly that I could go to AZ to meet my new niece and attend a moms retreat! The retreat ended up being held only 2 miles from my brother's house.

There were many great ideas and concepts that I plan to implement to help bring more love, peace, respect and joy to our home.

Diamond

My mom had to put her dog Diamond down last week. Some of the kids had a harder time with it than others, namely Walt and Hanna (Max was sad too, but held back the tears). Hanna cried saying, "why couldn't you put her down tomorrow?" Poor girl. The night before we fed her a steak dinner and loved on her a bunch. Danny did a burial and prayer on the side of the house for her.














Walt is really going to miss petting her so much, luckily he still has Cole.

Loose Teeth

Hanna had two loose top teeth for quite a while! One was so loose it was sticking out further in front of all her other teeth. Danny and I would plead with her daily about pulling it out, which she would not give into. After sometime though, we talked her into tying a string to the tooth and she could tug at the string if she wished too.

While the string was tied on we talked her into just tying it on the desk drawer and she could push the drawer if she wanted. (I can't help but laugh at Danny's cheesy smile here. He is so tempted to just push the drawer in). Well, while that string was attached to the drawer, she had forgotten about it for a second, she turned her head to look at something...

And out came her tooth!

Two days later she lost her other top tooth. Now we can't help but sing "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth" every time she smiles!

Happy 5th Birthday Van!

Van is 5 years old! I am so grateful that he is so easy to please! His birthday comes during a busy time of year and because of that I've never given him a "real" party yet. This year during school we had pizza and cupcakes and called it good. The best thing about it was he had no complaints even though there were no gifts involved. Van is such a happy go lucky kind of boy. He loves making others laugh (he's the class clown). He plays so well with Daisy and Walt. He can play really well with Max and Hanna too, as long as he's not teasing them (yes, even though he's younger he knows how to get under their skin). Van has gotten to be so good at memory. He plays a game with at least "someone" in our family every day lately. He's really good too, he's beaten everyone, but me. :)

Van had the class laughing as they sang Happy Birthday to him, he sang the Cha Cha Cha's in between.

Blowing out his 5 candles!

Happy 5th Birthday Van, we love you!

Dee's Birthday

Danny's mom Dee turned 68 on November 5th. Danny had this great idea to take her on a "tour of her life" for her birthday. Cindy borrowed her friends 15 passenger van (which by the way we just bought one last week) and we were all able to drive together. Dee and the boy's told stories as we drove past their old homes, neighborhoods, schools and churches. Then we went back to Cindy's for dinner and cake. It was so neat to see and hear about their childhood days. Happy Birthday Dee, we love you!

Halloween 2011

We carved pumpkins and ate a Jack-O-Lantern Pizza for dinner.

Our 5 little pumpkins.

Soldier Max

Angel Hanna

Magician Van

Princess Daisy

Chinese Boy Walt

All the kids together for our ward Trunk-or-Treat. Walt was a knight, but he wouldn't keep his costume on so on Halloween we changed him to the Chinese Boy.