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.

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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.

Pumpkin Patch

My mom and I took the kids to the Pahrump Pumpkin Patch and had a great time! We left Danny with Daisy at home (she didn't nap that day and she usually just wants to be held at these type of things). When we first arrived we had a little scare, we lost Walt! He had been running with Max and Van to get to the pumpkin patch and never made it there. After looking for a good 5 minutes I decided to head back to the car to look for him and poor Walt was lost at the baseball fields crying for his daddy. After that though, we had a great time!
























The kids went on the turtle train a couple of times, climbed on the haystack, went through the "hunted maze" a few times, Hanna and Walt took a pony ride (while Max and Van went through the hunted maze a few more times), Hanna got her face painted (which she always wants to do, but rarely gets to) and we went on a hayride together. We had a lot of fun!






















This family picture was taken at an awesome activity our Stake put on. It was a huge Stake Carnival, they had dinner, music, pop corn, cotton candy, games, prizes, the big bouncy slide, family pictures... (all for free)! It was awesome, I just forgot my camera that night.