New Beginnings

We are excited for our new young women leaders in the Deaf Branch.  Joyanne Burdette is the new Young Women's President and Toni Pemberton is her counselor.  Today we joined with two other wards for New Beginnings.  We learned more about Personal Progress, the new youth web-sites that are available and other aspects of Young Womens.  It was a lovely evening!

Jase's Klondike Video -- It's Neat!!

Our family went to Jase's "Sled Signing Ceremony" and Jase's Scout Leader showed us this neat video that he put together from their last adventure.  He did such a great job on it!  He is so funny because he had a typo on the video (which isn't a big deal), but he ordered about 30 T-Shirts for the boys and their moms before he realized that they said "Kloldike" instead of "Klondike!"  So he went and had them all re-printed!  The shirts have a group picture that reads, "Klondike Survivor 2010" and the Mom's shirts read, "Klondike Mom 2010."  The younger siblings in attendance got the shirts that were spelled wrong.  They didn't care and were thrilled to get a shirt too! 

Anyway, I loved the end of the video where he shows a picture of our boys superimposed over the stripling warriors.  What a powerful message!  I had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat!  I am so grateful for such wonderful leaders who do so much for our kids!  Click on the link below to bring up the video:

Klondike Video 

The Jensen Family...

Grandma and Grandpa Jensen with their kids

 

The whole Jensen gang...

Rick and Wendy

Help for Haiti

I went to drop off our bag of donations for Haiti at our elementary school this morning and was touched by the amount of donations filling the hallway in front of the office.  I cried all the way home.

I know many of you have participated in donation projects for Haiti too.  When we gathered our children together to ask what they could donate in the way of money and belongings, our five year old ran to
her room and brought back one of her favorite dolls and stuffed animals so that one of the children in the Haiti orphanage could have something to play with.  I was moved by her willingness to serve.

What we do may not seem like a lot, but when we all do something, it will make a difference!  I am reminded of the quote by Edward Everett Hale:

I am only one, but I am one.
I cannot do everything, but I can do something.
And what I can do I ought to do.
And what I ought to do, by the grace of God,
I shall do!

I hope that we can all find it in our hearts to do our part to help the people of Haiti.

The Hiding Place

So, Rick had a bad day and wanted to talk about it.  So he suggests we go to our bedroom.  Problem is, Jaiden and Josh overhear the plan and are following us around and we can't seem to get rid of them.  So en route, we pass the nearest bathroom and Rick pulls me in, "Quick, in here!"   I say, "fine -- but I get the seat."  We are chuckling at our cleverness while the kids are in our bedroom wondering what is taking us so long.  We are able to have at least three full minutes of conversation before the pounding on the door begins, "Mom?  What are you doing in there?"   Ah well, it was good while it lasted.

Oh and can I tell you how much I am enjoying teaching my night class?  I don't mind skipping some of the evening chaos a couple of times a week and when I come home the younger kids always act as if they haven't seen me in a week.  "Mom's home, mom's home!!"  They jump up and down and hug me and kiss me.  You just beat a reception like that, can you?? 

Janelle's Story

Janelle (age 7) is always writing little stories.  I typed this out exactly as she wrote it. I really got a kick out of the phonetic spelling!

"Once upon a time their lived a King.  His doiter the prenses was not marryde.  She rilly wanted to have a prints to merry.  But no wan came to the chatsel. Won day a prints came. The prints said, "I must have the printses if I fight a dragan. So the prints went to the cave to fihgt the dragan.  He got very hurt.  So He got out his sword and stabed the dragan rihgt in the dragans nose and the dragan fell.  and the prints merryd the printses and they lived happily ever after.  the end"

Janelle's pictures

Janelle is such a good little writer and illustrator!  Here are a couple of pictures she drew.  They are way  better than anything I could come up with!!

CAVITIES!

Today we inundated our dental office with children.  You could almost see the receptionist counting as they walked through the door....one, two, three, four, five, six, seven...  The six oldest all had appointments.  The baby got to just  play with the toys and point to all the pretty fishies.  During our drive, Jaiden gazed out of the window and remarked, "wow, there sure are a lot of people going to the dentist today aren't there?"  It is apparently her logical conclusion that all cars driving in a given direction must be headed for the identical destination.   

The verdict from the dentist? 18 cavities!!   Janika and Jase both had none --surprising for Jase since he  conveniently forgets to brush his teeth half the time (yuck!).  Jared had two, Janelle had two, Jaiden had six and Josh had 8!  I can't believe little Josh has 8 cavities!  At his last appointment just over six months ago he had none -- what happened?  Is it all of those "potty treats" we have been bribing him with or is it just weak teeth?

After this appointment I said, "no more potty treats!"  He is potty trained FINALLY (sigh of relief!) the past couple of weeks.  But as thrilled as I was, I didn't really want to make a post about it because that would be admitting that we gave up the first time we tried (which was clear last summer) and that it took him an entire year longer than our other kids to do it!   He did agree to the "no more potty treats" since I told him that he is too big for that now (and they also cause cavities).

So far Josh has been great at the dentist, but will that attitude continue after he gets a drill in his mouth?  Let's just hope the treasure box with those little rubber balls and plastic toys work their magic! He goes back in for the first round of fillings in two weeks.  Jaiden had two of hers filled today and went home and bit her numb cheek and tongue really hard leaving a huge white canker that lasted several days.  Oh the joys of the dentist...   

P.S.  When I brought Josh back in to get his cavities fixed, he did great!!  He cooperated and was just fine.  Whew!!   They did give him a little gas to relax him. The second time we went in he actually fell asleep in the dental chair!  When the dentist came back in he was trying to get Josh to open his mouth but he was out!

Jase's Klondike

Jase just got back from the winter Klondike Derby/Campout.  Here is what he wrote about it:

"Once I got to Cedar Canyon we started building snow caves and we didn't finish till night time.  Then we ate dinner (cup of noodles). Then we went to bed in our snow caves.  I bunked with my friend Marshall, and our snow cave was really small. The roof was about 5 inches from our faces. I wasn't that cold though (just my feet). Then we woke up in the morning and had all these fun stations we went to such as first aid, starting fires without matches, and tug of war, and something kind of like a 3-legged race. Then we had sled races with a couple boys up front pulling the sled, and a rider, and then we ran around a course to have a race. It was really fun!"

Sounds pretty cold and claustraphobic to me sleeping in a snow cave with the roof five inches from your face!  But I'm glad he had a good experience!! 

Jumpin' Jacks!

Since we had one last day to play before school started, I brought the kids to Jumpin' Jacks!   After a couple of hours I had to bring Jenna to the doctor for her 15 month check-up and so I took Jenna and Josh and left Janika to supervise the others during the appointment and picked them up a couple of hours later. You probably aren't supposed to just leave all of your kids there, but I really didn't want to haul seven kids to the doctor's office and figured they would be better off staying where they could burn off all of their energy!  Which they did...Jaiden actually fell asleep on the way home!!  I didn't get any still pictures of Jase, Jared, or Jared's friend, Carson, (they never hold still).  But I did get some videos of them having a fight with the huge blow-up dinosaur.  Later I saw the entire thing deflated, but I believe it was already on its way out...  

Family Pictures