Girls' Party

Janelle had a bunch of girl friends over tonight for face masks and games! They were going to watch chick flicks but ended up playing Jack in the Box games most of the evening. They had such a great time and were laughing the whole night! I wish I had gotten a picture of these cute girls without the face masks, ha ha! At 11:00 Rick and I asked if everyone had a way home and then went to bed letting the girls do their thing. I think they stayed until around 11:30. The reason for the party was that it was Junior Prom at the high school tonight and none of the girls were going. So they decided to make their own fun!

Snowmobiling

Janika and Brandon spent the weekend at the Jenson's cabin in Bear Lake. They had fun snowmobiling!

Jenna and Friends

Jenna, Anna, and Clarissa celebrated Anna's birthday with a party at Fiesta Fun and Diary Queen! I love how these three have been such good friends for so many years! I love how they are all wearing their matching dresses!

Ballroom Dancing!

Friday night Rick and I went on a double date with some of our friends. We went to Apollo Burger and then went ballroom dancing at DSU. Apparently they have a Social Dance night at one of the buildings on campus from 8:30 to 9:30. It was pretty fun! We actually ran into a few people that we knew! We might just have to get some friends and go again. 

Missing Keys and Answers to Prayers

Tuesday I had an answer to prayers. I couldn't find my keys when I went to bring Jaiden to tumbling. I had them when I came home from interpreting a few hours before and so they couldn't have gone far. Luckily Rick was home and so I was able to use his key temporarily, but I knew that I needed to find mine. I kept looking for my keys and said a prayer to find them. We all looked for my keys with no success. I was getting nervous because the key fob costs about $200.00 to replace. I checked all of the usual places several times. A few hours later I decided to try again and said another prayer mentioning the cost of replacement and even threw in a reminder of how I had paid extra tithing all last year, ha ha! I explained that I would really love to find my keys and we could really use this little tender mercy! Anyway, after dinner I thought that maybe I should check the garbage can. Although, why in the world would they be there, right?

I took out a garbage bag and started pulling out garbage piece by piece, putting it in the bag. I had gone through the entire day's garbage and was moving on to the garbage from the day before. I was about to give up when I saw a round black thing. I pulled it out and sure enough, there were my keys near the bottom of the garbage can! I was so grateful!! I gave several "thank you" prayers expressing gratitude at God's tender mercies! If I hadn't received an impression to check there the keys would have been thrown away and lost forever! Rick joked that there was probably an angel in heaven whose sole responsibility was to help people find their lost keys, in fact maybe there was one specifically assigned to the Jensen family, ha ha!. He then shared his own miracle experience of when he had lost his keys at Tuacahn when he was in the costume room getting a costume together for a seminary assignment. He was nervous because he was in a hurry and only had ten minutes before he had to get to his assignment. He knelt down and said a prayer asking for help to find his keys immediately so that he could get to his appointment on time. He then looked over and there was a basket of boots. He reached into one of the boots and there were his keys!  

Dance Company Winter Concert -- Jaiden

I was so excited to watch Jaiden's Dance Concert for Snow Canyon High School. There are 11 members of Dance Company ranging from 9th grade to 12th graders. Jaiden is in the 9th grade and so she is one of the young ones. I am so glad that she had this opportunity. Her dance coach, Shari Olmstead, is in our Stake. Shari's husband is Jase's Bishop at the Young Single Adult Ward and Jase speaks very highly of Bishop and Sister Olmstead and loves their family! Jase spent Thanksgiving with the Olmsteads while we were in California and also also Christmas Eve. We are grateful that he had a place to go since he had to work and wasn't able to come up North with us.

Dance Company has been a great experience for Jaiden -- even if it means rehearsing at 6:10 a.m. several mornings a week! I was impressed with how well the girls did on their dances. All of the dances were choreographed by the girls, except for two. At first Jaiden was nervous about attempting to choreograph a dance since she had never done that before, but she accepted the challenge and did great! She choreographed a dance to Face the Fire which she titled In the Flames.

They also had two guest choreographers including Shari's daughter, Sarah, a former Dance Company dancer who graduated last year and is currently attending BYU.  Jaiden was in 6 of the 11 dances, so that was fun! Often with dance studio concerts we sit through a long two hour concert in order to watch our child dance one or two dances, so to be able to see my daughter in over half of the songs in a short one hour concert was awesome! I thoroughly enjoyed the show! I posted videos of the songs that she was in.

Videos:
Last One Standing
Mission Impossible
In the Flames
Blinded
Echo
Society

Jaiden's cute Young Women leaders, Kaci Esplin and Heather Ovard came out to support her. That was so sweet of them!

Jenna's Note and Fairy Pictures

Jenna wrote this sweet note to Janelle today. Janelle and Jenna have shared a room since the summer. They are both messy and their room is a always a disaster, but Janelle is SO sweet to Jenna. She reads her stories at night, reads scriptures and prays with her, and sings her songs. It just warms my heart! The note says "Dear Janelle, you are always bright and colorful even if your sad or sick I will always love you."

Jenna enjoys art and has really been into fairies lately and draws all kinds of fairies with lots of detail. Here are some examples (Maddy the Music Fairy, Samantha the Smart Fairy, Betty the Baker Fairy, Layla the Lazy Fairy, Nancy the Fancy Fairy, Lindsey the Love Fairy, Kelly the Kind Fairy, Finley the Funny Fairy, and Janelle the Christmas Fairy. That is kind of an inside joke, because Janelle is obsessed with Christmas and her solo last year in Carolers was "The Christmas Fairy," which is a totally cheesy, but cute song that Rick wrote for the carolers a number of years ago. The Christmas Fairy goes out into the audience wearing a crown and has a wand and waves it over the heads of couples "to help them fall in love." The couples kiss and the audiences cheer them!

    

New Year's Day!!

New Year's Day involved putting away the Christmas decorations. It went really quickly with everyone's help! Rick then had each of the kids shout one New Year's Goal before jumping into the leaves one at a time. They would yell: "I am going to jump into the New Year by __________" and then run and jump. We adults did it too. The only problem was that Jaiden tried to do a flip on her turn and hurt her tail-bone. Then my brother Shane and I brought all of the kids to the St. George Children's Museum while Alicia did laundry in preparation for their morning departure. Then the kids all watched "The 12 Dates of Christmas." The kids and their cousins have watched it together the past two years and now think it is some kind of tradition of something. I will add some more pictures later, but these will suffice for now!