Piano Recital

Jase and Janelle (and all of the rest of the kids) did a great job in their piano recital tonight!

Natalie's Baptism

Perhaps you may remember that Rick is teaching a seminary class for kids who are deaf this year.  There are six students in the class and most of them are not LDS.  Well, one of his students, Natalie Gutierrez, is just a sweetheart.  She has been attending Seminary and also the Deaf Branch for the past year and it has been so neat seeing her grow and progress in the gospel.  She has been meeting with the missionaries for the past little while and tonight she was baptized!  She was just glowing! Stephen Peterson (who returned home from his mission last year) is a good friend of Natalie's and he baptized her.  The chapel was packed with friends and family.  Now Natalie is the only member in her family.  They all came to the baptism and I think they were touched by the spirit.  We had an ASL interpreter (me) and a Spanish interpreter (who recently returned home from a Spanish speaking mission).  The meeting was done in ASL and then I spoke the English to this young man and he voiced the message into Spanish for all of Natalie's family.  It was challenging!  Thankfully the spirit surpasses all languages.  I know there were members of Natalie's family who were in tears.  What a wonderful thing to see the spirit touch people's lives! Natalie was confirmed the next day and received the holy ghost.  We are so proud of her for making this important step in her life.  This year she will graduate from high school and begin college.  We are so glad that she gets to take the holy ghost with her!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Josh is FIVE!

Josh is five years old today -- Happy Birthday, Josh!!  The grandparents and Josh's aunt called to wish him a happy birthday.  He doesn't like talking on the phone and didn't want to talk to any of them.  (Sorry those of you who called, he really does love you!)  I think he did reluctantly say a few words to some of the well-wishers.  He got a really cool race track and cars for his birthday.  He also got a marble maze, some socks, and another car-plane type contraption.  Plus he got tons of awesome presents at his party yesterday so I think he was happy.  I went to an interpreting workshop this morning for four hours.  Rick and I then met with some friends of ours who we hadn't seen in several years.  They were in town and we met them for lunch.  So that was fun!  Then Rick went grocery shopping and I brought Jaiden to her friend's birthday party. She was so excited.  They  watched "Tangled," ate pizza, did Karaoke and makeovers, and had all sorts of fun!  I met Rick at the baptism.  It was long and so I was 20 minutes late picking Jaiden up from her party.  Then I picked up Janika from her play and dropped her off at the Region dance. Pictures later...  

Josh's Birthday Party

Josh's birthday is tomorrow.  We have so much going on tomorrow that I decided to have his party this afternoon.  He helped me make the cake this morning.  This was his first friend party and he was so excited!  When I asked him afterwards how he felt about his party he said, "It was great!  It was SO much fun!"  I'm glad he felt that way.  There were several moments here and there of noisy chaos, but it actually went pretty smoothly for the most part.  The kids liked making things out of packing peanuts (for about ten minutes) and they liked playing bingo (for another ten minutes).  But the good thing about kids is that you get a bunch of them together and they often have more fun just playing together than they do participating in organized (or in our case, disorganized) activities.

 

 

EFY Session Director Training

Last weekend we went up North to the EFY Session Director training.  I thoroughly enjoyed it!  It is so nice to take a break from regular life and sit and hold hands with my cute husband as we soak in the spirit of wonderful messages with NO distractions!  It was wonderful!  Normally everyone already has their session directing assignments a few months before this training, but this year they wanted to wait until after the training before we received our assignments.  It was fun to re-unite with friends from past years and meet new people. We found out later that we will be session directing at BYU again (which is no surprise since most of the sessions are at BYU).  This was a fun little get-away although difficult driving so far with seven kids on Friday and then again on Saturday to return home.  The kids stayed overnight at my mom's house and then Grandma Jensen and Gerilyn picked them up Saturday morning to take them to some fun places that day.  They went to the Hansen Planetarium and out to lunch at Chuck-A-Rama.  They also took Janika to find some clothing items for her costumes for her play.  I have such a great family! 

Jaiden's First Grade Program

I enjoyed watching Jaiden in her first grade program today.  She was so excited because hers was the very first part and so she got to open the show.  This program is all about families.  The girls get to dress up like Mommies and the boys get to dress up like Daddies.  I love these familiar songs and grew up with many of them.  "I'm a VIP,"  "My Dad's the Greatest Guy," "She's My Sister," "By Brother and I," and those sweet songs about Mothers and Grandparents and so forth.  During the closing song they show a slide show of pictures of our first graders with their siblings that they took the following week.  Rick was able to come too since it was his early day at work.  Jase tended our sleeping Jenna and Josh came to enjoy the show.  Great job, Jaiden!

 

Pre-school Spotlight

Josh got to share pictures and information about himself at pre-school today.  He told all about his family and what he was doing in each of the pictures on the poster.  He said that his favorite color is green and he that  his favorite places to eat were Pizza Hut and McDonalds (we don't go out to eat much so we probably frequent those restaurants once a year at most).   Josh's pre-school teacher is Kathy Ence and we just love her!  We moved to this neighborhood when Jared was in pre-school and so Mrs. Kathy has been our pre-school teacher for Jared, Janelle, Jaiden, and Josh (for a total of seven years since most of the kids had her for two years).  I was really tempted to sign Jenna up for next year but since she still has three more year until kindergarten, we will wait another year.  Mrs. Kathy was also Jase and Jared's Webelos leader. So she has had a big influence on the Jensen kids!  Thank you, Mrs. Kathy!