Busy Bees

We have had a busy couple of weeks, thus the lack of posting.  Here are a few of the things we've been up to.

I have made some good friends here in Glendora who I occasionally get to have Girls Night Outs with.  For this latest one we went to a little massage place in Korea Town and had the most amazing massages.  (It's the first and only professional one I've ever had, so I have nothing to compare it to, but it felt so nice.)  Then we had a quick late-night snack at a Mexican restaurant after and had fun chatting the night away.  Here I am with Shannon H., Tenicka, Shannon S., and Lucia.  I'm so lucky to have a husband who stays home with the girls even after a busy day at work so that I can go do these occasionally.  Thanks, hub!

One of Sophie's favorite places is the park, and you can find us there just about any day of the week.

Since we can't go to the beach quite that often Sophie makes do with taking her shovel and pail to fill with wood chips instead of sand.  She makes me all kinds of food that I obediently gobble up for her.

She is such a fun girl right now with quite the developing imagination that's fun to see.  We often have to re-enact scenes from Cinderella and other stories she loves.  I'm usually the prince because she is, of course, always the princess. :)

March Madness hit our home with a vengeance this year just as it does every year.  Joseph's been able to see quite a few games on his big screen (the reason he bought it, really) and has been reveling in "the most wonderful time of the year" (his words).  Too bad his bracket stunk it up this year, though!

We enjoy making a big, master bracket to put on the wall.  Sophie and Avery had their own brackets in my family's challenge, and Avery just might pull off the win there!  (I picked Avery's, but Sophie picked all her own.  She was determined from the very start that Oklahoma would win it all, so it will be highly amusing if they do.  Too bad the rest of her picks were so bad that she can't win!)

I am actually currently at the top of Joseph's family challenge.  1st out of 46 ain't too bad I'd say!  But my pick to win it all, Louisville, lost already, so I only have a small chance of winning the whole thing still.  At least I had a small moment in the sun.  (And check out Avery's mad ball-handling skillz already.  Joseph's feeling very encouraged.)

We went to a little St. Patrick's Day party in our green.  Sophie thought the whole pinching-people-who-aren't-wearing-green thing was the funnest idea ever.  But we sadly didn't ever see anyone she could get all day.

I did tell her that this was her holiday since she's got the Irish red hair (though there's not really Irish in our genes) and she thought that was pretty cool, too.

Joseph's brother Willis and his family came from Flagstaff to visit us for a week.  Here are 4 of the cutest kids ever: Sadie, Clarissa, Susannah, and Aaron.  

We had fun with them at Disneyland for half a day, going to Toon Town and on It's a Small World for Sophie's first time since it just reopened.  They stayed the other half of the day and definitely got their fill and had a great time.

I wanted to get a picture of the girls with Mickey while we were in Toon Town, but Sophie is so scared of any character if she gets too close, and she screamed the entire time.  Oh well, we tried.

We also took them to the La Brea Tar Pits so we could check out the fossils that were trapped there for a few million years but have been reassembled to their original forms, like this mammoth elephant.

Aaron especially was in heaven looking at all the cool stuff there.

This entire wall is made up of the 400 or so wolf skulls they have found.

Sophie checked those out for a while.  It's neat because outside the museum there are still tar pits everywhere, closed off by gates of course, right in the middle of Los Angeles.  Somehow Joseph and Willis still managed to come home and find some tar in their shoes!  Weird!

This was outside the museum of Contemporary Art that's next door to the tar pits.  I won't even try to guess what it was, but Sophie liked it.  I will fully admit that I do not understand nor enjoy modern art, but I'm glad some people do I guess.

These were cool, though.  I felt like we'd stumbled into Narnia, but instead of just one lamp post we found dozens all stacked in neat rows.

The kids had fun chasing each other around and playing hide and seek in them.

One of the things the Jensens really wanted to do on their trip was go to the beach.  They had touched the Atlantic Ocean once but it was too cold to play in, so they've never really been to the beach before.  So we went even though it was cold and windy there.  Not exactly ideal conditions for playing in the cold ocean, but they still seemed to have a good time.  This is the one picture we got the entire trip with all of us together.  We had a great time with them here and Sophie still misses her cousins.

The last thing I'll mention is our most recent ward activity that we heard about for weeks beforehand because it's the favorite.  It's called Potato Racing.  Each family is given a potato to carve and then stick wheels into, then the potatoes are raced down a pinewood derby track in heats much like the March Madness tournament.  My brother Peter and his family were here for it, so Joseph did the initial carving and then Peter did more fine tuning until we ran out of time and were forced to have it ready.

We won the first round race but in the second round we went up against the potato that eventually took 2nd place overall, so we lost to them.  But it was tons of fun and we learned a lot that we'll use to hopefully win it all next year (if we're even still here).  Great idea and lots of fun.  So that's the last few weeks in a nutshell.  If you made it all the way to the end I'm impressed.