Monkeying Around with Cousins

We went to the Hogle Zoo with some cousins we don't get to see often enough. But now that they're living in Salt Lake instead of Atlanta we hope we'll get to see them a lot more often!

Sophie and Jensen became good buds on this trip and Avery had fun playing with Siesa. They enjoyed showing my kids all the real-looking dinosaurs they have around the zoo right now. Their favorite were the two who spit water at them, a perfect way to cool off on such a hot day.

One of the other highlights of the zoo was watching this giraffe take his looooong tongue and lick this pole all over. What he was trying to do we'll never know, but it was fascinating. The kids showed him how long their tongues are, but we wasn't impressed. All the kids had fun together, I had a great time chatting with Sidsie, and we can't wait to do it again. Thanks again for a fun day at the zoo!

Because it's been a long time...

It's been a while I know...here are a few fun pics of the kids until I have more time to do a real update on our family.

William discovered my mom's pan collection at her house and was in heaven banging them around all day.

The best part is that now I know how much he loves them, that's where I plop him down in my kitchen as well when I'm trying to make dinner. He can keep himself occupied for quite a while with those makeshift drums.

We borrowed an idea we read about on our friend Jeni's blog and made some fun buildings and characters with marshmallows and uncooked spaghetti noodles for our FHE activity one night.

This is what our girls will do if Joseph has just mowed the lawn and left the green waste bin open for curious girls to discover.

At least they cleaned it all up pretty well. They're cute little stinkers for sure.

My Water Babies

Have I mentioned that the girls love to be in the water? Both have ever since they were small babies.

Joseph caught some candid shots of the girls swimming before we moved (we miss the pool--sniff!) so here they are.

Avery loves to have her face in the water. Unusual, perhaps, but she kicks all over the pool with her face down in the water.

She also loves to kick all over on her back with her floaties on. It might take her a half hour to get from one end of the pool to the other kicking that way, but she gets there!

They are fearless, both of them. We were at a friend's pool today who has this big rock wall that Sophie jumped off of. Not to be outdone by her big sis, Avery got up and despite my protests flung herself off as well. And they both came up with the biggest smiles.

They sure love to play together which does a mama's heart good.

Anything Sophie can do, Avery can too.

I'd love if they both turned out to be swimmers someday like their mama was.

My YW

At church I have had the honor the last 3 years of working with some amazing teenage girls. Since we moved to another part of town we are now attending church in a different ward and so I had to say goodbye to my church calling with these sweet girls.

Fortunately, that didn't mean goodbye to seeing them since we're only 10 minutes away. But since it's always fun to have a party, we decided to have a goodbye party of sorts at our community pool.

I am going to so miss working closely with these girls. They are truly all incredible. They are sweet, sassy, hilarious, kind, talented, and have become very good friends. Their nickname for me is "Grandma" (long story) but fortunately they had the tact to tell me that they consider me a big sister to them rather than a mom (since I could really only legitimately be a mother to the youngest of them, but even that would've been a stretch).

They always managed to put a smile on my face.

Here are 7 of my Young Women so 5 were missing in this picture. My girls think they are the bees knees and loved being included in any activity they could with the "big girls".

Thanks for making my calling so much fun! I already miss you all more than you can know!

I love you, Metzli, Aubrey, Megan, Emily, Katie, Veronica, Lauren, Rieley, Bekkah, Alyssa, Tara, and Kelley!

Firewomen

We took a fun field trip to the fire station with our moms group.

Sophie got to drive the big truck.

And Avery took a turn as well.

They could have stared at that truck all day.

They even got to take turns shooting the hose.

Tons of foamy soap came out with the water which the kids then played in for the next half hour. They were covered from head to toe in big white bubbles and had a blast.

And just for fun, aren't the men in my life handsome? (even if my husband's hair dresser (ahem--me) was severely slacking in her hair cutting duties.)

Dancing Queens

Avery and Sophie were so excited to dance together at their dance recital.

Their class isn't the most technical or best taught, but I think they could win awards for their costumes. The girls definitely felt like true ballerinas.

The dance was to "Skiddamarink".

All the girls in the class.

Avery might not have spent much time dancing at the recital, but at least she remembered to smile most of the time!

Sophie on the other hand was a model student, leading all the other girls through the dance like a champ.

Avery spent more time scratching her head than dancing, but she was sure cute!

Despite what you might think they weren't doing push-ups here. This was their favorite "dance move", called the Frog Dance.

We love our dancing queens!

Silly Kiddies

Sophie and Avery went to their friend Hank's birthday party. I thought the theme was very clever: a Mustache Bash. All the kids got to wear mustaches, either glued on or painted on, and the girls thought it was hilarious.

Will is obsessed with his tongue lately. And as you can see, he also has a fondness for eating.

What a faker.

See?

The girls love love love to swim and are fearless in the water. They have these princess diving sticks that Avery throws in the water and Sophie dives after. The deep end of our pool is 5 ft. but Sophie can get down that far to get the princesses even. Avery's still in floaties for my sanity, but hopefully we will get her swimming independently this summer because she's so ready to do it. They'd stay all day in the pool if we'd let them.

Tia Ria Gets Married!

Joseph's sister Maria (a.k.a. Tia Ria to her nieces and nephews) married a boy from Finland named Teppo Jottenus in the Jordan River LDS Temple.

We think Teppo rocks the Jean Luc Picard look. He's probably smart enough that he could fly the Enterprise if he had to as well. He's currently studying particle physics at MIT. I think he brought the collective IQ of the family way up when he joined it.

Most of all, he is a really great guy and we are thrilled for him and Maria to have found each other. I think they like each other just a little bit. ;)

Teppo's parents are on the left. You won't meet two kinder and better people than these two. Teppo's father was announced in the last General Conference as a new area authority for the Church over Finland and surrounding countries. It was a pleasure to be able to get to know them and their other children at the wedding.

Maria is the 8th of the 10 kids to get married which is why we make such a big group with "just" the parents, kids, and spouses (and Grandpa Jensen). I am blessed to have been able to marry into such a great family and truly love these people.

I think Joseph had just been rubbing The Bowling Ball for luck.

The Jensen family with the exception of Erik who is currently serving a mission in Independence Missouri, ASL speaking.

Joseph and I love this picture of all the grandkids (except Jensen, Siesa, Elsie, James, Jacob, and Bennett). You have every range of emotion possible, from complete boredom to absolute terror...and then there's our girls. Granted, they were in a good mood still at this point in the reception, but their smiles were helped along a bit by a little something called a fruit snack bribe. It worked!

The whole fam damily.

Maria's siblings (she's right in the middle, birth order-wise)

The obligatory tough guy picture with the groom, his two brothers, and his 8 brothers-in-law.

Will liked the dancing part of the evening best.

Joseph's mom, Bob, transformed the church gym into such a beautiful place for the reception. She made these chandeliers herself, just came up with the whole idea on her own. If I could have an ounce of her creativity it would be lovely.

Teppo and Maria really wanted to incorporate a lot of Finnish traditions into the reception like a formal waltz by the married couple as well as a Finnish wedding cake. So his mother made these delicious desserts that my children had a hard time keeping their fingers out of before it was cut. Those raspberries were so tempting. It tasted as good as it looked.