Austin Family Reunion

We had a wonderful time with Becky's family at the annual Austin Family Reunion last weekend. Here are some highlights of the fun.

Sophie enjoyed the root beer a little too much! :)

That ball sailed over Joseph's head in left field but only got me a double. (Joseph caught most all of the balls that were hit his direction, so I was pretty excited that he wasn't expecting mine to go so far.)

Our lane was the XX lane with several of us coming very close to getting a turkey. Peter got the game high with 174 but Mom was close behind with 161, her best ever! (thanks to her 5 strikes in one game! Wow!)

Sophie loved getting to know some of her cousins better. Aubree and Ellie were kind enough to play "Fetch" and "Paddycake" with her to her heart's content (or their heart's content.)

Independence Day

Sophie was our "Lil' Miss Firecracker" for the 4th of July this year. With her red hair that statement couldn't be more true!
We had fun with baby Austin and Abby & Peter

Addicted...or Not

I took this quiz to find out how addicted to blogging I am, and I came out right about where I thought I'd be. I love to write new posts on my blog and love to read all of your fun posts and see your pictures, but I limit myself (usually) to pictures and stories of Sophie. For me the blog is just another scrapbook (which is bad sometimes because I'm neglecting my actual scrapbooking because I spend more time doing this now) but it's not a journal or venting station like it is for some. Thanks to Oliver for the link to the quiz, and I agree with him that I blog because it's a way of keeping a family history of sorts for lots of friends and family to see. How addicted to blogging are you?

61%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Mingle² - Online Dating

Hitched!

Last Friday, June 29th, Taylor Jensen married Shelly Cook in the Salt Lake Temple. The day was wonderful for all involved and they're so happy to finally be married! Hooray!
Shelly and Taylor with SophieThey sure liked doing this shot over and over again! Woo woo! Hubba hubba!

The Wedding Dinner

The old quartet with Taylor as the lead serenaded Shelly with "In the Still of the Night."
The bride, the groom, and the Jensens and Cooks.
Gettin' some good grub!

Bob put on a fabulous wedding dinner the night before the wedding. The decorations were beautiful and the food was delicious. And the entertainment wasn't bad, either! (In addition to the quartet, Joseph also sang a song with me, a spoof on "Taylor, the Latte Boy" that we entitled "Taylor, the Fix-it Boy." Lots of fun!)

Jensen Clan Pics

Everyone from Taylor's and Shelly's family were here for their wedding! The only two who couldn't make it were the missionaries, Maria and Lee, and they definitely had a good excuse.

The Jensen Family

Willis, Jenilyn, Sadie, Aaron, and Susannah. Those kids sure know how to strike a pose!

Taylor the groom with Bob and Craig.

The Joseph Jensen Fam

It's Jensen family tradition for the groom and his brothers to take a "tough guy" picture at every wedding. Most of them can't do it without cracking at least a little smile. :)

The Reception

Taylor and Shelly's wedding reception was at the tip top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake. It was beautiful and a lot of fun.
Cutting the cake.Somehow some cake managed to find its way all over Taylor's face! No clue how that happened! ;)
The wedding line rubbing shoulders with Elders Bednar and Perry.
Elder Eyring also came, as well as Elder Uchtdorf (not pictured) and several Seventy.

Cousin Luvin

Sophie got to play with a lot of cousins at the wedding since all of her cousins on the Jensen side were here for it!All the grandkids with the newest member of the family, Shelly. We never could get all the babies to look and smile at the same time, and one person especially did not want to participate in this picture, but it still turned out cute.
Sophie and Susannah at the reception.

"Put your hands up and spread 'em! You're under arrest!" was what was going through my mind as I watched Sophie and Savannah play together. :)

Uncle Scott

Every now and then Uncle Scott just stops by to play with me. (He's vying for favorite uncle status.) He had fun holding me and watching me put my head down on the pillow while mommy tried to snap pictures while I was lying still (without much success.) I love you, Uncle Scott!

A Not-So-Creepy Crawler

She does a lot of head banging toward the end of this video--not sure what that's all about, but hopefully she won't want to go to a Metallica concert for her first birthday or anything! :D

Daddy's Girl

Happy Father's Day, Daddy! I love you so much that I want to be just like you! So I put on my baby MBA shirt, got out my laptop and school books, and went to work just like I see my Daddy do every day. Thanks for everything you do for me, like playing with me and making me giggle. Thanks for coming in to get me from my naps and putting up with me through all 3 hours of church! And thanks for loving me and teaching me about Heavenly Father and life. You're the greatest dad in the whole world and I love you!

xoxo Your Sophie

p.s. I even tried to play some video games so that we could spend time together, that's how much I love you!

I'm Crawling!

After a month of scooting, flopping, inchworming, and dragging myself, I'm finally really crawling! I'm still pretty slow at it, but I'll get faster!


My first love, however, is pulling myself up onto things and then throwing everything I see down onto the floor, like these magazines. I can cruise along furniture a little, so at this rate I'll be walking in no time, too!

Sophie's Celebrity Look-Alikes

Becky's Celebrity Look-Alikes

Joseph's Celebrity Look-Alikes

New Territory

My baby is growing up! Until this week I hadn't before noticed such a drastic change all at once, but she seems to have done so many new things in just a couple of days that it's been crazy! She's entered the I-don't-ever-want-to-sit-anymore-I-just-want-to-stand stage and pulls herself up onto everything, usually to pound on it and pull things onto the floor. She's also therefore starting to get into everything, and I've freaked out once over a blood red mouth that only ended up being a red dye from a flower she found and stuck in her mouth and then got everywhere. I'm not sure I'm ready for all this. She's asserting her independence by cutting her usual nap time in half so I am only getting half of the things done that I want/need to, and she thinks she's indestructible, so she often ends up falling and hurting herself because she's sure she can handle pulling herself up onto that unstable thing. (Don't worry, I'm always there watching, but sometimes I don't get to her before she's down.)
Sophie has started to pull herself up in her crib as well, and we have found her standing when we go to get her from her nap. So today we lowered the crib down to a safer level. I used to be able to just lay Sophie down and she'd find her thumb and her favorite pillow and be pretty good about going right to sleep, then sleeping for a long time. But just this week she has started to roll back over, then sit up, then stand when I try to lay her down. So this morning when I put her down for her nap, she did that and I decided instead of fighting her I'd just see what she'd do. She eventually laid herself down and not too long after, I heard music coming from her room. I couldn't figure out where it would be coming from because she couldn't possibly reach and then wind her mobile, and there was nothing else in her crib, so I had to laugh when I saw the source of the music. Sophie had reached her hand through the crib bars and turned on her swing's music, and it had lulled her to sleep. What a smartie! I'm glad something worked to get her out! Here's her asleep with her hand "in the cookie jar."

Here's how she got her music to turn on. I wonder if this will be a regular occurrence!

Caged

I love to crawl wherever I can get to, and today's adventures found me going after a green light under the computer desk. Mama's chair was in the way, and "I can't go over it, can't go under it, gotta go through it." So I did.

Clap Happy

I learned how to clap a few weeks ago, and now I can't stop! I clap at everything. I clap when I wake up in the morning, I clap when I see myself in the mirror. I clap after eating, I clap when I sit up from my tummy. I clap when I think mommy or daddy have done something funny or cool, I clap when I think I've done something impressive. I've even been known to clap when I'm whiny! I just love to clap! And here's proof:

Busy Week

It has been quite a week! We started off with a fun Memorial Day holiday BBQing with Becky's family in Provo, and then Becky went with her mom and dad to see:

who were performing at the Scera Shell amphitheatre in Orem. There are only 2 guys left from the original band, and their voices definitely aren't the same as they used to be, but it was so fun to hear them perform my mom's favorite ("Windy") and my dad's favorite ("Cherish") as well as great hits like "Never My Love" and "Then Along Comes Mary."

Becky also finished reading Harry Potter Book 6 in anticipation of Book 7 coming out in a month! It was still fabulous the second time through! Joseph and I agree that Book 4 is our favorite, then Book 6. (I also loved Book 5 the second time, even though I didn't really like it the first.) We know we're HP geeks, but we don't care. :)

We can hardly stand it until the last HP book comes out on July 21st. For Mother's Day Joseph ordered the book for me from Amazon to be delivered on my doorstep that day or it will be free. Is Snape bad or good? Will Harry live? Will Hermione and Ron finally hook up? All these questions and more will be answered (which will be nice since we spend a ton of time these days postulating as to how Rowling will end everything.)

We also went to two graduations this weekend, seeing Julie graduate from Skyline High and Miya graduate (as valedictorian and commencement speaker) from Granger High. We're so proud of both of you!

And then to end the week on a good note, I got to borrow the second Fablehaven book that just came out and I've read half of that so far. If you haven't heard of or read these books yet, they're fabulous. The author, Brandon Mull, is LDS and used to be in Divine Comedy at BYU, so the books are funny and creative and a little bit along the HP vein, too, so if you like fantasy, you'll love these books!