Maddie's Baptism in Utah

We went down to Springville in early May for my niece Maddie's baptism. In the LDS church, children can be baptized at the age of 8. Maddie is such a sweet girl and we were so glad we got to spend time with her and celebrate her special day.

 My sister Janelle and her family just before the baptism

 The 3 cousins that were recently baptized - Tessia, Maddie, and Sadie

A girlie hair-do train as we got ready for the baptism 

 All the members of my family that were able to be at the baptism:
My parents, the 3 sisters and their families, and an Auntie from each side of the family.

Later that same day...we headed to the Payson Temple Open House. Whenever a new temple opens, they have an Open House for anyone to come and tour the temple. My kids had never been inside a temple before, so they were really excited. It was a great experience. The temple was beautiful and had such a calm and peaceful spirit about it. I'm so glad we made time for this in our trip.

I love this picture. It was quite hot and the kids were desperately trying to cool off.

Luckily no one fell in. Although that would have made for a great picture too.

 A picture of my 4 Kiddos on the temple grounds

I really love this one too

After the temple Open House we headed to a park in Spanish Fork for some pizza and play time. It was great to unwind and let the kids run free after our busy and "stay dressed in church clothes" day.

Colby's goal is to scare his mother by his uncanny ability to climb to the top of everything

Renae loves playing with babies

Sadie has her best buddy Pops pushing her in the swing

Mason and Uncle Brad had an impromptu 2 liter bottle battle

This little baby cracks me up. She is fearless and CRAZY!! Love her.

Me and my 2 sisters -- I love them so much

Sadie may be in the foreground of this picture...but it isn't about her

Look in the cars. Each car has the dad in it. Waiting on the womenfolk. Reading a book.

A common sight in this family.

On Sunday on our way out of town, we stopped at my Grandma and Grandpa Jensen's house. We had a wonderful visit with my grandparents. My Grandma Jensen is 90. She is blind and her health is failing. While we were there, she was awake, aware, and even had a great sense of humor. It was a such a blessing for my kids to get to talk and interact with her. My Grandpa Jensen has been keeping busy by painting murals in his backyard of places he has been. He has been EVERYWHERE. Literally. Each of the kids posed by one of their favorites. They are really quite impressive!!

Renae by Hawaii

Mason by Chile and Alaska

Sadie by Samoa

Colby by Switzerland

Patriotic Program and Mother's Day

I think I'm giving up on this blog being "in order" for the time being. I'm just throwing together the posts as they come to me...I can rearrange them chronologically later, right?


Near the end of April, Sadie's 2nd grade class put on a Patriotic Program for the parents. It was so well done. They all had a speaking part and sang about 10 Patriotic songs. They even learned all the words to the Preamble of the Constitution. I was impressed.

 Singing her heart out

 Giving her memorized part

*       *        *

Mother's Day was a lovely day spent with my family. Eric and the kids cooked me an amazing breakfast and dinner. Honestly, any meal that I don't have to cook is amazing...but this really was fantastic.

My girls gave me a mani/pedi spa party. Look at our fancy nails!

Then Renae did an impromptu group/selfie Photo Shoot. There were dozens of pictures. But these were two that I thought turned out cute. Quite the artistic Selfie shooter, eh?

Birthday Boys

April is a Double-Hitter when it comes to birthdays in our family. Colby turned 10 and Mason turned 15. Both big milestones. It was Colby's year to have a friend party. Sadly, I wasn't able to bribe him out of it. But thanks to Pinterest we pulled off a pretty fun, easy, and relatively inexpensive Lego party. 

 Lego Brick doors were one of the great ideas I copied

 A fun group of boys enjoying their ice cream sundae bar and Lego cupcakes

 One game they did was a build your own vehicle competition. 

Each team built a vehicle and then raced them down a ramp to see which would go farther. 

It quickly escalated to who could launch theirs farther off the deck. It was a lot of fun.

Mason's birthday was a couple days later. We just had a quiet night with family. Mason hates having his picture taken...but sometimes you just have to hold them down and document that they still exist.

We did Pizzookie (pizza cookie topped with ice cream) for the boys Family Birthday Celebration.

The boys insisted on getting 25 candles on here. One for each year of their lives. 

 It looks like a small campfire!!! 

Happy Birthday to my sons. 

I love them so much and I'm so happy to have them in our family.

Sadie's Baptism

Wow, I am really losing my mind. Somehow I missed this post. A major event for our family was Sadie's Baptism in February. When Sadie turned 8, she chose to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was a very special day and we were so blessed to have many family members and friends to help us celebrate.

     Sadie and her daddy all in white

The girls in Sadie's Primary Class sang at her baptism

Ashley -- Charlotte -- Sadie -- Jada -- Katherine

These 3 Cameron cousins all turn 8 this year

Kendal -- Sadie -- Abby

Sadie and her Williams side cousin who turns 8 this year too

Maddie -- Sadie

Grannie and Pops (my parents) came up for the occasion

Sadie with us -- her parents

We had a good representation from both sides of the family.

Thank you to all of you who came to share our special day

And last but not least....a family portrait

Eric is usually our "problem child" -- either not smiling or making a goofy face. 

Another highlight for the weekend was swimming at Grannie and Pops hotel pool

Special thanks to Debbie and Janelle for being the photographers for most of these pictures

Upgrades

We finally did it. We bought a car from the 21st Century. Eric had fixed and patched and re-fixed our 98 Astro Van for the past 10 years. It was a great car and we have taken it on many happy adventures. But it was time to say Good-bye. We had intended to get a cross-over car like a Chevy Traverse or a Honda Pilot...but we made the mistake of taking our kids car shopping with us. You just can't beat the minivan for leg room and storage space. And when one of your kids is 6 ft...that really matters. So we are still a minivan family. Sigh. I was a little disappointed at first, but really it has been great. We settled on a 2008 Dodge Caravan and we absolutely love it...except for the color. Look in a parking lot, any parking lot, and you will see a dozen white minivans. Both Mason and Renae have already made the mistake of getting in to a stranger's minivan after school. Uggghhhhh.

We added these to the back window to help set our car apart from others. Fun...but we still need to figure out something for the front and side views to help us see our car better.

The kids favorite bell/whistle is the swivel seating. Although it quickly became apparent that not everyone liked traveling backward and not everyone was easy going about sharing their leg room with the person across from them. But still a cool feature. There is also a table that can pop up in the middle for eating or game playing. 

So Eric finished our lovely deck last summer. We have been meaning to get some seating out there for ever...but it just didn't happen.

The kids got resourceful at coming up with their own seating arrangements.This works...but took a fair amount of masking tape to keep the umbrella up.

Here was our first dinner on the deck with our new furniture...not even fully unwrapped. But we were so anxious to eat on our deck that we didn't care.

The next day...THE NEXT DAY...it snowed heavily. Ahhhhhh, and we thought winter was over.

The final product with the seat cushions and umbrella in place. We love it. It is like adding a new dining room to the house. We eat out here just about every night unless it is raining, windy, or cold (which it has unfortunately been almost every night the past 2 weeks.)