Jensen Family Reunion

Every two years we have our Jensen Family Reunion. This is my mom's side of the family. It's always fun to get together and catch up on what everyone is doing. This year it was held at Mutual Dell up American Fork Canyon. It's a fun place with lots of things to do.

We started out the day by going to the Timpanogos Cave Jr. Rangers program with Kaylee, Kadin and Rachel. We learned all about Reptiles. We got to see all different species of snakes. We also got to see this rattlesnake. I would definitely not like to run into one of these.

We also saw this Gila monster. Very cool.
We then headed up to Mutual Day to spend the rest of the day hanging out with family.
They had all sorts of activities for the kids to do. We spent a lot of time going down the big blow up slide. The kids loved it!
Kadin and Kaylee also went down the zip line.

Everyone then got a chance to search through the saw dust pile for candy and money. They divided us up by ages so all of the younger kids wouldn't steal our prizes, or maybe the other way around. I won a bunch of candy and a dollar bill! It was an absolute mad house!
By the end of the day we were all exhausted!
This year I was able to get to know a lot more of my cousins and their spouses. I had a lot of fun hanging out with them and seeing all the fun things the kids got to do. Here's a picture of my mom and her family. She was the only girl and had 5 brothers! It's great that they were all able to make it to the reunion. We had a lot of fun and we will see you all in 2 years!

Our first award!

Thank you to Megan who gave us our first blog award. How exciting for us! It has taken us awhile but we wanted to pass it on. Here are the lucky winners:

Cory and Jessica : "cutest Brady award"- for posting cute pictures of Brady and keeping us updated. (sorry if your child is named Brady and you did not win this award)

Tom : "best support for cookies and milk award" - for always making funny comments on our blog and for his great movie reviews.

Doug and Rochelle for "best family pics and videos award" - it's almost like you guys are professionals or something! (seriously though, check out how great their pics are!)

Matthew and Brooke: "the best anti-Ute blog award" - I don't know if Andrew would actually call this a good thing.

I wanted to give an award to all the blogs we read, but Andrew said that would be Communism. So to all of you that didn't get an official award please don't be offended! (unless you're a Communist). We love all of your blogs (except for the Communist ones -- go USA!).

And please remember to pass it on, or something. I'm not sure if this is one of those "pass it on or face the possibility of being bitten by a small monkey" things, but you never know.

Days of 47!

Last year I was very confused when the 24th of July was not celebrated in California. Growing up in Utah I forgot that it is a state holiday. So this year it was great to actually be in Utah for the 24th of July. It made it actually feel like a holiday! Andrew and I went with my family to the Days of 47 Rodeo. It was a lot of fun.


Here I am with my two little cowgirls Kaylee and Rachel. Rachel loved the horses and the cows.


Andrew wasn't very happy about putting on the hat for the picture, but he was a good sport.

Here is the bucking horses. The only events that I don't like are the ones with the small cows. I think it's sad that they tie them up and pull them on the ground. (but don't worry I'm not going to stand outside the rodeo grounds and protest.)

After the rodeo we went to dinner at Spaghetti Mamas. This was one of our favorite places to eat in Utah. The food was absolutely delicious. I think this picture of Rachel says it all.


We then went and watched fireworks at Kevin and Heather's. It was a great show!






My dad was also in the Spanish Fork parade that morning. He drove his restored 1944 Willys Jeep. Super cool!

Sounds fishy to me

I love a good pedicure, but I don't think I would dare try this ...

You can read the whole story by clicking here.

Completely exhausted!

I just spent 40 of the last 72 hours at a swim meet. I am completely exhausted. My feet hurt from standing all day long, my head is spinning from all the noise, my arms ache from waving on the swimmers, my throat is sore from cheering, and my nose is beet red from the sunburn. The days ranged from freezing cold to sweltering hot. I feel completely disconnected from the world and I have a bazillion emails in my inbox.

But ... I couldn't be happier with how well my swimmers did! As tired as I am I know they must be wiped out from swimming all weekend. They all did incredibly well and I even had a few swimmers make their qualifying times. I am so proud of them all!

Now ... I have 5 weeks of vacation! What am I going to do with myself?

Rose Bowl Dodger Night

Last week my work had Dodger night. I was able to get a free ticket for me and then a pretty cheap one for Andrew to go to the game and sit in the "all you can eat" pavillion. Neither of us are Dodger fans, but Andrew loves baseball, and I love to eat food at baseball games, so we thought it would be a pretty fun night.

Here we are at the game. Our seats were way out in left field. I didn't like that as much because we were far enough away from the game that I kept getting distracted and not paying attention. But I tried to focus and figure out what was going on.
If you have never sat in the all you can eat section at a baseball game, you should definitely try it someday. You get all you can eat hotdogs, nachos, peanuts, popcorn and drinks. We wanted to get our moneys worth, but not eat too much. I think we did pretty good. We both had two hot dogs and then shared two nachos and two bags of peanuts. We also decided to fill up my purse with as much bottled water and peanuts as we could take home with us. I was worried that they would be checking our bags before we left to make sure that people didn't do things like that, but we were safe.
We definitely got our moneys worth!

Catching up: The Jarvis' come to California

I am still trying to catch up on all my blog posts. Maybe someday I will be up to date. Last month some of the Jarvis family came out to visit for a cousin's wedding. Hillary and JJ came out a few days early so we were able to hang out with them for awhile. It was fun to have someone around to go and do things with.

We spent an afternoon at the beach. JJ loved the sand but wasn't so sure about the water. I love his face in this picture!
We also went and hung out at the arboretum. I had never been there before and didn't realize how big it is! I think our favorite part was the ducks!

We then went to Disneyland for a day! Here is the traditional photo out front. If you look close enough you can see that JJ is looking the other direction. I think he is checking out tinkerbell in the background!

Because it was so close to our anniversary, Andrew and I decided we would officially celebrate our anniversary there. They gave us these super cute buttons to wear all day long that had a picture of Mickey and Minnie and they said "Happy Anniversary!" It was fun to hear all the workers congratulate us, except for the guy outside the Haunted Mansion who said "My condolences." Andrew was a trooper for agreeing to wear the cute pin all day!
This picture is proof that Joe actually was happy to go to Disneyland!

With some smooth talking by Andrew we were able to go eat at the Blue Bayou restaurant. That is the one inside the Pirates of the Carribean ride. I was able to order my favorite thing, Macaroni and Cheese off the kids menu (thanks JJ!) It was delicious.
We also got a delicious chocolate mousse to celebrate our anniversary.
Nothing makes Andrew happier than eating one of the big pickles at theme parks.
As always, it was a great day at Disneyland. We all had a really fun time. JJ was running a fever that day so he was pretty worn out. Poor little guy!
Andrew's cousin got married on Saturday in the LA Temple. It was an absolutely beautiful day. Here we are outside with Hillary and JJ.
Whenever we go out to the Temple we always try and stop by Diddy Riese. If you have never been there you are definitely missing out. It is this little place that sells the best homemade cookie ice cream sandwiches. You get to choose from all these different flavored cookies and then pick an ice cream to go in the middle. They are huge, delicious and only cost $1.50!

I get so excited whenever I get to eat at Diddy Riese!

We were sad when everyone had to go home the next day. We had a lot of fun and hope everyone comes to visit again soon!

A review of Jumping, by Andrew

Diane and I went down to the local Blockbuster this week and got ourselves the Movie Jumper. I had mixed feelings about this movie for a couple of reasons:

1. Hayden Christensen. He turned Darth Vader from this to this. He could save me from a burning building and I would still think "You made Vader into a sissy boy, how dare you."
2. Rachel Bilson. I've been known to see a few movies just for the cute female lead. Only a few (unless you count all of high school, college and .... well...)
3. Movies about people with incredible powers always seem to overlook obvious issues. It's like the people with great powers are really stupid or something.

Personally if Diane would let, I'd just watch Bourne Identity over and over again, and when we got tired of that (someone can get tired of that?), we'd chill with Danny Ocean and the gang. But since Diane insists on trying new things, we sat back with a bag of smarties, a 3 pound bag of gummies (hopefully our new dentist reads this blog, and I'd like to give a shout out to Dr. Hig, who just cringed at the thought of me chewing gummi bears) and enjoyed the movie.

It really was pretty good. Not amazing, but a solid movie. It was short. Which is one reason why I thought it was good. If you don't have the plot or enough good ideas to fill 2.5+ hours...DON'T. Just let it be an hour and a half or so, and leave the useless parts out. The premise behind the movie is that Lord Wuss, er..., Hayden's character somehow has the ability to jump from place to place. He has an awful childhood: mother left when he was 5, dad is a jerk, gets picked on by a chubby and poorly dressed kid at school, he is awkward with the ladies and finally he lives in Ann Arbor (watch out for a Ute invasion!!!) which, although I have yet to visit, ranks somewhere on my scale of slightly better than Siberia (oh yeah and he's kinda dumb, or at least a poor student). He falls in the ice trying to retrieve something that the chubby kid threw on the ice. Being a poor student he doesn't realize that ice is not has hard as concrete and that the water beneath the ice is cold. He falls in and is swept away to his certain death until...wormhole (by the Tom, this is how I view you spending your days, only with a biology twist). That's a jumper. Anywhere they see, they can jump. Just need a picture or a visual. So he leaves home and jumps from place to place. Inside bank vaults (which don't have cameras, nor do they track money very well), the top of the pyramids (gee I can jump anywhere in the world, let me set up a chair and eat lunch IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT, not that I don't want to see the pyramids, I just don't think I'd eat a sandwich there), and to pick up attractive girls in British pubs. All the while, he has to avoid a group of people led my Samuel L Jackson (who was in Star Wars as well, and probably just wanted to do any movie where he could "accidentally" punch Hayden in the face for ruining Star Wars) that are out to kill Jumpers. 3 Issues in closing:

1. Doesn't Hayden realize that when he teleports in and out of places that there are cameras... lots of them?
2. He pays for everything in cash apparently...including rent and everything he buys...
3. Jumpers are caught and killed by Samuel L Jackson's group using electricity, which prevents jumpers from, well, jumping...but jumpers have been hunted since the dark ages...if I my only weakness was high voltage, and I got killed in 1454...apparently Hayden wasn't the only high school drop out of the jumpers.

Anyways. Solid Movie....ENJOY!

*NOTE*

The special features had the usual part about the making of the movie. The director, who also made one of the Bourne movies and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, made the comment: "I didn't want to make a special effects movie. If I could cast someone who could actually teleport, I would." I'm stunned by this comment. One, doesn't that go without saying? Wouldn't Spielberg have cast real dinosaurs or a real shark, if he could be sure that both were real (a great white that big and crazy, anyways) and would not eat the actors. Or wouldn't Lucas have cast a real Jedi instead of Nancy Hayden? That seems like the stupist thing ever! Let's see, I could pay this one dude a million dollars to do all the jumping scenes, or 20 million in special effects...hmmmm. Two, if there were real jumpers wouldn't that make this movie really lame? Part of what made it "cool" was it was about this amazing ability. That would be like actually having real Spidermen in the world, and making Spiderman. What's the intrigue? It would have to turn into a plot movie rather than an action/sci fi movie...lame.

The Dentist

I went to the Dentist today. There are a few of you that will realize the impact of that statement. But for those of you who don't you must know that I have not nor will I ever like going to the dentist. Ever since I was the age of three I have had horrible experiences at the dentist. I have always had really bad teeth due to soft enamel or something crazy like that. I always went to the dentist regularly and I always took care of my teeth, but it never failed that there always had to be major work done each visit there. Growing up we lived fairly close to our dentist's office. We would often drive by there on our way to different places. I hated the dentist's office so badly that whenever we would drive by I would duck down and try to get on the floor of the car until we were past. (except when my dad thought it was funny to stop out front and tell me we actually already had past.) I have many memories of them having to call in extra assistants just to hold my arms and legs down as they filled my cavities. I look at it as child abuse, but they called it dentistry. Of course I always got to choose a prize out of the treasure box before I left, but that didn't make it any better. I remember one of the worst days was when they would no longer allow my mom to come back in the room with me. (And if my mom would have been in town today I would have requested that she come along.) I'm sure she loved sitting in the waiting room listening to my fits of anger. I also remember when I was about 16 years old and the dental assistant yelled, yes yelled, at me because the "8 year old boy who was just in here was acting a lot more brave" than I was. I didn't care, I didn't like being there. Don't get me wrong, I had a great dentist. He was a great person, he just chose a horrible profession. He was nice, although he always liked to ask me questions just as he stuck his hands in my mouth. I always wondered if he actually understood the answers that I tried to give him or if he would just smile and nod anyway. I just don't know what there is to enjoy about going to the dentist. Their offices always smell badly, there is a constant drilling sound in the background, and I still don't know why I always have to answer if I have ever taken the medication phen-phen. (and no I haven't.)

After Andrew and I got married I just never got around to making a dentist appointment. I would always think about it just as the insurance we were on was about to end. So I conveniently kept putting off going to the dentist. Well I knew we finally had to do it sometime so I got a recommendation from a friend and made an appointment. And in case you were wondering, I had a perfect check-up today. I knew three years wasn't too long to wait in between visits! Overall I was pretty impressed with the dentist. They have a lot of new technology that I hadn't ever seen before. They took a million x-rays but they were all put up digitally on the screen. Everything was over pretty quickly. I only saw the actual dentist for about 5 minutes, but I think I definitely prefer it that way. I do have to admit that even though I dislike going to the dentist, I do love the way that my teeth feel when I leave!

I found this great cartoon that definitely expresses my feelings:

Do you like to go to the dentist?

(sorry Cory, no offense intended ... I'm sure that you will be a great dentist.)

A trip to Utah!

Last month we went to Utah for Caitlin's wedding (Andrew's sister). While we were there we tried to cram in a few other activities with family and friends. It was a very busy few days but we had a great time!

The wedding dinner was held at the Market Street Grill. The food was delicious. Especially the chocolate cake. Here we are with Grandparents Wanlass and the Woods. It was definitely the most interesting wedding dinner I've ever been to!

The next morning was the wedding ceremony held in the Jarvis' beautiful backyard.

Here's the whole Jarvis family. They have had 4 children get married in the last 3 years!
We got to hang out with our nephew JJ while we were there. He really likes Andrew!

The reception that night was at the Point. It was a beautiful location. I really liked the cake, which was a cupcake cake. Delicious! They also had really good food and an ice cream cart. It was a lot of fun.


While we were in Utah Andrew wanted to find a 5K to run. He also talked his sister Ree into doing it with them. We went and watched them race on Saturday morning. They both did a great job!
I got to go to Kadin and Kaylee's swimming lessons with them. It's so fun to watch them as they learn to swim.
We also got to spend quite a bit of time with the Johnson family. We celebrated Father's Day, my birthday and Andrew's birthday all at the same time. Heather made delicious strawberry ice cream!

It was a great trip and we were excited to see everyone. Hopefully we will make it out there again soon!