Our Adorable Cavachon Pups!

Since my mom seems to have NO time for blogging recently, I will take over (this is Rylee, in case you didn't know that by now). But, she promises to have Thanksgiving and Christmas posts soon. So recently, our dog Quincy had five puppies! They are Cavachons, which is a mix between a Cavalier and a Bichon Frise. There are three girls and two boys, all very healthy and cute. Three of them are white with apricot ears and patches, one of the girls is a tricolor, and the last girl is white with sable ears and bum. The litter was born on December 14 at 2:00-5:45 AM. Mom came upstairs and woke me up at 3:30 and told me the puppies were being born! So that day/night, I STILL went to school that day (because it was almost Christmas break and I couldn't afford to miss any homework). My poor mom stayed up for 48 hours straight, no sleep. We gave each of the puppies Christmas names: Jingle (1st one born), Tinsel (2nd), Chestnut (3rd), Mistletoe (4th), and Olive (5th); but we plan to change them around Valentines Day, which is when they'll be ready to go to their new homes. If you/know anybody that is interested, please let us know!! They are one of the best breeds of dogs ever: they are hypoallergenic, don't shed, don't yap, and they are super mellow and easy to train. It's been really fun raising the puppies over Christmas break and it's been a great experience for all of us as well to be able to take care of and watch the puppies as they grow up.

Ode to a Bunny

We have lost yet another family pet. All I can say is at this rate Quincy should be having nighmares about her end. Maverik the Holland Lop bunny that came into the Jensen household the day after Christmas. Rylee recieved a cute little lop bunny on Christmas morning. Tears of joy and happiness filled the day. Waking up on December 26th with tears of sadness and terror to find little "Carmel" laying stiff in his cage in her room. Well I was not going to have my daughter crying the day after Christmas when there should be nothing but joy and happiness so I got on KSL.com and went about finding the right look a like bunny to soothe the pain. I called a lady who had a bunny for us. Unfortunately she lived 2 hours from us and we had a blizzard that night so the roads were icey and snow packed. It didn't stop my mission and Rylee and I headed out into the snow. Arriving safely with a few scary moments we came to the lady's house to find a rabbit the size of a cocker spaniel in the living room. She fudged a little on the phone forgetting the say that it was not exactly a Holland Lop like I requested in order to get us to fall in love with this GIANT bunny. Rylee looked at me and whispered that this rabbit would never fit in the cage and that she didn't want one this size. I agreed and was so mad that I had risked our life to drive 2 hours with intent of getting the right bunny. I got in the car and called Steve to have him look up more ads and point us in the direction of another bunny. Luckily we found a guy that happened to be on the way home with a bunny for us. That was how we got Maverik the bunny. He was a really good bunny and our kids had a great experience having a bunny and everyone participated in his care. Our family is sad to loose another beloved pet. My children have learned a lot of lessons about love, loss and life having pets in our home.

Trick or Treat

Okay so it rained and poured on Halloween. That didn't stop the Jensen's from scoring bags of candy on the 30th. Thats right folks here in Utah Halloween falls on Saturday. Thank goodness the ward has a trunk or treat so that we could get the kids satisfied with pounds of candy in about 20 minutes. We were then off to Grandma Jensen's for chili and breaksticks. As you can see from the pictures we had a variety of costumes. Parker the deadly ninja, Cooper the classic nerd, Charlie the cowboy, I went as a boring mom with a rerun witches hat. Rylee was a gangsta (costume provided by cousin Brad using his real clothes..hahaha) and then I got a text from Brad before he headed to a college costume party as Antoine Dodson from the famous YouTube video, Bedroom intruder. For those who have not seen this please go check it out. You must see the original news cast version first before the song that was made out of it. Needless to say that Bedroom Intruder song is now Brad's ringtone on my phone.

Pumpkin Painting with the Jensen Gang

Every year we have a family BBQ and paint pumpkins provided by Grandpa and Grandma Jensen. Its just a fun activity to look forward to and we always have fun seeing the creations. Charlie always seems to start out with a nice face on his pumpkin, but his earge to keep painting ends up with a brown goopy pumpkin with layers of paint. Rylee wanted to be a little artist this year and just draw a cartoon on hers. Cooper and Parker gutted and carved theirs. Boys just like to be sticky I decided.

Let's get our FREAK on!

For the month of September and October my brother and sister in law own and run a professional haunted house in Salt Lake City called Nightmare Mansion. I came down to help take tickets, which was a crazy busy job. Jill told me to bring the kids down to act in the show for a couple weekends during the busiest time in October. Rylee was so excited. We had to get down there early like 5:30pm and ended up getting home at 2:30am. We took a few of Rylee's friends and a couple of mine down to experience the madness. Holden (the burned victim in the the straight jacket) said it was intense and felt a little crazy after acting crazy in a padded cell for 5 hours. I felt bad for him but not as bad as I felt for Rylee after it took 2 hours to clean and comb through her clown hair. When I saw her in full clown makeup, her REAL hair ratted till it felt like cotton candy, I knew we wouldn't just go home and crash. Her favorite night was the night she was a mourner in a funeral room. She was crying over her dead father in a grave and yelled at people and once lay still against the wall, and one man came up and said "I think its fake" right when he was about to touch her she opened her eyes and yelled "Don't touch me!" Cooper was a white ghost kid in a maze of white sheets. As people tried to make their way through he would walk past and look them in the eyes and then disappear into the sheets, definately unnerving. The last night Rylee wanted to be in a scarier room so they put her in a body bag room and gave her a hand saw and a fake bloody arm. Rylee said it was the scariest night of her life. She thought to herself, " Here I am in a room with body bags with a fake arm and a saw...... one girl came in and Rylee banged the hand against a barrel, the girl screamed so loud and freaked out that she scared Rylee more than Rylee scared her. However, the die hard that Rylee is she still wanted more after that night but I was too tired to do another weekend. I guess Im getting old and boring.

Logging in Christmas Meadows

We are on another adventure at the urging of friends to enjoy an outing in the mountains. We drove to Wyoming on a Saturday morning in early October to cut trees to log for firewood for Grandpa DeLong. We also brought along a 22 for a little target practice. This kind of activity for some reason gets kids all excited. I have never seen such anxious kids to carry logs half their body weight. Even baby James looked every part the lumberjack. I may have posed with the chainsaw butI left that manly activity to Sam and Joe. We loaded a pickup truck and a horse trailer with all the logs that we carefully measured and Steve stacked all the wood. Sam's sister Michelle came with her two girls and we all enjoyed a lovely picnic of sandwiches that Sam's mom packed with brownies and other treats. Overall, perfect weather, perfect friends, hard work and a great lunch. The Jensen's could not have had a better time.

I Love to See the Temple

We had a very special family home evening and we went to the Ogden Temple. We talked about how scared temples are and how it is important to make it a goal to go inside someday. As many of you know this historic temple will be getting a complete make-over next year. They will be closing it down for two years to build a brand new temple in its place. We wanted to also have our kids remember how old they were and to have pictures taken around the temple so we could remember how and what the Ogden Utah Temple means to us. I love this picture of Steve and I and I am so grateful to be married to him for time and all eternity. We are grateful that we have a forever family and that we will be together through the eternities.