Sophie's Blessing Day

I'm a little slow in posting this, since you can see that it happened in August. We missed Ian and Shelbee and their families! It's been three years since we were ALL together. We really need to have a family picture taken, but I'm not sure when that will happen. We don't want to leave anyone out!

Thanksgiving 2010

Rion looks like he's ready to eat! We had lots of food and enjoyed everyone who came. You can see from the background that Rion had a good time playing with everything in Grandma's cupboard.
We didn't do anything really extraordinary, but it's just nice to visit with everyone. You can see from the following pictures that Chris & Brooke, Lars, Alyssha, & Rion, and Tana were here. No one in this family seems to like their picture taken, but pictures are an important record of events, so...................try to change your attitude!


Tana playing on the computer




Jim - Incognito




Chris and Brooke watching a movie (or not)




Lars and Alyssha relaxing on the couch

Jims pepper mix

Terry had her update, now for my handy work. When the cold snap came last week, I picked all the red and green Jalapeños. I made a veggie mix with them. I mixed onions, garlic, carrots, cauliflower, peppers and spices with a Apple Cider vinegar solution to get a preserve out of them. They turned out OK for a first try. I may modify the cook time next try. The peppers are too soft for my taste, but the rest of the mix was OK. It's a safe bet to say, I won't have to fight Terry for them. They are colorful anyway!

I LOVE FALL!

Fall is my favorite season of the year. I think I appreciate nature's beauties then more than any other time, although spring is a close second. I'm looking forward to finishing school so I can make our yard look more beautiful.

Isn't it a commandment to till and take care of the earth? Well........I haven't been doing such a great job lately. However, this tree seems to be doing just fine without my help as you can see. I just thought you would enjoy seeing how beautiful your thoughtful present was becoming.

I was a little disappointed in this tree at first. I expected a maple tree to be more full, but it was rather spindly with small leaves. But every year it fills out more and is becoming a "beautiful swan." It reminds me of how children grow. They all go through the "gangly" stage when they are kind of spindly like the tree, but Heavenly Father works miracles, and we all turn into beautiful adults.

Grandchild #7

I realized today that we haven't blogged about our newest grandchild. Sophie Anne Lott was born April 28, 2010 in Omaha, Nebraska. Jim and I went to visit and help out. I went to Brooke and Dave's house to help with the new baby, and Jim went to Shelbee and Dan's house (2 hours north) to help with some building projects. We both accomplished something (I think) and had a good time. It was nice for me to just get away and have a break from school. Below Rion's pictures are some of my favorite pictures I took while I was playing with baby Sophie.

Rion Tomas Jenson - 7 Months

We had lots of fun with Rion last weekend. Lars, Alyssha, Rion, and Tana came to visit for Memorial Day weekend. These are just a few of the pictures I took. We had fun with Lars, Alyssha, and Tana too.
We watched movies, ate, went on a picnic, ate, visited, ate, did genealogy, ate, etc. Do you think we ate a lot? Well, Tana likes to cook, so when she's home, it seems like we're always eating because she's always cooking. It' great!

All ready for bed

Rion playing in the bathtub

What a handsome boy

Sophie's little feet and Grandpa's big thumbs

Sophie snuggling with Grandpa

Sophie and her mom

Gardening - Did you know?

Did you know that green peppers don't like "Miracle Gro"? According to a gardening expert in our ward, it slows the plant down.

Did you know that inserting toothpicks down into the ground next to the stems of your tomato plants on opposite sides will keep cut worms from killing your plants? They cannot wrap themselves around the plant tight enough to suck the life from it.

Did you know that newly planted vegetables like sugar and Epsom salt? Put a cup of sugar and a half cup Epsom salt around each plant. The sugar will kill the nematodes (whatever they are) and adds sweetness to the tomatoes. The Epsom salt is magnesium, which helps the plants.

Did you know that if you keep a tuna can by each cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, or brussel sprouts plant, as well as at the end of each row, the earwigs will not infest them. Put about 1/2" of cooking oil in each can to catch and kill th earwigs. The older the oil the better. Clean and reuse as needed

Well, that's my gardening wisdom. Actually, a good gardener in our ward gave this advice in a relief society activity about gardening. He says it works for him. We are contemplating planting a few things by our trees that are fenced. Apparently, we are not going to have raised beds in time to plant. So far, I haven't planted any flowers, but my little flowering pear tree has some cute white blossoms as you can see in this picture. It's amazing that it still lives after the deer scraped half the bark off of it!

Well, we woke up to some new snow this morning! 7am, 24 deg. and looks to be about 3 inches on the lawn. Somebody in history was smart enough to color the eggs for a reason!!!!! It's also good camouflage for the Easter bunny, as long as he's a white one! Terry is still snug in bed, so I had to get this on the blog and I forgot to log in on my name. It's going to say posted by Terry, but it really wasn't.

When you were a child, who dyed the Easter eggs in your household? Who hid the eggs? Did you get a new Easter outfit every year?

When I was a child, we had a great time on Easter. We always helped my mom dye the eggs the day before with the usual different cups with different colors. It seems like we used food coloring and vinegar when I was really young, but switched to the pre-made tablets later. We made them colorful like this picture. When we were done, one egg was chosen as the prize egg.

My parents hid the eggs outside (we lived in California) and the prize egg was always hidden in an extra hard-to-find place. Some candy was hidden also, but not much. Whoever found the prize egg actually got a prize (present). It was usually a toy of some kind.

We didn't ever get an Easter outfit that I remember. About the only time we got new clothes was just before school started.

I am tagging Alyssha, Brooke L., and Dave to answer these same questions on their blogs. I'm not sure if that's the right way to tag people, but you get the message.

This was one of our Buddies that came through in the fall. He showed up one evening, on the front sidewalk. He wouldn't stay in one place long enough to put Christmas lights on him. How typical of a Deer to do that! He did stay put long enough to leave a pile of fertilizer for the lawn, but it's all in one spot! We just can't get them trained to SPREAD IT OUT! Bad Deer.

My Landscape Design

I'm taking a landscape design class independent study with a friend. I think I missed my profession in life (maybe). I should have been an architect or something.

Even though this says "Jenson Residence," it isn't really. We were just supposed to put that on the drawing. This isn't a traced drawing either. It's one of the drawings from the textbook that we had to redraw to scale. See all those curvy lines? Those took forever!

I think it turned out pretty cool if I do say so myself. Now I'm working on a "Site Map" of our own house. It's just the basic house with sidewalks, fences, rocks, etc., but no plants. That will come later. Then we have to analyze the property to see what changes need to be made. It will be fun to see how it all turns out. I hope we'll actually be able to improve and add to our yard, although it probably will take a few years. I can't wait to learn about all of the plants and flowers, but that comes after the midterm, which we are beginning to study for now.

MY (JIM'S) turn to post something

This picture was taken in ST. George a couple of years ago. I shot with that group all winter, it was nice down there. No snow, sunshine, and almost Spring like.
This was in Cedar City, at a regular monthly match. "Doc Nelson" is timing me.
This was last summer at the Springville range. We had a "Evil Roy" shoot. We all dressed up like one of our world champions named "Evil Roy". You can guess what he wears I think. The shooter to my left in "Justice Law". He is a friend of mine from Orem. He is also a Police Officer there.
The "Evil Roy" shot again. Here I'm counting for another shooter. The closed fist means he shot "clean" or didn't miss any shots.
This is a Posse picture from our "State Black Powder Shoot" in Price, last summer.


Terry says, I needed to put SOMETHING on our blog. Ya, it's MY turn I guess. So................there it goes. I put some Cowboy Action Shooting pictures on here, that my change her mind about MY turn.

Christmas 2009

Four of our children were home for Christmas this year, and we had a lot of fun. On Christmas Eve, we decorated gingerbread houses, although Jim and I made a gingerbread train. What a mess it all was, but remember how much fun it was to play in the mud? This was almost as good.

On Christmas day we had a baby blessing at our house. Lars blessed his son Rion. It was really nice, and we had a turkey dinner afterwards. Of course, the food was great! It's just too bad Rion wasn't old enough to enjoy it!

The day after Christmas we had a baby shower for Brooke (Jenson) Lott. She isn't due until April, but they were here visiting, so we had the shower. Two of her friends from high school came and stayed the whole time and just visited. It was an open house, so the other people came and went. She got a lot of cute clothes, but we hope it's really a girl because most of the clothes are pink. The ultrasound people said they thought it was a girl, but they also said Rion was a girl when they had their first ultrasound. Brooke also had two other showers in Orem and Salt Lake with Dave's family and friends. This baby is not going to go naked that's for sure!