Bowing Santa

Here's our bowing Santa. He spends all day like this - tired from his evening of standing so still. All the deflated blow up stuff during the day kind of cracks me up. Including our Santa.

The Snowman

This is one of our favorites especially the music.

Just a warning, it is long and haunting.

Christmas Lights

I thought I'd share our Christmas lights. Evan is our creative mind and hard worker. He put the lights up December 1st. He has finally stopped asking if we might buy some more. The blow up Santa was the last purchase. I think we have plenty of lights to last us a long time. We'll see what happens after the holiday though. Evan tells me Greg said he'd take him out to the after Christmas sales. Sounds like Greg needs a little talkin' to.

Lovely Lights Ev! Thank You!
(oh, a little blurry for you? You'd think I was driving by when I took these pictures...there are some close ups later)

Up on the House Top...

It's a deer if you can't tell. His head turns back and forth.

It's a snowman if you can't tell. He just stands there doing nothing but being cheery.

It's a penguin - and I know you can tell. His wings flap up and down, but it is barely perceptible. The penguin is in honor of Ryan's childhood love of penguins.

Can't forget the flowers. No lights but they're pretty anyway.

Maybe tomorrow I'll think to take a picture of Santa taking his day long bow from his long night of standing so happy on our roof.

Thanksgiving

I forgot I'd taken these pictures on Thanksgiving. So - here they are - Thanksgiving November 2008 at the Jensens.

Parker budding photographer.

Mari
Cameron, Clint and Jensen family friend John

Jace and Claire

Greg and Evan (and an interesting gaze from Claire)

Don and friend Shanon

Our gracious hosts Nancy and Scott

A bit of family togetherness

Mark, Claudia and Kelly came later in the day to share dessert. It was a nice day. Great food and wonderful friends and family. We can not ask for more.

It's Raining. It's Pouring.

Had word from Ryan that it is raining kind of hard in Laie. So hard that the bottom floor of his dorm started to flood. Lucky for him, his room is higher up. Too bad for those on the first floor though. And, the testing center is/was closed! Not good anytime but especially the last days of finals. He says no cars are floating away or anything like that, but he and friends did go skim boarding on the grass. He shared some pictures.

The Dorm

Ryan titled this one "Sprinkling"
More Sprinkles

This could be the skim boarding spot, but I'm not sure...

See ya soon Ry! Only two more days! (Ryan comes home Dec. 13, 9:00 pm).

A Trip to the Hygienist

I had a visit to the dental hygienist today. I have volunteered to be one of Claudia's patients. Awesome! Claudia is finishing up her first semester as a dental hygiene student at Cabrillo College. The drive over to Santa Cruz was beautiful. And the campus is so lovely situated, at least from what I could see, it seems an ideal place to go to school. Sitting in the waiting area I noticed the pictures of the graduating classes through the years. What a trip through hair history! Was a crack up. I'm sure you can imagine. The waiting area had various people, waiting for their hygienist to come get them. It was a buzz of excitement. These students ready to try their handy work. Most in the waiting room were friends or family - each for the most part being greeted with an excited hug. It was the happiest waiting room I've ever been in!

Claudia at her station. The gown has her name embroidered on it.

After the exam she rubbed this pink stuff on my teeth. Lovely!
This fabulous tool is going to make all the difference in my new dental hygiene routine!

Thanks for the OHI Claud!

Go Claudia! Go! And that goes for all of my sisters and my niece out there working at their education. Go Julie, Go! Go Sandy, Go! Go Liz, Go! All of you are so close! Keep up the good work. We're excited for all you and your great accomplishments!

Claire's Busy Weekend!

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The Field is White Already to Harvest

Just had to post it even though most of you received

the letter and picture already. Very cool picture.

Elder Whiu and Elder Hardester
Adelaide Australia

D&C 4

1. Now behold, a marvelous work is about to come forth among the children of men.
2. Therefore, O ye that embark in the service of God, see ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day.
3. Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work; 4. For behold the field is white already to harvest; and lo, he that thrusteth in his sickle with his might, the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not, but bringeth salvation to his soul; 5. And faith, hope, charity, and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work. 6. Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence. 7. Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you. Amen.

Animusic

This is really cool!!!

Whatchadoin?

Saturday afternoon, I sat in the car texting Ryan and asked him what he was doing. He said he was on an hour long bus ride to Sandy's Beach. I told him that his dad and I were delivering "Don't forget to Vote" door hanger reminders to homes where voters had said they planned to vote yes on proposition 8. Greg really did all the work, delivering the hangers. I drove the car, followed him to the end of the streets and poked the "holes" out of the door hangers so Greg wouldn't have to do that. It was a very rainy afternoon.

I sent Ryan this cell phone picture.

Ryan sent me this picture.

Wish we could have been there Ry!

The Halloween Cell Phone Pictures

Three cheers for Ryan! He has a cell phone with a memory card so he can publish his pictures. We resent and forwarded etc the pictures of Napoleon Dynamite and Evan as Ryan, so here you go.

EVAN AS RYAN

RYAN AS NAPOLEON DYNAMITE

"Gosh!"

(I'm sure it was said with a quick turn of his head)

Still no "Metamorphosis" picture though. I'll keep trying. I hear the seminary teacher snapped a shot.

A Halloween to Remember

OK, it wasn't really such a different Halloween. But a fun Halloween it was. As always, the decor went up several weeks ago. This is about the extent of it! Well, except we have some fun green and orange lights that we wrap around our topiary privets out front. Sounds fancy huh? Not really, especially since the potted ones on the porch are dying. I'm sure Halloween lights did not do much to help them. Inside, every year, I dress up this little entryway chest. And every year I have to figure out what it was I did last year that I liked - so this year - here's a picture - I liked the set up - I'll never have to try and remember again. I'm a little more into the cuter side of Halloween. Claire as well. In fact, Claire doesn't really like Halloween for the gore, but I think she's starting to enjoy the thrill of a haunted house more and more - kind of.

OUR CUTE DECOR

Claire and friends went out trick or treating as "Metamorphosis" - I'm serious. Two of them were caterpillars, two were butterflies and Claire was a cocoon. I like to say a chrysalis but she says cocoon. How does a person dress like a cocoon? You cut out little colorful circles, tape them to your belly in the form of a caterpillar, then dress yourself in white kitchen garbage bags - where you can see the caterpillar "inside" - you don a cream color snow beanie on your head with a branch/twig sticking out sideways from the top. I am so sad to report that I have NO pictures! And I can not believe these girls did not take any themselves. They take pictures of themselves allllll the time - but none on Halloween? Go figure.


Evan on the other hand, though he didn't take the pictures, was around home so I could think to take a picture of him and his friends. Thank you "red eye" effect - it adds drama to the costumes.

PHANTOM, EXTRA HAND MAN, AND CREEPY SOMETHING GUY

Evan's good friends Johnathan and Brian

What does Evan look like? He reminds me of something - isn't there some South American doll that looks kind of like this get up? Last week, at the ward Halloween party, Evan went as Ryan. He wore this hoodie, it belongs to Ryan. And he wore sun glasses and a black baseball cap. He really did resemble his brother. Since he's wearing the same hoodie, maybe this character is Ryan gone zombie. But the Mickey Mouse hands kind of detract from the zombieness. Really, someone tell me - is there some sort of doll out there that looks like this? And sorry, no picture of Evan gone "Ryan" - only on the cell phone. I don't know how to send those. Can you? Besides to other cell phones?

Over a week ago, we sent Ryan a Halloween package. It included a Napoleon Dynamite wig and glasses. Ryan had asked for a costume so he could go trick or treating at the fancy shops that line Waikiki. Again, unfortunately, no picture except for a cell phone picture of Ryan in his Napoleon garb and the text "gosh!" It was quite a convincing look. But, via IM yesterday, I learned that he had decided to lend the Napoleon get up to one of his friends and he was going to go as Iron Man. Iron Man? "Where did you get an Iron Man costume?" He said he was just going to carry around an iron! We've yet to learn how all of that turned out.

Onto scary things - Claire ventured into a garage haunted house. A monster man popped out and startled her. With her lovely dainty butterfly pillowcase turned candy bag she proceeded to hit the guy. As she looked down to see all the candy that had fallen out of her bag, another monster man came up close to her while the monster she'd hit tapped her on the shoulder. At that point, she screamed and ran for her life - abandoning the precious candy on the garage floor. So - Claire doesn't have very much candy - and two ghoulish guys from the haunted garage are thinking how fun it is to freak out the girl who is so easily freaked out.

And the scariest thing of all...Candles! At least Greg thinks so.

Hope you had a happy Halloween.