Christmas photo

We had to promise these girls a spot in our photo to get

them to come and spend time with us at Christmas. It was worth the sacrifice!

Aahhh, just us girls.


Our little Christmas bunch.

Little Christmas Visitors

We had some adorable little visitors for Christmas. We welcomed Maddie, Jaren, Tanner and Taelyn with open arms and hearts! They kept the place hoppin'!

Little Christmas House

Here is our Little Christmas House in the Big Woods

No more Wisdom Teeth for Kimi

Kimi had her Wisdom teeth yanked out by Dr. Petersen on Wednesday.

Last night she was up for going to little Zack and Max Pond's birthday party with me, although she was a little "out of it".

But today she has been suffering a little more. Poor thing. She's not too miserable to text though! I know she would love some condolences :) Doesn't she just look so pitiful?

Finally! Just a little from Thanksgiving.

It was great to be with 4 daughters and their families. Being together is my favorite thing with my favorite people!

Annettie! Thank you for coming so far!






Christinie the beautiful hostess and her lovely little Missy

Jen and Kimi with help from Jazz

Jen and Kimi trying to be beautifuler. (it took them 6 tries...)

Me and the lovely Natalie

Kimi preparing for her super awesome board-breaking feat!

(and a peek from Tae)

Maddie... Like mother, like daughter...

Sophie feasting on her chocolate pilgrim

Dad and his new little buddy, Mandie

Some happy, scowling and puzzled faces of a few participants.

And last of all, the grown-ups of the gathering plus Sophie.

I'm so happy we could all be together! Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!

Christine's preparation and everyone chipping in to help, made it quite fun. I wonder who will be hosting next year.....

Christmas Tree

Skittles helped Dad and I set up the Christmas tree :)

The tree in it's final Glory

Just another Sunday morning....

This morning in the newpaper there is an article about Prop 102 (Marriage only between a man and a woman), (which DID pass, by the way - thank goodness!) and those who gave money in support of it. The reason it is in the paper is because the newspeople got the list from the government of who gave how much money and they want to let the city know who they are. The total from our city was about $350,000. (that's huge) Our stake president, Mark Frost, had met with specific couples he thought of and asked them if they would give generously to this cause by way of request from the prophet. Each decided on their own how much to give. Then this past week he gave an interview with the paper so he could answer their questions and they would quit bothering others who weren't really comfortable with defending the whole church for it's huge involvement in the work to pass the Proposition. We have been concerned about the article and worried that it would somehow make the church or people seem stupid or wrong or something because the paper has a very liberal editor and newsroom in general. Well the article came out this morning on the front page and was a very good and well done article. Whew! It had a nice quote from Pres. Frost about marriage and making families and such. I would quote some of it but Don took it to his stake meetings this morning. It also quoted another preacher in town in favor of the prop so that was good too. Then it said that the opposition raised a whopping $1,338 here in Flag for their side. hmmm. Most of that came from a fund raiser.
Now for a funny ending. After Don left for his meetings this morning he called and asked me to check if he really closed the garage door. It's so natural to do it that he doesn't remember doing it sometimes. And he also teased I make sure the front door was locked just in case someone put something on the porch. I teased back that I would put on my asbestos suit. And he said "Well, it's Sunday so we should always wear our "as-BEST-os" clothes. Hahahaha. He's so punny!

OK. How do you do this?

Hmmm, this is probably all of me you will see.
You said 1/2 face photo, right?

"My One Beauty"

Someone photoshop some more bangs in for me.

Why do I fix my hair like that?

Wierdo.

This is SO fun.

WHAT did you SAY?????

Will I ever get it??? Last night at my sign language class we had two visitors. One was deaf and the other is not but signs very well and I thought he was deaf. My problem was that I had SUCH a hard time getting what they were saying!!! AAArrggghhh!! It was SO frustrating! They each introduced themselves giving a little background and what they do now. I felt like I couldn't get any of it and I felt embarrassed just sitting there with the rest of the class watching them. I have even talked to the woman before and should have been a little familiar with what she was saying. Well I guess I actually was and did get lots of her info but missed so much still. And then I didn't even get that the man was NOT deaf! So I asked, How long have you been deaf? Who? Me? I 'm not deaf> What???? My teacher clarified for me. I just hope that someone else didn't know that either. The people are both tutors. I think I need to go meet with him and try to figure out what all that stuff was that he said. I do need to do outside class chatting with deaf people so this one's for me. Here I come. Probably another thing that I HOPE will help is if I make time to watch at least half an hour of the sign language videos each day. Maybe it will eventually click in.

Out of Africa!

On October 25th Jana and Emma came up and met us at Out of Africa, about halfway between our towns. It is out in the desert with fences keeping the animals in very large spaces. There is a tram to take us to see some of the animals and then we hop on a bus with open windows to take us to see the zebra and giraffes and other animals which we can feed with carrots or special biscuits. We also watched a show with 2 small bears who ran around chasing a guy who would jump in a pool to get them to jump in and then they would play and splash each other. It was really cute. So cute in fact that I totally forgot to take any photos of them. But here are a few pics of the rest of the fun day.


The Zebras come right up to the bus but the driver told us they bite so why is someone trying to feed them by hand????

Emma is feeding this Giraffe. Too bad I didn't get the pic from the side...

Eeewwww! Thier tongues are 18 inches long!!!

Emma loved the Lemurs. There were quite a few of them and she started singing "I like to move it, move it. I like to move it move it." and dancing along the road to them when she saw them!

Here Jana is petting the miniature lioness up on her perch. (not really. I'm just a great photographer!)

Maybe this is when we heard a very angry lion roaring VERY loudly over and over again until the people went away from his fence.

Emma talking to a Hyena. Do you know they Moo? They only 'laugh' when they are hunting.

Mr. Hyena again.

My personal favorite, the Tiger. He was just pacing back and forth by this fence.

So that was the day. We all enjoyed it very much and the weather even cooperated. It was beautiful.

Monster Fun

Our Resident Monsters I found them lurking in the dollar section at Target and just had to bring them home. Aren't they just the cutest? They make us Happy !

A few travel pics

Someday I will learn how to put pictures where I want them.....

Conference Countdown

We had a great time traveling up to conference last weekend. First we met Christine in St. George and we went with her to the Tuacahn outdoor theater to see Les Miserables. It was fantastic! Definately Broadway quality (and I have been to Broadway so I can say that!) . The actors and their voices were fabulous, the weather was perfect and we had good seats and now I need the sound track.
After that we traveled on up to Christine's and quickly went to sleep. In the morning she kept the kids home an extra half hour to visit with us and took them to school herself instead of the riding the bus. They are chatterboxes in the mornings; it was fun. they had a lot to tell us about. And Mandie was Very friendly (it's good when your grandchildren like you). Poor Jason was feeling miserable and couldn't visit with us.
Then we headed on up to Logan to visit Kimi and Cherise&Bryce's homes and Utah State. We got lost on the way (I was sleeping and Dad was phoning) but luckily Cherise was able to head us in the right direction without our having to turn around (thanks Cherise!). What a beautiful place that is! It reminds us of Cedar City with old homes and tree lined streets. We first visited Cherise in her lovely and fragrant basement apartment which is very cutely decorated. I'm glad we had a chance because they may be moving out into a newer place very soon. We enjoyed seeing Kimi's dorm and her new computer - Dad wants one now. And she showed us the museum where someday a display she works on will be displayed. And Cherise showed us her art building where she does her work and becomes more brilliant. AND we ate in the Marketplace where Kimi does most of her eating and drank the most delicious chocolate milk which she is lucky enough to be able to drink every day. mmm mmm mmm.
Let's see... then we drove on down to SLC and took Kimi with us. We dropped her off near the temple to hug some hispanic guy she saw waiting across the street. (I think she likes him...). Soon thereafter we arrived at Jennifer's house where we slept in the lovely guest room and were awakened by strange children lurking in our room in the morning. Heh heh just kidding. They weren't strange! They were adorable and huggable. We had a nice morning watching conference and then headed in to the city to be at the afternoon session. A wonderful young woman from Argentina sat next to me. It was her first time there and she was overcome with emotion even before Elder Holland told the story of the boy on his horse in the river. After the meeting we invited her to view the gardens on the rooftopm with us be then she realized she had to meet her ride and would have time but was happy we had invited her. Then Dad and I found out that we couldn't go up there anyway for security purposes. rats. So we drove back to Jen's and picked up Jasper so he and Dad could go to priesthood mtg at the conference center. While they were gone Jen and Kimi gave Cherise that great haircut she showed off on her blog which I would hyperlink here if I knew how to do it.
Anyway, then the next morning Jen fed us a yummy breakfast and we stayed and watched Conf. on TV and enjoyed the family. It was nice to do that instead of going so early up to the conference center and all that rush. We headed on back Arizona way around 1 p.m. We arrived at Christines and she and the kids fed us a lovely dinner which really hit the spot. We just hung around long enough for the kids to get used to us and move on to inspecting the box of Halloween glow-in-the dark fangs and other scary things she had brought out to have fun with. Sadly, Jason was still feeling crappy and couldn't join us. Hopefully time will help him recover and join the world again soon and get strong and healthy. We miss having him around to visit. Finally, the trip home without whining kids (or E&M to argue {remember the trip to Denver??}) was pretty boring. But we did listen to an interesting CD named "What's On The Other Side?" about what the scriptures and other people teach us about life after death. Very interesting. And we drove over Cedar Mountain and enjoyed thoroughly the beauties of the world. Some of the vistas are just SO beautiful! It's truly amazing. And then Home again, Home again, Jiggety Jog! 10:00p.m. and the Kitties are fine.

36°

It is 36° here this evening. BRrrrrrrrrrrr~~~~~~~ We love it! Brown pine needles have blown off the trees and they land standing up in the grass. The front lawn is covered with them. They will fill at least two dozen trash bags. I'm so glad to have Don around to do all the dirty work of stuffing them in. He's pretty helpful that way. The petunias are still blooming and look lovely in the autumn yard. The kitties like to go out and sniff the air and come back in. They forget they are animals and come in to laze around in their catbeds on the backs of the front room couches. they love to be up high and think they own the front room. Which they do unless we have company coming. Then they are banished to watch us from outside the back door and whine to come in.

Pre-School Time!

Time to learn about Firefighters!


As you can see, I need more practice using Nikki Nikon when the kids are involved. Anyway, Here are three of our preschoolers. Sofia, and Cody in blue - his language is Sign because his parents
are both deaf too. Hunter is with Mary, another interpreter. They are calling 911 so the firemen will come. Then the firefighters are s

quirting out the "F" Flames. They liked that. But especially liked

running around the room in the Firetruck which they all painted outside on the grass. The kids are all really sweet. Hunter is contemplative and good, Sofia is bouncy like a little cheerleader, and Cody is the challenge. He gets real tired of people telling him what to do all the time. But he is so adorable! We also have Payten, a little Mormon girl, actually who just started and got her first hearing aids and they are Pink! We also are getting a little spanish girl; Jenny, and a boy next month (they start when they turn three) who I think is navajo and he will be a control issue like Cody - but Cody is already much better behaved than when he started in Feb. It will be interesting. I'm not really sure how it will work with little spanish Jenny. I think maybe I will have Kimi tell me many useful spanish words we would use in class and that will help tremendously as we teach her sign language too.

I have to say that I really love this job. Not only am I improving my sign (with the help of my current college sign class too) but I get to enjoy other great women who love chocolate and the kids and I get to prepare all the little art projects and help the kids do them. Of course we also have circle time fun but I don't need to help with that much this year. I also officially Interpret two afternoons a week for Casen who was in our class last year and who is now in Kindergarten. So the things I do are varied and fun and the time goes by quickly. I am so grateful for the job. It's just right for me.

My Mom, Ruth Jensen

Since we have just passed the anniversary of my Mom's death, I would like to share a couple of pictures of her. They are engagement photos . Isn't she beautiful? She is 22, Dad is 26. Thank you Bonnie for sharing

them with me!

Karen's New Toy

Here is my new little Nikon toy baby. Don gave her to me for my birthday. I'm so happy; now I really am as cool as my daughters! We took her down Oak Creek Canyon to Rene's French restaraunt for her first evening out in the world. Here are a few of her first pictures. You need to excuse the fuzzy one of Don and I; the hostess took it and it's blurry but I wanted to keep it anyway.

On the way down to Sedona

Beuteous Skies

Beauteous Clouds

Beauteous (fuzzy) Couple!

Courtyard out our restaraunt window

So that was Nikon's first adventure. I'm sure you will be seeing much more of her work in the future. Thanks for making her feel welcome in our little blog.