Emalyn

Now for what 's going on in Emalyn's life...

First of all, she had her birthday July 29. She turned 5 years old!!
We made her a butterfly cake (with plenty of candy...) And she got some beautiful presents. Tyler gave her a musical make-up box (that she LOVES), Krysta gave her a crown and earrings, Daddy gave her a pink and blue bouncing ball, and her mom gave her a new school shirt.

She wanted to have a pinata at her birthday, and we had a lot of fun whacking it with our bat.

Aren't we all such talented dancers?

At the end of August, she had her first day of Kindergarten. I love the excitement that cannot be contained on this face. She was so excited. She LOVES school and her teacher.

We are so proud of our dear Emalyn. She is such a sweetheart. She has an amazing ability to have empathy for others, be sweet and loving to everyone around her and still be very assertive about what she wants and feels. She has had a lot of changes in her little life this year, and she is growing up faster than I can believe. She's very smart and doing well at school. She also has budding musical abilities-she started picking out some melodies on the piano this week, and making up songs to go with them. She is a wonderful big sister to Krysta, and they love to play together.

The Amazing Tyler-man!

I think, to catch up on the last few months when I took a hiatus from blogging, I'll just catch up on each family member, one at a time.

So first, it's Tyler.

Here he is on his first day of First Grade. He was pretty excited to finally get to eat lunch at school. As you can tell, it was pretty cold that first day.

He got to play soccer again this spring. We weren't originally planning on having him play, but another player signed up and paid all the fees and then was unable to play, so they offered Tyler his uniform. To say he was excited would be an understatement. He loved it. They never actually won a game (unlike last spring, when they won every game except one in which they tied) but they all had a lot of fun. Tyler is the kid in green walking in front of the kid in purple.Tyler had his 7th birthday on September 19th. When we asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he said he wanted to have it at Grandma and Grandpa Jensen's house. Since it was on a Saturday, we realized we could actually do it. We kept it a surprise until the day before (since he had to pack). It was a lot of fun to be able to spend his birthday with family. He got bakugans from us, you can see him getting them out of the package here. And from his Grandma Nancy and Grandpa Ron, he got this hammock, which you can tell how much he liked from his expression.

I can't believe I have a seven-year old! He's growing up so fast. I am so grateful for his presence in our home. He has such a natural happy disposition and can find joy in almost every situation. He's a gentleman, who loves to take care of me and do special things for me (like get out breakfast for me in the morning, help Krysta get out of bed, help Krysta get into her carseat with her seatbelt in the van, get me drinks of water, find cans of whatever I need for dinner in the pantry downstairs, etc.). He's a wonderful brother to his two sisters. He really helped Emalyn get ready for kindergarten by telling her what to expect and all about Mrs. Gale, since he had her last year.

Heidi and Jaron bought relighting candles to put on Tyler's cake. You get to see some of Tyler's surprise here, but our camera battery died in the middle of him blowing out the candles. We eventually took the cake outside and had everyone help blow (or pinch) them out. It was pretty funny.

Lastly, on September 29th, he graduated from Eye Therapy. He worked hard for the last year, and his eyes are doing so much better. In this picture, he's standing with Dr. Alona King, who did the therapy with him. She's absolutely amazing with kids and helping them overcome esotropia and strabismus. We will really miss her!!!

Pity, pity pumpkins!

A couple of weeks ago, Emalyn asked if I would paint her fingernails. It's been so long since we've done that-and it was so fun! We did Krysta's too-and she really really loved it!
Emalyn loves colors-all of them-usually all at once-rainbow colored anything is her favorite-so she painted each hand and each foot a different color. I loved this picture, where she's laying down on the ground, showing off her fingernails. The nails on the hand on the right are purple, and the nails on the left are pearl. We didn't get her feet, but one foot was done bright red, the other in pink.

Blogger turned this picture on it's side, and I can't get it to change, but here's Krysta showing her fingernails and toenails. One hand is purple, the other is pink, and her feet are both bright red. She absolutely loved doing this-now she walks around showing everybody her hands and feet and saying, "I pity, I pity".

We had to pick our pumpkins while they were still green from our garden since it hit freezing temperatures in early September. Tyler and Emalyn decided to have a sleepover in the kitchen, with their pumpkins. As you can see, blogger turned this picture too. Sorry!

Anyway, just thought I'd better post some recent pictures, so you know we haven't dropped off the face of the earth. We've been having a lot of fun, with school, soccer, and trips to Utah, and they've been keeping us really busy.

"...We all scream for Ice Cream!"

Or at least Krysta does anyway. We took this video of her finishing off the last of her ice cream. Thought you'd get a laugh out of it too.

At the Beach!

Last Saturday, July 11, the Beck's (Deron, Virginia, McKenZ, and Jaxon) invited us to go to the beach with them. Did you know there's a real live beach only 15 min away from us here in Idaho Falls? We didn't before either. It's in Rigby (home of the invention of television, by the way), and it's called Rigby Lake.

The water was freezing, so Virginia and I opted NOT to go in, but that didn't stop anyone else from spending hours in the that frigid water. Especially Krysta. We literally could not stop her from staying in the water. And that meant that Scott spent a lot of time in the water too!!! (Thank you dear!) She has the most awesome lifejacket though; every time she fell down in the water, it would turn her right side up and she'd just float on her back. It wouldn't let her do anything else but that. She didn't mind that either, she'd just kick her legs and with that she'd get places.

In this next picture, Emalyn (she's facing backwards) and Krysta are visible in the front, then you can see Jaxon, then Tyler, then McKenZ (you can only see the back of her head), then McKenZ's friend Casey.Tyler and Emalyn have no legs!!

This is Emalyn saying, "AAAGGHHH! I'm stuck and I can't get up!!!"

This is Tyler saying, "Hey this is pretty cool. I like the feel of this sand in my toes. I could stay here all day..."
And this is Krysta and Virginia just chillin' in the shade. Hey, Virginia not only had a lounge chair and an umbrella for shade, but also a seemingly never-ending supply of barbecue-flavor potato chips-wouldn't you have stuck with her too? And the fact that Krysta just plain ADORES Virginia probably helped too. (P.S. Sorry about all the skin in the background!)

Deron and Virginia also brought their raft and let everyone go around the lake with it. Here, is Scott, Jaxon, Tyler, and Emalyn. Virginia and I had a go too, but due to an emergency potty break from one of the kids back on shore, the photographer was unable to take a photo. It was pretty fun though. Although, I'm sore now just from rowing around that tiny lake, and that's just sad.

Tyler, Emalyn, and Jaxon playing in the water.

"Look, Mom, I found a rock! A dirty, sandy, germ-covered rock!" Thought this picture would give you a taste of the joy Krysta felt the whole time we were at the beach. She just LOVED it the whole time. Everything is such a discovery at this age. She made this day much more entertaining.

Swimming Lessons!!

We put Tyler and Emalyn in swimming lessons back in June. They did so well! Tyler's pretty good at stroking and kicking at the same time, and Emalyn is getting SO much more comfortable in the water. I signed them up for the same time as our friends, the Wilcoxes. So Nicole and I got to chat and watch our little ones play together as we sat up in the balcony, while the older kids had their swimming lessons. I never remembered to bring our camera, so these pictures are courtesy of Nicole and Albert Wilcox (Thanks!)


Krysta had a lot of fun with their little boy Carson. It's fun to see how they interact together.


They started this "I'll sit, then you sit, then I'll stand, then you stand" game all by themselves.

My birthday

I know this is bragging, but I have to do it. I seriously had one of the best birthdays ever. The BEST birthday ever considering the fact that most of what made it great was how many things my kids thought of all by themselves.

First, I woke up to a message on my bathroom mirror from my sweet Scott, telling me Happy Birthday (he gets up at 5 am for work and is nice enough to let me sleep through that every day!). I forgot to get a picture of it, and have already cleaned it off (which I'm really sad about because I usually leave his messages up there for weeks...) but it was happy to wake up to read that.

Tyler saw the message not long after breakfast, and that inspired both Emalyn and him to write me messages of their own. Emalyn wrote this, and put it up on my bedroom door:

And Tyler wrote this, and taped it (very securely) to the front door of our house:

This sort of freaky expression that he's wearing is his latest choice of a "smile at the camera" pose. Really odd-looking, I know.

Next, they both got out all the birthday decorations out of the top shelf in the pantry closet and put them all up for me. Then they wanted to make me a birthday cake, which I helped with. I've always thought you shouldn't make your own birthday cake, but it's so so so fun when your kids actually think to do it for you. It was really fun to help them with that.

In the meantime, a sweet sister from my ward brought me a rose, and at NOON Scott called to tell me he was on the bus, on his way home from work. That was the best surprise of the whole day!!!!!!!!!!

He stayed home while Krysta was napping and they worked on refinishing our canoe, while I got to go get my hair cut. It was getting way too long and really annoying me, so I wanted to chop it off. Apparently I communicated the "chop it off" part a little too well, because it's a bit shorter than I thought I'd explained. I'm not super happy with this picture, so I'm going to get a better one, but here's the finished look:

When I got back, we had just enough time to light the candles and have some cake before we took the kids over to my wonderful neighbor who volunteered to watch them so Scott could take me out for my birthday.

Yes, they actually counted out 32 candles and put them all on the cake. They had almost all melted down into the cake by the time they were all lit and I blew them out. But they were really excited that we actually had 32 candles!

For our date, Scott took me to the Olive Garden (yummy, yummy food) then we went and bought me new sunglasses and a new watch.

And that was the best day I've had in a long time... I am grateful to have such wonderful family and friends.

Jensen Family Reunion!

Last Friday and Saturday (July 3 & 4) was the Jensen Family Reunion. It was up a Heber Valley Campground in Utah, which is an LDS-owned campground. It was organized by Nancy and it was so much fun!

Instead of tents and sleeping on rocks, we got to stay in cabins:

and sleep on air mattresses! Tyler and Emalyn even got to sleep on the top bunks of the bunk beds because there was a higher railing there than on the lower bunks. As you can see, they were pretty excited. Pictured above: Tyler and Emalyn using their strong heads to help Aunt Heidi get her air mattress into her cabin.

This is a picture of Scott with all of his Calder cousins that came to the reunion. It's amazing to see the posterity of two amazing people, Paul and Geri Calder. This was taken Friday night after dinner, and just before the skits. Last Christmas, Nancy gave us each copy of the history of James Hacking, and for this reunion we were given the assignment to prepare a skit based on one of his life experiences. Our family (Scott and I) chose to do the story where James (Tyler) was a little boy with his two sisters, Phoebe (Emalyn) and Eleanor (Krysta), running down a hill when they saw a diamond-backed rattlesnake (Scott) ready to strike. They were running so fast, that James decided to tell his sisters to jump with him over the snake, and by some miracle they weren't bitten. (I narrated the story.)

That same day before dinner, we all went out on the lake in paddleboats and canoes, but Scott and I forgot our camera, so we have no pictures of it. But we had a lot of fun with all five of us on one boat!

The next morning, we went to the challenge course. These courses have challenges that build teamwork, self-confidence, and teach gospel principles.

The first was the zipline:

These are all pictures of Tyler first climbing up the pole, then walking across the rope, then getting across to the other pole where a sister missionary was waiting for him. This was about 20 feet up in the air. He was so brave! After this part (we didn't get any pictures) he was supposed to ride the zipline down to the ground. That part was a little traumatic for him, he really didn't want to go, and started crying and holding on to this lady for all he was worth. She saw me down on the ground and said, "Are you his mother? What do you want me to do?" You have to understand, there was no other way down than to ride the zipline at this point, and we couldn't go with him because it would only hold one person at a time. But when she asked me what she should do, I knew inside that the only answer was to push him off of the platform, but I just couldn't say that outloud. I was just so scared for him, and I couldn't have him hear me say, just push him. So I turned to Scott, and he yelled up, "Just push him out!!" And that's why we all have Dad's who are brave enough to do what has to be done no matter what. So the sister tried, but Tyler's grip must've been pretty good, because she couldn't get him off the platform. She tried and tried, and all the time Tyler was just crying and crying for Scott and I to come up and get him. Finally, Uncle Chris, (our brother-in-law) crossed the rope to be with Tyler (I think this was technically against the rules, because it took a while for them to let Chris do this) and he helped her push Tyler off of the platform. I am so so so grateful he was up there with them!!! About halfway down, Tyler's screaming and crying turned to screams of excitement and joy and relief. He was grinning by the time he got to the ground. The first thing he said to me was, "I wanna do that again, mom!" What a boy!!!

Here are some pictures of Scott doing the zipline. These pictures start form the platform after crossing the rope, where the sister missionary helped him get hooked up to the zipline and then he rode down it, and used a ladder to get off at the end:

After the zipline, we more challenges, but I only got pictures of two more. This one was the spider's web. We had to get everyone through the spider's web, without touching it, and each of us had to use a different hole in the web. Here we are after we crossed it:

The next challenge was to get all of us on this teeter-totter log and make it balance. We had to all get on from the same side and not change the order once we got on. Here we all are on the balanced log!

That was such a fun time with everyone. I got to know a lot of Scott's cousins a lot better. And it's always good to spend time with family. We miss our families a lot, since we moved to Idaho, and we love any and all time we spend with them.

Tyler's kindergarten graduation and Kinder eggs

Tyler graduated from Kindergarten yesterday afternoon. I can't believe how fast this year has gone by. He has grown and learned so much this year, and I've enjoyed watching him change as his knowledge of things grows. He is becoming such great reader and mathematician. He has a lot more confidence in his ability to learn new things. We're so proud of you Tyler!!

Also, last Friday, my sweet sister, Cheryl, mailed to me some Kinder eggs that we'd bought together near her home in Connecticutt. That was quite a miracle on her part, since they'd gone from her house in CT, to Utah in a moving van, then back to Nebraska in the same moving van, then she mailed them to me. Very sweet of her to do all of that for me. Here's the kids opening theirs. They'd never seen Kinder eggs before, so they didn't know of the surprise inside.