Texas here we are!

Honey Grandma has lots of things for the kids to play on and with and in. They are loving it as you can see. We have not yet ventured into the pool, but we plan to soon so I will be posting more pictures then. Hope this catches us up for the moment.

Trampolene fun

Trip Pictures

It turns out that Honey Grandma has the usb we needed with her camera...
sooo.... here is a couple snapshots from the van on our trip down.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We Jensens have much to be thankful for! We hope all of you are enjoying a wonderful thanksgiving wherever you are. We are in Texas safely enjoying time with Honey Grandma. The kids are recovering from their bronchitis now and feeling better. Samantha had to be seen in an E.R. in the middle of nowhere on the trip out, but is fine now. She had a high fever due to an ear infection on top of her Bronchitis, and it dehydrated her a bit. They gave her fluids via IV for about 3 hours and an antibiotic. Thankfully no one else has been as sick as she was.
It seems that we have forgotten the cord to connect the camera to the computer in the the trailer, so I will not have pics to post until Mark gets home and sends it out here. I promise to catch everyone up on them then. We took a few pics on our trip and lots since then.
Once again, Happy Thanksgiving and dont forget to praise God for his faithfulness and love this season and always!

Baby Faith

Some friends of ours have a little girl who was just recently diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Please keep her and thier family in your prayers as she goes through Chemo treatments.

Cold Season

Well, it had to happen eventually! The Jensens were hit with our first cold virus this season. I'm actually surprised we didn't catch anything sooner with the traveling and all. Everyone is starting to feel better today but it was a long weekend for some of us. Just a head/ sinus thing though thankfully. It's hard to know in this area if it is a virus or allergy induced. We hope to have everyone feeling better for our trip this next weekend. We missed our last Sunday with our church family here and didn't get to say goodbye for now. Sad.... somehow this always seems to happen to us. The kids are quite excited about leaving the trailer now though and can't wait to spend time with Honey Grandma! Maddie keeps asking us if we are going to "Christmas" yet.

Thank You Uncle Michael and Aunt Joy!

Here is Maddie ( who has a little cold) in her new outfit.

A Challenge

I was inspired by a post on a friends blog and decided to challenge my kids to help me clean the trailer completely as quickly as we could. One child has a strong competitive spirit and took to the idea right away, going overboard even and wiping walls and doors. What mom in her right mind is going to complain though??? Another unthrilled and less than inspired went along half heartedly. A third helped clean his own mess on the table and then quit. The girlies went about continuing to make messes for the rest of us to clean. However, after exactly 33 minutes we managed to have the trailer in very nice shape! So here are some before/after or pro/con pictures for you all.

Before: The Cons of having 7 in a tight space:

After: The pros of cleaning such a small place:

Thanks Elli!

Updates

Just want to let you all know that we will be leaving Calif. on the 22nd. We are heading to Texas to spend a month with Mark's mom before going home to Montana. We will be spending Thanksgiving and Christmas there this year. We regret that we will not be able to make a trip down to Simi this time. Hope to see everyone the next time we are in CA. Please keep us in your prayers, if you think of us, for safe traveling. We look forward to our visit with Honey Grandma and G.G. We have a trip to Seaworld in the plans and Ethan's 7th Birthday celebration as well. ( he is still unsure what special thing he wants to do at this time.) For those of you waiting for our return to Montana, we will be home to spend New Years Eve with family and friends!

A Christmas without wishing for his 2 front teeth!

After about 2 years of no front teeth on top, due to having to get them pulled early, Ethan has adult teeth coming in on top now! We have not seen him with teeth in so long! Here is a picture of his new smile.

More Family Fun

Andrew has been asking us to go back to "Bontana" each night. We told him that he gets to go home after Christmas. "What is Christmas?" He asked me. " "It is Jesus' birthday." I told him, wanting to give a simple answer. "but I don't want to eat Jesus' cake!" was his response. He just wants to go home...cake or no cake.
While out in the park a couple of weeks ago Andrew found some pine cones. He decided to take one large one home with him. On the way back to the trailer we overheard Ethan and him arguing over something in the back of the van. Seeing as how that is not exactly uncommon with the 2 of them we quickly looked to break it up. We asked what they were arguing about. Ethan said the pine cone. I thought this meant that one had it and one wanted it...I was wrong though. I then heard Andrew say,"it is too my friend, here's his eyes and nose and arms!" Then Ethan replied," it's not alive Andrew, it 's not a friend." Yes,they were indeed arguing over whether or not pine cone was Andrew's friend! We let Ethan know that it was o.k. for Andrew to have pine cone as his friend and all was calm again...for that moment anyways. We have since reminded Ethan of Baby Taco and Flyguy!
Ethan has been studying Bible in 1st grade and we went over Creation in his first book. I was reviewing with him when he got into the second one and this was Ethan's explanation of day and night.... "God made the sun for day and the moon for night"..."The sun sleeps at night and the moon sleeps in the day"
This is a typical sentence for my 3 year old daughter...."Daddy, you get Sammy down please, her on top the table, her get my crayons, and I coloring, and my picture is pretty, and I not want Sammie on the table and mess my pretty picture, and you need to get her down Daddy, so I can color." Keep in mind that this is all run together so fast that you can hardly make out what is said.This is pretty much how most of Madeline's conversations go these days. I hate to think what our phone bills will be when she is a teenager!
This is what happens when your children outnumber you....Andrew decided to put on a little show at the beginning of the Church service. Now if we were the parents of only one child we most likely would have been horrified with embarrassment. However this is not our first brush with embarrassing situations and most likely not our last. Contrary to popular opinion, our children are typical children. They have just as much of that lovely thing called sin nature as the next. Andrew had been wandering around before service started, which is typical for him and not usually a problem. Kevin, the pastor, called everyone to worship and Andrew did not head over. So, Mark got up to go get him at the back of the room. Still, no big deal, right. I was left sitting in the front row with the other 4 children, Sammie on lap. The next thing I know Kevin opens his mouth to start to speak and there is Andrew, up behind him shaking his head no at Mark. This actually could have been an even worse situation then it already was though. As Mark headed up there,giggles beginning to fill the room around us, Andrew begins to try to escape his fathers clutches. I am unable to do anything, as I could not leave the other 4 alone. Being the father of 4 of these wonderful little blessings though, Kevin turned around snatched him up in his arms and passed him off to his daddy with a smile and a couple jokes. That's just how it goes sometimes when you have more kids then arms. Praise God we do! Just another teaching opportunity, that's all, another teaching opportunity!
Madeline is working really hard at getting this potty thing down. She has picked out new "unnerwears" and that has made her even more determined to not have accidents. She has a hard time telling me when she needs to go before she actually starts though...thus tinkling in the new panties a tiny bit on her way to the bathroom. She angrily yells at us now, "Oh no! I pea soak!" each time this occurs...but never you fear, she is getting better and better at getting to the potty in time. I'm proud of my big girl!
Sammie is saying a ton of words, but these are some that we find cute recently. She seems to be coming up with new words everyday.
"lalalor" -color" nack"- snack" aside"- outside "nink" -drink "es ay" - press play "dodo"- play dough" I ant"- I want" dath" - bath "ditty" "mow"- kitty meow
For those of you wondering why there is not often as much about Zach in these, you have to remember that he is nearly 11 now and much harder to catch in embarrassing or humorous situations these days. So, the following info is not funny but atleast keeps you all updated on him. Zach is now brave enough to want to "swim" with the dolphins on our upcoming trip to Seaworld. A huge step for him! His favorite subject in school is Science... he is very hands on. He was asked last week to wrtie down one thing that he would change about his mommy and one thing he loves about her. I was informed that I think the little ones are innocent when they aren't too often. I was also reminded that the "simple" things in life, fixing meals, cleaning, giving hugs, really are the big things.

Thank God for friends with kitchens!

Madeline has not complained much on this trip. She has not asked for home often, she seems mostly content to just be together as a family. Two things she has brought up from back home though. One, her Nana, and the other her kitchen! We visited with some of the ladies from church over at the pastor's house over the weekend though and little Miss Anna had a KITCHEN! It was the highlight of Maddie's vacation thus far!