Walking and walking and walking some more

The doorknobs in this house are to blame for the series of unfortunate events that took place around these parts yesterday. Imagine if you will, a doorknob. In my mind they all look the same. They are round in nature and usually twist to open. Most doorknobs have a handy little lock that you can twist as you exit your dwelling. Doing this twisting motion before you exit will unlock said doorknob, if it was locked to begin with. If it wasn't locked, it'll now be locked since your amazing wrist can do a flick and lock it. Well, if you have super duper extra annoying doorknobs, the door will open even if the lock is still in the lock position. Since the door opens, ones brain might think that the door is already unlocked and that it is fine to leave it unlocked since it's the door to the garage. The front door is already locked and dead bolted. You're just running two small children to school, so you'll just go out the garage, push the handy ten second delay on the garage door closer button thing, and walk the 1/4 of a mile or whatever it is to the school and then whistle a happy tune as you walk home on this beautiful morning, pushing a two year old in a stroller thinking about how great it is to live close enough to the school that each morning you get to spend time with your three children as you walk them to their institution of knowledge. Or instead of whistling a happy tune you're actually thinking that it's freezing cold and that you can't wait to get home and walk inside. Not to mention there is a two year old in the stroller that has a runny nose and the tissue that you brought is already so full of snot that you have now had to resort to using your own shirt, but you're a mom, so a little snot on the front of your shirt is normal. You're also thinking that the blasted jogging stroller is extra hard to push today and upon further inspection, you realize that the front tire is totally flat. Getting home is sounding more and more wonderful. You round the corner, your house is in sight, you're almost there! Then right as you get to the flag pole where the BYU flag is waving, in the breeze, you realize that there is probably a million percent chance that as you left the house today making sure the front door was locked and dead bolted, that you forgot to unlock the annoying lock on the annoying doorknob that leads from the house to the garage. You think for a split second that maybe the sliding glass door is unlocked since a certain two year old thinks it's amazing that the door slides, so he slides it open and bless his little heart, he does try to close it and he gets close every time, but his not able to get it all the way closed. The next second you remember that you did in fact finish closing the sliding glass door and lock it before you left. You check just in case. Locked. You then think about how you know that Heavenly Father is in deed a God of miracles. You think that maybe you'll just sit on the driveway and wait for an angel to come down from heaven and unlock the door for you. After staring at the sky waiting for your angel to appear, you think that maybe you aren't going to have a Joseph Smith experience and start thinking about how you're going to get out of this conundrum. You know a few things. You and your two year old are locked out of the house. You know that your amazing husband has keys with him, but he's at work. Your amazing flip phone with contacts, mostly from out of state, so it's basically useless, is also locked in the house. So you can't call anyone. You know that there are in fact members of your ward in the area, but you don't know where they live. There are two families that you know where they live. Family #1- mom is a teacher and dad is going to school so chances of them being home is slim to none. Family #2- live a mile and a half away, but if she isn't home, you have to walk the mile and a half back. You know what you have to do, you're just trying to think of any other option. After another glance at the sky for one last angel check, you load your two year old in the umbrella stroller, since the jogging stroller has a flat and you can't figure out how to pump it up,  with the annoying wheels that don't always roll like a wheel should and you set off for parts unknown. We had to walk to the hospital to get  the keys from said husband. What else is there to do? He's on call so he might be home really late. You can't just sit outside all day hoping that he gets home before midnight. What if he doesn't? That would be truly awful to sit outside all day and all night. Now when I say set out for parts unknown, that's because I didn't know how to get to the hospital. I knew that it is south west of our house. I had the general idea of where it is, but I didn't know for sure where to go. Thankfully little B loves walks, so he was so happy to walk and walk and walk. There are also side walks most of the way there. There was on point where we had to walk on the road for a little over a mile, but it was fine. We were only chased by one dog, oh wait, two dogs. We only got sprayed by sprinklers once, but, when I say sprayed I mean that we basically had to run through them. We got wet enough that we had to hang our jackets up to dry when we got home. We passed a house that had a clock hanging on the outside, not uncommon around here, anyway, we passed it and it said that it was 9:25. We had probably already been walking for 20 minutes. Then we passed a bank sign that said 9:55. We walked and walked and walked and walked and then we walked some more. Thankfully we started to see those blue signs with a white H telling folks where the hospital is. We followed those signs and saw parts of the city that I didn't even know were there! I saw a Pita Pit and was really excited until I got close enough to see that it isn't in business any more. I saw a Papa John's and thankfully that is in business. Not that we ever get that because well, it's too expensive. But when you've been walking for so long that you feel like the stroller you're pushing may as well be a handcart and your cut off sweats( I didn't feel like I really needed to get ready for the day because B's the only one I care about impressing and since I wasn't planning on seeing him, because he was on call, I put on cut off sweats. I didn't do my hair either. Actually, that's normal. However, I did have a bra on! Not that I need one but I've been told that it's socially unacceptable to go out without one on, so on it goes, usually.), I digress, I was feeling like my sweats could have turned into a long dress. I was really tapping into my pioneer ancestors! I'm just sayin' that seeing the Papa John's made my mouth water and I'm really happy to know that there's one here. Anyway, we finally rounded a corner and saw the hospital! I almost wept with joy! We picked up the pace, found an entrance that just happened to be by some bathrooms which is really good because the little with me said that he needed to go potty and when he stood up to walk, he had to hold his legs together. He quickly sat back in the stroller and said,"I sit, I need to pee." We made a quick potty break and walked to the first desk I saw. We told the cute old ladies our pickle, they called back to the surgical desk and were told that someone would be out in a minute for me. The clock on the wall said that it was 11:20. We were waiting when I heard a voice behind me say,"Hey!" I turned around and saw B standing there with keys in his hand. Here was my Joseph Smith moment! B was my rescuing angel! He asked me how we got there and when I told him that we walked his eyes got big and he started shouting,"Wow! My wife is amazing! Everyone, gather around and listen to her story!" OK, he didn't really do that, but he should have! He just said,"What?! That's like 6 miles." Then he handed me the keys and said,"You can take the car." I truly started laughing and said,"That's funny that you thought that wasn't a given. There is no way I walked all the way down here to only get the keys and then walk home. Call me when you get done and I will drive down here and pick you up." Thankfully he didn't get done way late and when I said that we needed to go get him little B said,"We walking to the hopisal again to get daddy?" I told him that we didn't have to walk, that we could drive. He jumped up and down yelling,"Yeah yeah yeah!" Just for kicks I pulled up map my run.com which is a really cool website that lets you put in where you run and it'll tell you how far you went. Anyway, I put in the way that we walked and it was 6.66 miles away. We are going to make copies of the key and hide them in our garage, back yard, front yard and maybe tape some to the outside of the house. Walking truly wasn't that bad as long as I don't have to do it ever again. We talked about replacing the doorknobs, but obviously we haven't yet. We've been told the reason they open even when they're locked is in case there's a fire, you'll be able to get out without having to unlock the door. That is a great feature if your house is on fire. If it's not and you're just walking children to school, it has a tendency to be super annoying!

Welcome home!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I finally took pictures of our house! Can I get a high five please?! Before I put on any pictures I just need to say, no judgement. The house is pretty awesome for being bought sight unseen. There is a lot of potential in this here house. Just keep that in mind. :)

I had to stand across the street so that I would be sure to get the BYU flag. B almost wept with joy when he learned that there was a flag pole. Flying his BYU flag was one of the first things he did. Let's talk about the house now. I personally hate the yard. Both front and back. I would love to rip out the curbing and rocks and add more grass. How about adding a tree? I think that sounds like a genius idea! The spider bushes aren't super great either. Someday we will be able to fix the lawn so it looks a million times better. Moving on.

When you walk in, you either have to go up or down. Let's go up, shall we?

This is the wall that we want to take out. We finally got someone to come look at it. Well, we actually had three different people come look at it. The first two gave us a very confident,"I don't think it's load bearing." We were a little uneasy about having either of them take it out. Taking a wall out when someone "doesn't think it's load bearing" is risky to say the least. We didn't want to take it out and then have the roof cave in.We wanted a very firm, "no, it's not load bearing." The third guy we had come told us that it wasn't load bearing, but he couldn't do the work. So, we still have a non load bearing wall that we can't seem to get rid of. We know that we could take it out ourselves. I told B that I watch HGTV so I totally know how to do something like wall removal. If it weren't for the electrical things that are in the wall, we probably would take it out ourselves. Alas, B already got shocked by a wire in the wall once and says he would be fine not reliving that experience. Shocked isn't the right word. It's more like he drilled into the wire and it exploded in his face. True story. Anyway, we are patiently waiting to find someone that can come do it for us.

Here is the living room. You might be thinking,"my word it seems dark in there!" You would be exactly right. There are no lights in the ceiling. LAME! There's a guy in our ward that says that adding can lights is super easy. He explained it to us and we even watched a couple YouTube videos on how to do it. We almost committed to doing it when B had a flash back of his past electrical experience and may or may not have woken up screaming and sweating saying he didn't want to add the lights himself. So, we'll call in someone to do that for us too.:)

Here's the kitchen. It looks kind of like a kitchen. Out the sliding glass door, there's a deck and that's been pretty cool to go out and eat dinner on. There were really bad fires around these parts this summer, so we didn't get to go out there as much as we would have liked to.  I didn't realize what an eye sore the garbage can is until I saw this picture. Time to figure out a new spot for that!

Upstairs there are two bedrooms. Ours and

This one. At first we had this as little B's room, but there was no where to put the toys. We moved him down with K and made this the toy room. That about wraps up the upstairs. There is a bathroom, but we all know what that looks like, so I didn't take a picture.

This here is the family room down stairs. We would love to take out the wet bar and have a really nice great room down here. I know the valance's are truly terrible, but I'm too lazy to take them down and since I spend most of my day upstairs, I honestly forget about them.

Here's the view from the wet bar.  Wouldn't it be so awesome to be running on a treadmill and have this view?! That's what think too. B thinks it would be awesome to be playing ping pong and have this view. We'll see what happens. 

This here is the boy's room. Yes that is little B sleeping. I took the pictures during his nap. We really like that the room is big enough that the young fellows can share. 

This one is M's room. We love that her room is big enough that she can use the bed that my amazing older brother made. 

That's it. I know that it's not amazing, but we like it. We'll like it even better when we can take out the wall, redo the flooring and the yard. But, we are happy with it and are excited about the potential that it has. Now all we need is for people to come visit us! Come up is masses or one at a time, we aren't picky. We love you, we love company, we love you as company! Come one come all, we're excited to see you!

Overwhelmed at the thought

You know those times when you've neglected your blog for a really long time and you know it's time to bite the bullet and update it? Then  you decide that  putting it off for one more day is the most brilliant idea you've ever had. Of course one more day turns into one more week and then two. By this point you are so overwhelmed with the thought of doing the blog that it reminds you of the time you bought a house, site unseen, walked in and knew the paint had to change. You also knew that you were leaving town in three days and would be gone for two weeks, but the paint HAD to be done before you left. Thankfully you were able to pound out the unpacking and cleaning and still had two days before you were leaving. You pull out all your painting supplies and go to town. Only to find out that your calling in life was not to be a painter. There's paint running in streams down the walls and pooling on the drop cloth where small children have then stepped because they were trying to help by painting their own little section of the wall. Said paint is slippery so they put their hand on the wall to catch themselves, so now your freshly painted wall has a small two year old hand print on it. You go to paint over it and the paint starts to peel off the walls. Now is the time that you throw in the towel and call in the professionals. They come with their painting gear on and tell you the small fee they will charge since you have all the supplies. You happily hand over the money because it is well worth the sanity of every member of your house. As you are thinking about that long story you are reminded that you should update your blog and just like the paint, you just have to bite the bullet and do it. So, here we are, updating the blog. Let's see, what is there to tell? We made it across the country so B could start his new job. We got here in time to unpack, go boating once and then high tail it out of here to go on an amazing vacation! I'll try not to give you a picture overload, but let's be honest. We all know that I have a picture taking problem. I'd like to put pictures of our house on here, but I haven't taken pictures of it yet. I know I know, but we really want to knock out a wall and it'll look so much better with the wall gone. The jury's still out on if said wall is load bearing or not, so I'm waiting to put pictures on until we know what's going on with the wall. Let's see here, before we left on vacation, we went boating with the Bartschi's and the Steik's. We were on Bartschi's boat. Can I just say that his boat is the closest thing to a Yacht that I've ever been on?! It. Was. Amazing!

 Here are a bunch of hooligans that had a great time on the tube. They were bouncing around and little L in the back wanted to go faster and faster.

T Bartschi was driving and stopped the boat so that those crazy enough could jump in the water if they wanted to. Before these three took the plunge, we snapped this picture. It's one of my favorite of the night. Whilst they were paddling around in the freezing cold water, I got to hang out with K. 

To say that I miss living next to beautiful K would be a gross understatement. We thought that we would live next to them here, but Heavenly Father had a different plan for them. I love that we got to go boating with them before they moved on to their next adventure.

Of course I had to take a picture of B skiing. I could watch him do this forever and it doesn't matter how many times I've seen him do it, which is a lot,  it never ceases to amaze me!

We left here and went to Utah to be with family for two weeks.

We started out with my family. For the amount of family that I have, this is such a small group! My younger brother and his wife had their sixth baby while we were there. Little A is one of two nephew's that just couldn't wait to be born so they came in the car on the way to the hospital! We packed so much into the week we were with my side of the family. It was so swell because we had only planned the camping trip, the rest was just planned day to day. Let's start with camping.

I think this is such an adorable picture of my parents. My dad's cancer has metastasized. His cancer pills were giving him seizures, so the doctor took him off his cancer pills to stop the seizures, but now he doesn't take his cancer medication. His short term memory is shot. As we were driving from North Carolina to here, I called my parents. I talked to him and he asked where we were going. I told him we were hoping to make it to Nauvoo that night. He asked if we were going on vacation. I told him no, that we were in the process of moving. He got all excited about the news. He acted like that was the first time he had heard about it. He was so happy that we were going to be so much closer. I held it together until I got off the phone, then I fell apart. I know that I tease my dad and tell him things like his social security number is one and that Noah is in his high school year book because he's so old, but to be perfectly honest, watching him act his age is truly heartbreaking. Anyway, we were all so happy that even though grandpa and grandma couldn't camp, they came to the lake for the day.

 The lake was so fun! I especially loved that there were so many people there to help watch young ones, that I didn't have to get in the water! I wanted to try this here paddle board, but there were a whole lot of people in line in front of me. By the time it would have been my turn, the rain had come to stay. Before the rain hit, there was plenty of time to play.

 M loved this kayak. I love that Payson lakes is small enough that she could have gone almost anywhere and we still would have been able to see her. It's big enough that the little kids felt pretty awesome to be able to paddle so far away from shore.

He tried the kayak and liked it ok, but he really liked the tubes. 

 We ate lunch and then the rains came down and the floods came up! Thankfully J was there to act as our pack mule. I had gone to put kids in the car and watched in amazement as J came up the hill loaded with almost everything we had taken to the lake.

We were told that we needed to make a treat flag. Each family brought a treat and if you got a treat in your tent, you wrapped the treat you had brought in the treat flag and snuck said treat into someone else's tent. We loved it and I must admit that K was so sneaky sneaking the treat into the Jensen family tent. He did it in the middle of the day when everyone was around. I even knew he was doing it and he was so stealthy, that I was shocked when I saw him standing next to me. I asked if he had done it, he smiled a mischievous smile and said," Yeah, I just did!"  It was awesome! We also felt like we needed to put a picture of the tent on here because that's where we spent a lot of time. It rained and rained and rained. We stuck it out for a few hours hoping that it would clear up. It would stop for a few minutes and then it would start again. We finally had a family huddle. We decided to throw in the towel, or rather, all the soggy camping gear, and call it quits. We relocated to my sister's house to finish out the camping trip.

Sleeping on the floor surrounded by cousins is way better! 

 The rest of the week was so laid back and relaxing. K loved playing ping pong while we waited for our lane to be ready for bowling.

The cousins loved bowling together and I loved when the game ended. It was a whole lot of fun, don't misunderstand. But, to have this many young ones bowling took a really long time.

We played at parks,

and splash pads,

and back yards.

There was an amazing slip n' slide that actually worked because it was homemade. All three of the kiddos loved it and I would have even gotten a picture of M playing on it, but the neighbor turned on the splash pad that they have in their backyard and M and the girl cousins ran over to play in there. M came back and told me that the splash pad shot up warm water. When I heard that I was tempted to go play in it too! Your own personal splash pad that has warm water?! That's amazing! We had a blast with my family 

We played hard and were totally pooped when we left Utah to fly to California to be with B's family for a week. This young one lasted until he sat down before he fell asleep. Truth, he didn't make it to feel the plane start to move. We met family in San Diego where we had rented the most amazing house we had ever been in. It was big enough to sleep 32 people in beds. Not bunk beds mind you, no sir. We all had beds. The coolest part of the house was the water slide. We took pictures, but it just doesn't do it justice.

I was really worried about staying in this house because of the pool, but there were alarms on every door that lead out to the pool. The buttons that had to be pushed to bypass the alarms were too high for little people to reach. If one kid was in the pool, every kid in the house wanted to join. I think we could have stayed at the house all week and no one would have complained. I love that the water slide slowed down enough at the end that little B was able to go down by himself. He wouldn't sit up and go, he always went down backwards.

The pool was awesome too. There was a hot tub in the pool and enough space that the whole family could go swimming and you never felt like you were in a crowded pool

 Once we got done with the pool,

There were ping pong tournaments to win

and pool games to be played. I truly suck at pool. Truth.

The young one's loved to watch movies in the theater room. One night B wanted to watch a movie in there. We put children to bed, gathered adults that wanted to and settled in to watch Mission Impossible 2 or maybe it was 3. I don't remember, but it doesn't matter. I lasted long enough to eat most of the popcorn and then I slept through the whole thing. Maybe if we had watched an interesting movie like, Troop Beverly Hills, I would have been able to stay awake! Since we were in San Diego, of course we didn't just hang out at the house.

There was a day spent at Legoland. We were really worried that it was going to be dumb. We had only heard bad reviews by the folks we knew that had been there. Maybe it's because we went with really low expectations, or maybe it really was good. Either way, the offspring would tell you that going was a raging success!

M is totally 100% crazy and this was her favorite ride. She and her cousin, A, could have gone on this thing for most of the day. I could hardly watch it. It picks you up and flips you around like your a limp noodle. They died laughing every time they went on it.

This is one is more like the ones I like. Little B got too hot and got a fever, so he wasn't his normal happy self. We tried crushing a Tylenol up in applesauce. He got the taste of the pill and threw up. Not great! I went to the first aid station to see if they had children's Tylenol. They did, but they charged money for it. I hadn't brought any money with me so I couldn't get him any. Instead, we tried to keep him in the shade and pump him full of water.

 This is the whole gang! Well, the ones that could come. There was one family that couldn't make it and we were all really sad that M and R and their kids couldn't make it.

Of course we had to go to the beach. The water was freezing, and the waves were big. It was exactly how the beach should be. Other than the fiasco of being separated while parking so one car of family members parked miles and miles away from the rest of us and as we were walking towards each other to hopefully meet in the middle, we ended up walking past each other so they ended up where we started so we had to turn around and go back. Once we were all together again, we sang, We're all together again, and ran off to play in the sea life toilet. Ok not really, we didn't sing.

These two played on the boogie boards almost the whole time and the amount of sand that their bodies collected was truly amazing.

Little B loved playing in the waves and the sand but playing in the sand in the waves was not something he likes. He didn't like sitting down and being pushed over by the water.

Of course we went to SeaWorld. I will say that although it was amazing, we liked SeaWorld Orlando better. Everything in Orlando is covered. In San Diego, you are in the sun all day and to say it was hot would be putting it lightly. The poor cousins from Alaska were miserable all day.

Killer whales are huge! They are amazing to watch.

I think this picture should be on a post card. It's so cool!

We loved the dolphins too. They can jump so high!

Maybe the highlight of the entire trip was the wonderful and amazing karaoke night. Soon to be brother-in-law, M, had this magical device that he plugged into the computer and we could search any song in the whole world and it would pull up the words on the TV. I. Was. In. Heaven! I'll be the first to admit that I have the voice of a dying cat, but I love karaoke! I got to sing some Bon Jovi and Crash Test Dummies and  Frozen. Oh! And the Fight Song song. I love that one! Oh what joy Karaoke brings to me!  

B's younger sister is getting married and so when we got back to Utah from California, we stayed for a couple days so that I could go wedding dress shopping with her.

We got to spend time with the amazing T family. Oh how we love them! We have lived apart from each other longer than we lived next to each other, but going to Utah wouldn't be complete without spending time with them. Our kids love each other and I love to hang out with R. Our trip wouldn't have been complete without spending time with them.

 B really wanted to go boating. BJ didn't have to go back to work for a couple days after we got back from California, so boating we went! A moment of pure insanity overtook me and I did a handstand. It was so cool until I flipped off the tube and landed in the FREEZING water. Deer Creek is always so cold! When I say cold I mean cold enough that if one were to jump into the water to pee, it would take a minute because your body goes into almost instant shock from the sub zero temperatures.

Oh how I love the beautiful S! She is so funny and I love that our relationship has gone from me cleaning her teeth to her being part of our crazy bunch forever!

Isn't she beautiful?! I love this young little lass!

We ended our out west extravaganza by going wedding dress shopping with J. I love that M came with us and I loved to watch her face as J came out in dress after dress. The problem J had with finding a dress is that she is absolutely beautiful and looked truly amazing in every dress she put on. She was able to narrow it down to two dresses. She put on one, studied it for a minute and then put the other one on. She just couldn't decide. I was sitting in the chair thinking about how I would love to be a wedding dress model and wear wedding dresses all day. J's little helper lady must be able to read minds. She looked at me and asked if I would come hold the other dress up to myself so J could see the dresses side by side. I ran  walked very calmly up on the little stage thing, took the dress and held it up to myself. I was so happy! Then the little helper lady put the veil on my head and I almost cried! Truth. S took a picture of J and I standing side by side, but I can't put it on here because J isn't married yet. I can hardly wait for J's wedding so that I can see her in her beautiful dress again! Our trip was amazing and I cried when it was time to come home. No matter how long we live away from family, saying good bye is never easy. We love that we live so much closer and hope that we can go visit family so much that they'll wish we would move far away again!