Happy 2010

St. Andrews Bay

We have been busy at the Jensen house these past few days! Tanner has been visiting with us for a few weeks and this week Andrew and Keali came down from Atlanta to spend a few days with us before they head back to Rexburg. Today it was about 70 degrees so we decided to go to St. Andrews Bay State Park. We went to the alligator pond, but we didn't see anything. Then we headed over to the jetty and walked along the beach for a while. It was great to be out in the sun and with the family on the beach.

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Just look at those beautiful flamingo earings that Keali is wearing.

Those were a Christmas present from Megan to Keali!

Steen, Tanner and Daniel on our hike around the alligator pond.
Mommy and Natalie on the hike.
Andrew and Keali (and baby due in June) on the beach.

Tanner doing some shell collecting.

There was a big ledge and the kids had a blast jumping off of it.

I love this picture of Andrew with the kids.

Here's a video of the kids and Andrew jumping. They had a blast!

Super Apple Pie

For Christmas Steen got me this. Some of you may be thinking it's a silly gift. No way, tonight we made the apple pie of all apple pies. Thanks to an episode of Good Eats that Steen watched a few weeks I am now an expert on apple pie. You can be too. Links and recipe to follow.

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This is what I started out with:

This is the finished product:
Can you say PERFECTION...
Here's the YouTube link to the video segment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIOmvvzAnGg
And here's the link to the recipe on food network:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/good-eats/super-apple-pie-recipe/index.html
We followed the recipe to the T all except for the Apple Jack. We used apple juice.

Christmas Fun!

These past few days we have had a lot of fun making family memories! This was our first Christmas away from our families so it was up to Steen and I to make it a great holiday and do things the way that wanted things to be done! We are pleased to say that we pulled it off and had a great Christmas here in Florida! Here are a few pics of what we've been up too!

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Decorated gingerbread men - A Katie Jensen family tradition.

We had the missionaries from our branch over on Christmas Eve. We enjoyed a delicious dinner with them, played some games, and of course acted out the Birth of Jesus with our hand puppets!
Here's the Christmas Eve gang.

On Christmas Eve the kids got there new matching jammies that I made them!

The kids got some great presents including a play kitchen, shopping cart, and lots of food. Thanks to the kids we ate good on Christmas day!

Here's the Valencia Orange tree that I got for Steen. Next year at this time hopefully we will be enjoying some fruit from it!

And here is little Natalie in her new Excer Saucer that Santa brought her.

She's loves it!

We hope you all had a great Christmas!

Now it's on to the New Year. We have Andrew and Keali heading down from Atlanta before they leave to go back to Rexburg. They will spend a few days with us which will be lots of fun. It's always a party at the Jensen house when we have company in town.

Sandcastles & 7 months...

Today we woke up to some lovely weather and decided to go to the beach to have some fun in the sun and sand. While we were there I couldn't help but think that while many of you are building snowmen we are sitting on the beach building sandcastles! It's so weird to be here and at the beach two days before Christmas. And yesterday Natalie turned 7 months. She loves to hear herself talk and has such a sweet personality. The kids are looking forward for the next few days ahead. We have been busy shoping, wraping presents, and in the kitchen getting ready for the festivities. Merry Christmas everyone!

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My beach babe!

Nothing like getting a little sand in your hair.
Stomping the sandcastle.

Caught red handed, throwing sand - a big no no!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas

from the Jensen Fam!

Fun with Uncle T

Steen has been gone on business for three weeks. We miss him so much! We are looking forward to him coming home tomorrow! Uncle Tanner is here visiting for a few weeks. We've been doing some shopping and of course hanging out on the beach since Tan got here.

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Here's the entrance to one of the places we went shopping at today.

Here's Tanner on the beach.
We love shell collecting.

Gingerbread Houses!

On Tuesday we decorated gingerbread houses! The girls (Megan & Mommy) were in charge of the house and the boys (Daniel & Uncle Tanner) were in charge of the train. We had fun, got a little sticky, and got to be creative!

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Here's the girls before shot

The boys finished product!
The girls finished product.

Santa Claus

Tonight we had our church Christmas party. I grabbed this shot of the kids right before we left. Guess who came to the party? Yup, that's right, Santa Claus was there. When he asked Megan what she wanted she for Christmas she said EVERYTHING! Sweet little Daniel said he wanted a transformers toy and well, Natalie screamed bloody murder at the sight of jolly old St. Nick. Then on the way home Megan explained to me that the Santa at the party was not the real Santa because his beard was fake and kept falling off and she saw part of the pillow under his coat. She's an observant one! I made something up about how Santa has helpers because he can't be seeing all the children in the world at the same time. She of course believed me but questioned why he couldn't at least have a real beard. Wow, that was quite the big conversation. I just love my kiddos!

I Spy Daniel

When I went to check on the kids last night before going to bed, this is what I found. It was dark and for a moment I didn't see Daniel. He was one busy boy after I tucked him in last night.

Walk on the Beach

Today when we were driving home from church the weather was just perfect. We hurried home, scarfed down some lunch and headed for the beach to take a walk and do some shell collecting. We had a great time. As Steen and I were walking barefoot in the sand with the warm sun beating on us we couldn't help but laugh and think how weird it was to be walking on the beach in our shorts on November 29th. We would have never imagined ever living in the state of Florida, but we are loving it. Then Steen jokingly said that maybe on Christmas day we will have to go to the beach. I think we may just have to make that a tradition!

Decorating the tree

We put our tree up on Friday. Everyone else around here already has there's up so we decided to join the club and put ours up too! We turned the Christmas music up and had a great time decorating the house. Here are a few pics of the kids decorating the tree. I will post more pics later of the finished product!

Mr. Underpants

When Daniel came downstairs the other morning this is what he was wearing. He was so proud of himself and thought he looked great. I just had to take a pic!

6 Months!!

Can you believe that Natalie is already 6 months old? She's got the biggest smile ever and is tons of fun to have around! We just love our little Natalie. Soon she should be crawling and her two little bottom teeth are making there way up, just in time for some turkey at Thanksgiving!!

Our First Visitors

We had a super fun visit from Steen's family this past week. We showed them around the area and kept busy while they were here. We started the visit off with Steen's birthday celebrations! We also went hiking to Falling Water State Park. Of course we spent lots of time at the beach playing in the water and shell hunting. We ate lots of yummy food here at home and at a variety of restaurants. We had a great time and are already missing our visitors. Enjoy all the pics:

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Katie and the birthday boy!

(Notice the banner in the back ground? That's my latest sewing project!)

Steen was spoiled with gifts from everyone!

Cake and ice cream time. Yummy!

Smok'n Butts BBQ was crazy delicious. We love living in the BBQ country.

Here's everyone at the falls. It was cool, but it didn't compare to anything we are used to in the gorge.
Natalie loved all the attention from her grandparents and Uncle Anton.

Here's our beach. We never get tired of looking at this view!

We got lucky and happened to see a huge group of sting rays from up on the pier.

Here's the kids having a great time playing in the sand.

Here's the kids with the St. Andrews pier in the background.

Noting like a Florida sunset.

Me and the kids at sunset one night.

Here's the fam in front of our house.

Thanks for visiting us Jensens. We had a great time with you guys. Come back soon!