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.