Happy 13th Birthday Cam!

I can't believe my baby boy is a teenager today. Don't get me started about how fast time flies. It's the saddest part of my life.

Cameron Thomas Jensen was born at 6:55 p.m. weighing in at a whopping 9 lbs 15 oz. Let's just say 10 pounds. Since he was born on his grandpa Tom's birthday, he was given Thomas as a middle name. He has enjoyed sharing this day with grandpa. Several weeks before I was due, Jessica came down with the chicken pox. The day before I had Cam, Kylee and Jake got them, so when we brought Cam home from the hospital, he had to be quarantined in our bedroom, and kept away from them for the first week he was home. But to no avail as he got a small case of chicken pox two weeks later. So his first few weeks of life were eventful! He was always a good, quiet baby, and that has carried over to his childhood, and young adulthood. He's a very sweet, kind, obedient boy, and a complete joy to have in our family. Here are some highlights of his life: I love this picture of my good friend Lorene rocking him to sleep because she was so very sad that we moved from Mesa when he was just two months old (his cheek looks like mine did last week with my tooth infection!)

He loved to ride Jake's "hee hee" often times riding it for so long that he'd fall asleep! We have an awesome video of him riding it while struggling to stay awake, and about falling off.

He went through a great love of power rangers stage, and would often spend the day dressed as one.

He's always been a very active boy. Always on the go wanting to be doing something. He doesn't usually sit and watch TV or play video games. He's very adventurous and isn't scared to do anything. When he was about 5, we were at 7 peaks in Provo and waiting in line to do this ride that looked a little frightening. The girls were freaking out to do it and very hesitant. Cam's famous quote has been used many times over the years: "If we die, oh well." He much prefers to be playing with friends, playing sports, or doing any number of the following activities:

He has always loved sports, and goes from one to the next throughout the year, usually overlapping by several weeks. One of my favorite things in life is (and has been) watching my kids play sports/music/dance/cheer.

Cam's a good saver of money, and a hard worker. He's had his own paper route for almost two years now, and had saved up to almost $700 before parting with some on something he really wanted. He 's bought himself three different ipods, although he sold the video nano recently, so he's down to two. . . He's very generous with his money for gifts.

He's a diligent and conscientious student. So far, through a year and 3/4 of middle school, he's a 4.0 student.

Possibly the only thing he would change about his life if asked would be to have a pet. I know all the kids have begged for a pet over the years, but Cam has possibly more than any other. What a mean mom he has to not let him have some little cuddly creature to love and take care of. Well, like the saying goes; "if you can't have a pet, oh well." haha

He loves little kids! He is so good to play with his little cousins whenever they are around.

He has some great friends. When we just had Kylee and Jessica, and I would be around 12-13 year old boys in our ward, I thought "yuck- I hope I don't ever have a boy." Now, I feel completely different! I love my boys, and I even love their friends- well, for the most part.

Cam loves to be around his family. He gets along with everyone great. He has never once had a fight with. . . Kylee! Haha.

Cam and Jake have always been best buds.

Cam has had a lot of injuries/illnesses. If I had to list illnesses/injuries for all the other kids combined, Cam would still have three times more than that. Poor little guy- if it's going to happen to someone, it's most likely going to be him. Many times he's asked "why does it always have to happen to me?" When I did a post about him several months ago, I put a few pictures of some injuries, so I won't redo those, but I did scan some new ones. This first one is a mystery infection he had when he was almost a year old. His pedetrician didn't really know what it was, or how to treat it, but after a few days, it went away. It sure looked sore until then, and he was quite miserable.

When he was 4 or 5, he fell off his bike and had to be rushed to the emergency room by Mike. I was away at girls camp, so Mike had to handle it all. He had two layers of stitches in his chin for a total of 25. He sure got a lot of sympathy (and presents) from neighbors, friends, and family. Just a few months ago, he had a mole removed from his neck that he didn't like the looks of.

Other accidents/illnesses: (I talked about most of these in my May 18, 2008 post) *When he was 5-6 he smashed his thumb in a tent trailer door. He had it X-rayed, but no broken bones. He just lost his thumbnail. *He got his finger shut in the van door and had to wear it in a splint for several weeks. *He had shingles on his back *He had two mouth surgeries to repair his bottom gums *Broke his wrist snowboarding and wore a cast for 5 weeks *He gets very dry knuckles in the winter, and if he doesn't keep aquaphor ointment on them, they'll bleed *He would get severe stomache aches as a little guy and oftentimes I would wonder if he needed his appendix out. They were that bad. Luckily they've lessened quite a bit the past several years.

He likes to do crazy/silly/dorky things. He's a funny kids who makes us laugh.

Freda had a fun birthday party Saturday for Cam, Tom, and Teresa. Stacie made this cute poster and put it on a fence leading into their neighborhood.


On the kids odd birthday years, instead of a birthday party (hurray for me!) with their friends, they get to go out to dinner with me and Mike. Cam chose to go out to Golden Corral. It was actually really good food. No kidding. We had a fun time together.

Cam is a terrific 13 year old. We are so blessed to have him in our family. We all love you Cam!

Happy St. Patricks Day!

Our green dinner. We also had a fun green breakfast. I love St. Patricks Day! Oh, and happy birthday to Sydney!

I found a cute story last year and read it to the kids on St. Patricks Day, then I had hid a paper shamrocks and a pot of gold around the house. They went on a treasure hunt, and got a prize for finding the hidden treasures. The shamrock prize was a box of lucky charms, and the pot of gold was a bag of chocolate coins- "gold." They loved it! So I thought I'd share the story if anyone would like to do this with your family. Have fun!

LEPRECHAUNS

The Irish people tell stories about tiny people no bigger than your little finger. These little people are called leprechauns. Leprechauns are very smart. They are full of tricks. They live in the woods, where they gather gold and bury it. It is very hard to see leprechauns because they run and hide when humans are around. The Irish say that if you can catch a leprechaun, you can make him tell you where his gold is buried. Then you will be richer than all the kings on the earth. But watch out for tricks!

Jack was a boy who wanted to be rich. He was sure he could catch a leprechaun and find out where his gold was. Jack waited and watched, and watched and waited ever so quietly in the woods. Day after day, he watched and waited. At last, one day he saw a tiny man with long white hair and a long white beard. He swooped his hand over the leprechaun and zap! The leprechaun was caught! "Let me go, human!" shouted the leprechaun in a tiny voice. Jack held him safely inside his two hands. The leprechaun struggled and kicked furiously. "First, tell me where your gold is buried." said Jack. "Yes, yes. I will tell you," said the little man. It is buried under a tree. Just walk where I tell you and I will show you.

So Jack walked deep into the woods with the leprechaun. They came to a place where the trees were very close together. The leprechaun pointed to a tree and said, "Here. My gold is buried under this tree." Now Jack knew that this was true, because leprechauns never tell lies. But it was a very plain tree. It looked the same as all the other trees around it. "I will have to go home to get a shovel," said Jack, "but I don't want to forget which tree the gold is under." He had a yellow scarf around his neck. He took the scarf off and tied it around the tree. "You must promise me that you won't take my yellow scarf off this tree," Jack said to the leprechaun. "I promise," said the leprechaun. "Now let me go."

Leprechauns are tricky, but Jack knew that they always had to keep their promises. So he knelt down to the ground. He opened his hand and let the little fellow go. The leprechaun ran off into the woods and was quickly out of sight.

Jack ran as fast as he could to get a shovel. He was very excited and happy. He found a shovel and ran back with it into the woods. Soon he would be richer than any king on earth, he thought.

But when he got to the deep part of the woods, wehre the trees were close together, what do you think he saw? Every tree had a yellow scarf tied around it, exactly like his own scarf. Hundreds and Hundreds of trees. Thousands of trees. As far as he could see, every tree had a yellow scarf tied around it.

Jack's mouth hung open. Tears came to his eyes. Which tree was the gold buried under? There was no way that he could dig under all of those trees. So Jack very sadly went home. He was one more person who had been tricked by a leprechaun.

Injuries/crashes

The past three months have been a bad time in the Jensen household for injuries and accidents. Let's just say we've paid or will be paying thousands of dollars to take care of these problems.
First off I'll start with injuries which have all been mine:
*I tripped over my bench at the sports academy doing step aerobics and twisted my ankle. It was swollen, and bruised for a week or so, and it took several months before it felt normal again.
*I jammed my thumb one day trying to help a neighbor get his car out of a snowdrift. I wondered if it was broken, but since we have crappy health insurance, I didn't want to pay for x-rays just to be told it was sprained, so toughed it out and didn't go to the doctor. Two months later, it's still painful at times, and has definately got issues. It probably was broken, and now it's set wrong. Brother. Can I live with it?
*I slept wrong one night and had a severe case of stiff neck for about 4-5 days. I could barely move. It was so bad one day that I was CRYING about it. Now, that's bad, because I think I have a high pain thresh-hold.
*I wore a new pair of tennis shoes running and got two huge blisters on my heels. They were so big and painful, I wore flip flops for several days. It's been a week and a half and it's just barely to the point where I can wear shoes w/o it hurting.
*I started getting a toothache on a bottom molar last week. When it was so bad I woke up in the night with it aching, I went to the dentist the next day. The tooth already has a root canal and a crown on it. He refered me to our endodontist, who said the tooth is fractured, so I have to make a decision to either: have another root canal- which may or may not fix it; have surgery on it-which may or may not fix it; or have it pulled and have an implant put in. I hate all those choices! I've been in almost constant pain from it for the last three days, taking pain pills every two hours. Finally today the penicillin kicked in and I think I may survive. My cheek is so swollen it looks like I'm sucking on a jaw breaker. I have an appointment with an oral surgeon Monday to see what he would recommend. Bummer!

Now to the car problems. One night close to Christmas, Mike was driving very slowly on some extremely icy roads, but when he came to a corner he was going to turn left on, he couldn't stop, and rear ended the truck in front of him. He didn't damage that truck, but he dented the front fender of our truck, and deployed both airbags. That little incident ended up costing about $2500- $750 of which we had to pay for our high deductable. AND, we were without the truck for almost two weeks. Next, the van started leaking oil quite badly. Five days, and $1,000 later, the problem is fixed. Yesterday Mike noticed a dent and a cracked tail light on his truck. How that happened is a mystery. And last, but not least, last night Jake was driving himself and a friend to Lacrosse practice in the van (with Mike in the front seat) when out of nowhere came a deer who collided with the front of the van. It scared everyone to death, especially Jake. After the deer slid and rolled a ways, he got up and trotted off, leaving behind what you see in the picture, and lots of hair stuck to the car and all over the road! Jake didn't stop shaking for awhile after. Got the estimate today for repairs: $1500. Our deductable is $750. Curses!

Is it just me, or are we done for awhile needing any more car repairs or having any more minor health problems? In the picture, you can't really see that there's a dent to the left of the tail light

Pieces of the headlight were all over the road, and the light was dangling out of place by wires when the boys got out to investigate the damage. Those black marks below the headlight are cracks, not just marks.

Fun Phone Call

My 30 year high school class reunion is coming up this summer (please tell me you find that hard to believe. . .) and I've been thinking about it and wondering when I will get some information about it in the mail. Last night the phone rang while I was saying goodnight to Jake, so Cam answered it and brought it in to me. The female voice on the other end said that she was calling from the Minico class of '79 class reunion planning committee and they wondered if I would be willing to come "out of the closet" and admit that I wasn't really one of the four valedictorians of our senior class. Before I explain what that's about, just let me say when I heard the phrase "come out of the closet" I was thinking she wanted me to admit to something very different than what she was talking about. Haha. Anyway- to explain why I was perceived to be a valedictorian, when in fact, I was not (are valedictorians grateful for a D- in Biology? I think not.) Somehow, by NO planning on my part, in our senior year year-book, my picture was somehow put in place of the real valedictorian, a girl named Becky. Her name is under my picture, but still, it's my picture! All that hard work for her for three years, then she doesn't even get the honor of having her picture on the page of valedictorians. It was very upsetting for her, and I must say she was understandably mad about it (and even took her anger out on me a little-- again, I had nothing to do with it!) So, over the years, I've had fun tricking people (including my family) into thinking I really was smart in high school! The phone call last night turned out to be from Cari, one of my best friends from high school who was calling to let me know when the reunion was, and to mess with my mind a little. I am looking forward to attending the reunion in July and hopefully seeing some people I didn't get to see 10 years ago at our 20th reunion. I'm sad that I don't see many of my classmates very often. The one I see the most is a teacher at LHS, and both girls had him as a government teacher. Should I coax Mike into going with me, or just go it alone? Should I start dieting now or wait a few more months? Haha- just kidding. I'm actually doing good now getting my holiday and cruise weight gain off.

Extended Family

I absolutely love living around many extended family members. There's really no need for any close friends (unlike when we lived in Arizona) because we always have family to do fun things with. We love it when we have visitors for the weekend. The Bundy's are frequent guests, and we always have a lot of fun when they come for a visit. It's an added bonus that they and the Hatch's enjoy each other so much, because then we get to see even more of Kylee and Brody! Emma is like the little sister all the kids always wished for, but never got. . .

Emma sure knows her way around our house, has stuffed animal "friends" she loves to play with, and always has at least one of the kids to play with.

We always have serious card games going late into the night. This night these four thought they would be really funny and put a huge amount of salt into my glass of ice water when I left the room for a minute. Haha. That got a good laugh from them all at my expense.

These next several photos are just random pictures of different family members taken over the past few years. I think we are so blessed to have so much family within a 2 hour drive. I have all 4 sisters and 1 brother, and Mom and David (for half the year), as well as 6 nieces and 8 nephews (most with families and children of their own). I also enjoy seeing my 6 aunts and uncles and many cousins (who also live within a 2 hour drive) on occasion. Mike has his parents, both sisters and brother and their families all within an 80 minute drive.

Sister Ann, sis-in-law Nancy, bro-in-law Dave, and brother Gary.

Niece Sara, Ky, sister Carol, and niece Lindsey.

Mike's sister Teresa, sis-in-law Jessica, and mother-in-law Freda.

My niece Jamie's husband Ryan, niece Sara and husband Cody. And several great-nephews and nieces.

Sisters Carol and Ann, my niece Stacey's husband Todd, two of Carols kids, one of Jamies, one of Sara's and Brody.

My niece Stacey, her two girls, the Bundy's (nice pose Lindsey) and my niece Jamie's boy Josh

The Handy Bunches as we like to call the Hatch's and Bundy's.

Mom, and three of my sisters. Where's Von?

Teresa's kids, and our kids.

Derek, Jaxon, Ky, Jake (and someone man-handling him- Tommy maybe?) Jess and Stacie.

Jessica, Tom, Derek, Teresa, and Cam and Jake.

Ann, Von, Lindsey, Ky, Sydney, Tina, and Janet.

That's not everyone, of course, but enough to show that I do have wonderful memories of these family members. I wish we could see more of Paul and DeNae, Magen and family, Haley, Stacey, Jordan and Claire and their families. And actually most of the Smith's even though they live within the 2 hour distance! This post is dedicated to all of mine and Mike's family. I love you all!

Great Weekend #5

It's very hard to do a post after the cruise one. But, after three weeks, I guess it's time to move on :( But, speaking of the cruise, I spent much of this past Presidents weekend working on a scrapbook of the cruise. It will end up being 20 pages, and I only have 5 more to do, but I ran out of paper yesterday, and since I was incapicatated most of the day with a terrible kinked neck I didn't get out for more yet. I am home again today (when I'm forced to take a day off from exercising, you know something's wrong) with it still bothering me quite a bit, so I won't get out for more paper until hopefully tomorrow. It's been a lot of fun doing the scrapbook. Friday night was a highlight for Mike. One of his missionary friends who recently moved to Kaysville put together a mini-mission reunion for him, Mike, and two other missionaries (only one could make it) their wives and their mission president and his wife who now live in Farmington. All these four missionaries were assistants to the president, and all are from Cache Valley. We haven't seen any of them (except for one family about 11 years ago) since we were first married, and Mike hadn't seen his mission pres. since a reunion shortly after he returned from his mission in '84. Needless to say, Mike was very excited to see and talk to all these men. And the evening didn't disappoint. They spent three hours reminiscing about the good ole mission days (why were the wives invited? haha- actually their stories were quite interesting). Mike's mission president had a huge impact on him as a missionary, and Mike has often said that President Grant is one of the most influential men in his life. So I really loved being able to meet him and his wife because I've heard so much about them. Incidentally, President Grant was a teacher and athletic director at Ricks when I attended there, so we were able to talk about some teachers I had remembered well and that he knew well also. It was a fun night. We came home to visit with Dustin and Daelynn who were staying the night with us on a little weekend get-away to celebrate Dustin's 30th birthday. It was fun to see them for a bit and catch up on what's happening in their lives. I made what was supposed to be a yummy, fun Valentines day breakfast the next morning, but it turned out to be a disaster as I forgot to add the salt, baking powder, and soda to the pink pancakes. YUCK! And embarrassing! Luckily I figured it out before they left (but not before they choked them down) so I could sort of redeem myself from being a terrible cook. Jake and Cam went skiing/snowboarding for the day, so Mike and I did home projects and cleaning for the entire morning, then we went out for lunch at LaNonnes, an Italian restaurant we've been wanting to try. I had a delicious chicken pasta dish, but sadly, Mike's choice of potato dumplings was a big disappointment. He'll know better next time not to branch out with something he's never heard of. It worked well on the cruise- the only difference there being if you didn't like something, you could just order something different. Oh well, live and learn. That night we ordered our traditional heart-shaped pizza from Papa Murphys and spent the evening at home with the kids.

Sunday we had some of Mike's family over for a birthday dinner for Freda and Derek (Teresa's boy who turned 15 the next day). We had a fun evening eating, visiting, and trying to do some tricks that Rick taught us.

This is me and Teresa trying to pick up the paper bag with our teeth standing on one leg. Not so easy for tall people, but little Madelyn did great!

This is Jake balancing a penny on the hook of a wire hanger and trying to make it stay on while twirling it around- stopping it and twirling it around in the other direction. Again, not so easy, but fun to try.

Me with Mike's two sisters and my great friends- Teresa and Stacie.

It was a fun evening. It was nice to have Monday off and the day started out well enough with the kink in my neck for me to go to spinning, but then during pilates, it started bothering me enough that I had to leave early, and spend most of the rest of the day trying not to move. Luckily something like this didn't happen on a day (or days) when I needed to be active- like on the cruise!