what are the jensen's up to?

The last month or so has been a bit chaotic, but things are going well. In the middle of August, Matt started the MBA program at the U and has really enjoyed everything so far. He is also working full time still for ThomasArts and starting about August they hit their busiest time of the year, so between work and school, he has been crazy busy, though he would never complain about it.

I started my second year of teaching and thankfully am at the same school, same grade, and same classroom. That made for a nice summer break. This year I have a much bigger class (33) and they have an entirely different attitude than my class last year, so it has been a little hard adjusting. However, because of the big class size, I got approved for a classroom aid for about 20 hours a week and talked one of my best friends, Nadia, into do it for me. It has been so fun working with her again. I'm also finishing up my ESL endorsement at the U and busy with the YW in the ward.

While life has been much busier, and Matt and I haven't seen each other as often, we have made it a goal to still find time for fun things like the fair, quick U game trips, walks around the neighborhood, etc. Life is good and we can't complain.

"the fair is a veritable smorgasbord-orgasbord-orgasbord"

How great is the Utah State Fair? We think it's pretty great. We headed down last weekend with the Thurgoods putting aside worries about money and calories for the night, and we're very glad we did. Through the night we also met up with the Bellamys and Tucker and Donnalee.

Between the sets of Matts and Jennys we were able to try (meaning we split most of these four ways) the following: pork chop on a stick, deep fried cheesecake with raspberry sauce, grilled turkey leg, lamb ribs, deep fried pickle, navajo taco, deep fried snickers, and a corn dog. The definite winners of the night were the deep fried cheesecake and grilled turkey leg.

(Every time I try to type fried, I typed friend. I think that means that fried=friend.)

Visiting our dear friend Big Red.

Visiting our other dear friend, deep fried cheesecake.

Jenny won the MVP of the night for her amazing lamb catch as it almost fell to the dirt!

A fair is a veritable smorgasbord orgasbord orgasbord
After the gates are shut
Each night when the lights go out
It can be found on the ground all around
That's where a rat can glut, glut, glut, glut!

We certainly went home feeling like Templeton from Charlotte's web.

do you know the way to san jose?

Okay, so I've been really bad at updating our blog. What's new? Anyway, this is one of those nights when Matt is out with a study group and I'm putting off doing housework. These nights come pretty often lately.

Over the weekend of the 11-13 of September we make the trek to San Jose to see our dear old Utes take on San Jose State. Here are the pros and cons from the weekend.

Pros:

-Bellamy's had a car big enough to fit us all.

-Boston was a champ and didn't cry or get fussy at all through the 23 hours.

-We got to stop in San Francisco and the weather was perfect.

-We got to eat at Scoma's.

-The Utes pulled out a W.

-The kareoke headphone game to Best Hits of the 90s.

-Wienershnitzle was surprisingly not as bad as we thought it would be at midnight.

-Thurbad never sang Mariah Carey (unlike the San Diego trip last year)

Cons:

-We could never find a Popeye's open.

-The Utes looked bad most of the game.

-Even though the company was good, the drive was long.

-We could never find a Popeye's open.

-The Sands Hotel and Casino didn't really have complimentary drinks like we were told. (We were planning on drinking at least $25 worth of coke per person.)

-Did I mention we couldn't find a Popeye's? Freaking Popeye's!

The beautiful Sands hotel room.

Possibly the best meal we've ever had. Thank you Scoma's!

Beautiful San Fran!

Awesome picture of Bean Town at the game. I forgot to take any other pictures at the game because I was too busy figuring out what superstitions would get the Utes to win...it ended up that I needed to take off my sweatshirt and freeze, Matt had to make Popeye's bets (in vain), Adam had to hold a napkin and dig it into his keys, and Thurbad had to stand 20 rows above us. You may think we're crazy, but the 4th quarter looked much better.

Thanks Bellamys and Thurgoods for a great weekend!

so long sweet summer

Since today was offically the last day of summer, I was remembering how we never posted pictures from all of the fun we had when the whole Jensen gang got together. It was so much fun to see everyone and to do all of the great things we did. We love you guys!

Some of the fun things we don't have pictures from include the Gibson family picnic, Cherry Hills, Grandma J's suprise party, the dinosaur park, the Farmer's Market, and many late nights of Corsari.

We started things off on the 4th with a 5K for the Murray Fun Days.

The rest of the day was spent at Grandma J's and Bruce and Nancy's with a lot of fireworks.

One of the days Matt went with Bruce and the other siblings to the race track. I can't remember who won...David?

Another morning we walked around the Silver Lake loop. It was perfect weather for it.

Another day, we got the opportunity to do the iFly at the Solomon Center, which is definately one of the coolest things I've done. I loved it so much that Matt took me again for my birthday.

We enjoyed a lovely day in Park City doing the Alpine Slide, zipline, swimming, and eating lots of good food.

And finally, one of the best parts was playing around with our favorite nieces and nephews!

How could you not love these kids?

Thank you Bruce and Nancy for such a fun summer staycation!

...and they lived happily ever after

Matt and I are pretty good at drawing out holidays and getting the most out of them, so we did just that for our anniversary.

Anniversary celebration number one happened the weekend before the actual day and included spending the weekend in Park City, delicious sushi at Hapa Grill, the Alpine Slide and Coaster, the Park City Arts Festival (which was our first date), swimming, and delicious El Chubasco with the Thurgoods and the Paynes. Thanks for planning such a great weekend, Matty boy!

Anniversary celebration number two was spent in Chicago and included getting to see the Chicago Jensen crew, the Northbrook carnival (aren't carnivals the greatest?), Matt winning a $25 gift card to Macaroni Grill, Lucky's (as seen on Man v. Food), the Art Institute of Chicago, sushi, Julie and Julia, a skyline tour of downtown Chicago on a boat, Ed Debevics, and a Ferris Wheel ride. Thanks Andy and Amy for having us!

So here's to three wonderful years and the many more to come!

San Diego

Back in June we had the opportunity to take a quick weekend trip to San Diego with Bruce and Autumn. While we were only there for a couple days, we packed a lot of fun in.

We had a delicious brunch at Del Coronado and were about to meet up with two of our favorite people, Elliot and Leslie. It was so fun to catch up with them.

Fun at the San Diego Zoo. When Autumn and I put the polar bear masks on, the panther tried to attack us. Luckily, Matt fought it off. It wore him out so much that he needed a foot massage after.

The main reason we went to San Diego = baseball. Thanks for the fun weekend Bruce and Nanc!

Lastly, I had to post this picture just for Jess.

in memory of tammy rogers 8.11.1966 - 6.6.2009

Things I learned from my sis:
- how to do a bridge when shuffling cards (we stayed up all night trying to do this)
- animals need a voice too
- how to play No Peeky
- how to get over stupid boys
- how to dress like an 80's rocker
- nubbin night
- songs like "weenie man"
- that she could have been in Flashdance ;)
- how to take silly pictures
- that it's important to stay in touch with those you love
- send Christmas and birthday gifts on time
- family and faith in God are the most important things in life
- saying goodbye is always hard (I remember always trying to hide in the bathroom when she was flying back home because I was too sad to hug her and say goodbye.)

She was a great sister, friend, lover of animals, and example and I will always love her.

sweet baby jack

We were so lucky to get to go to Arizona for our sweet nephew's baby blessing. We had so much fun spending the weekend with the Barkers

spring break in moab

Over spring break, we decided to do a quick trip to Moab. Some of the highlights were Matt caving in and taking me to Taco Time in Price, Utah, going through Canyonlands, Arches, and Dead Horse Point, tasty restaurants in Moab, seeing Monsters vs. Aliens, and pretending that several things we saw were made by dinasaurs - for example, see last photo.

the end of 2008...are we really that behind?

According to Matt, since school's out for the summer, I just sit around all day. What better thing to do than update the blog? Looking back through our pictures, I realized that we still had trips and holiday pictures that we never posted from November/December. Below is a recap of fun events including Thanksgiving, trip to Chicago, Yankee Swap, and Christmas.

Thanksgiving weekend and getting up our Christmas tree.

In mid December we flew out to Chicago to see Andy, Amy, and Autumn, as well as our Chicago Bears. We had a fabulous time! Huge thanks to Andy and Amy for having us and putting together so many fun things to do. This is the giant Christmas Tree by Marshall Fields in Chicago, right after we saw Wicked.

We went to eat at Fogo de Chao and saw Kyle Orton - he's in the background, just above Andy's left shoulder. We had to act like we were taking a picture of Matt and Andy so we didn't look like too big of idiots.
This was one of the most fun things I have ever done in my life. It was absolutely freezing, and as you can tell we were all wearing about 7 layers each, but it was totally worth it. We had great seats and the Bears won in overtime against the New Orleans Saints. Bear down!

One of my favorite parts about Christmas time is that all of our friends are back in town and we're all about to get together for Yankee Swap. This year we decided to go big and splurged on a turduckin. That's right, a turkey, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken, stuffed with creole dressing. I hope you all can appreciate our fabulous Christmas garb.

Finally, we started off 2009 with a small surprise party for Matt. We ended up beating most people there because Matt walks way too quickly out of Jazz games and also knows how to get around traffic, but we had a great time. Thanks to everyone who came.

a gem in salt lake city

One of my favorite events in Salt Lake will be happening May 15,16, and 17: The Living Traditions Festival. This is something Matt and I had heard about for a couple years, but we were never able to go. Last year, we went for the first time and loved it. It is free admission and they have food demonstrations, dancers/performers, crafts, and fantastic food! Last year we got to watch a Bulgarian cooking demonstration and ate Pakistani and Salvadoran food. This was the beautiful day that I was introduced to pupusas. Anyway, if you want to see all of the delicious food vendors and learn more about it visit http://www.ci.slc.ut.us/arts/livingtraditions/food.html.

pay it forward

The first 3 people to leave a comment on this post will receive, at some point during the year, a handmade gift/treat from me. What it will be and when it will arrive is a total surprise! The catch is that you must participate as well. Before you leave your comment, write up a pay it forward post on your blog to keep the fun going. Then come back, let me know you're going to play and sit back and anticipate the arrival of your gift! Hooray for homemade things!

my two most recent regrets

I've never made a snack food stadium or a bacon explosion. I'm a bad person.

a utah family are we.

If you didn't enjoy this football season, there's something seriously wrong with you. Either that or you're a BYU fan. Actually, cougs/zoobs would fall under that first category. What a year! I know I'm late on this, but I can't remember a year I enjoyed more this year. We bought season tickets after getting out of the MUSS, hit a few away games, rushed the field 3 times, and loved every second. Especially all those seconds while we were beating 'Bama into the groud. And those seconds watching Max Hall totally fall apart.With Nicola at the Utah State game.

Milking the cow.The whole Utah State game crew. And if you were wondering the answer is yes, we did enjoy the Sizzler afterwards.Do Stayner and Thurbadness have matching Utah shirts. Yes, yes they do.

Saw the cousin Jensens (of LA), the Rudelich pair (of LA), Josh (of the Diego), the E. and L. Scruggs' (also of the Diego), and somehow managed to put up with a drive to and from the Diego with Bellamy and Thurbad, who bicker like a married couple.

The season-ticket holders (north end-zone pride! low-five!)

What up Kruger and Johnson?

Yep, we really are that cool. This is right after Max Hall tried to pass by me on the field but was picked off by some Utes.

cheated by the bellamy's

The Thurgoods (below as Publisher's Clearing House) hosted their annual Halloween party. Our tradition is winning. But we lost to the Bellamys, who cheated and brought their kid dressed up too. Come on, a monkey, a tree, and a banana? Weak! It was a total kid-sympathetic vote. Next year we're stealing a kid to ensure to win.

Who would you have voted for? The Bellamys? Or us. I don't have a picture of them but we were...a tropical couple,

monkeys,

ghosts,

thugs,
pirates,

and greeks! We got cheated!