We're alive in SF

Hi family! Here's an update:

Diana and I have been loving it out here so far. We've made a lot of good friends, Diana has a good job, and I'm liking dental school a lot. I just finished up with boards over the Summer, and second year is my easy year, so life is good. In fact, I've got so much free time this year that if you were ever going to come to visit, now would be the time... Hint hint.

We're planning on heading to Utah for Thanksgiving, and although we originally thought Diana wouldn't be able to get Christmas off, it's looking like she might thanks to a chance schedule mix up with an Eastern Orthodox employee! We hope to see as many of you as we can over the Holidays.

Here's a couple of pictures for your enjoyment so you can remember what we look like:

Me at School.

Diana on her way to work at the robot factory.

FHE at the Dixons

Right now Will is focusing on getting his Pinewood Derby done. He is making a yellow and blue Hot Rod. He is getting excited to race his car to the finish line!

Kirsten is keeping busy by Irish Step Dancing, doing school work, and babysitting. She also enjoys attending Stake Dances now that she is fourteen. Kirsti is happy that it is the fourth quarter of school because she is looking forward to the summer.

Lindsay is a sophomore in high school.
For those of you not fluent in Webdings, Lindsay is a sophomore in high school. She is having fun on her high schoool tennis team and is kept busy (and tired) with school and early morning seminary. She is excited for her 16th birthday in 97 days...not that anyone is counting.

Debi, the stake media relations assistant, has taken over the upstairs computer. During her "time off," she does housework and chauffering. Check out Debi's recent essay at http://deseretbook.com/time-out/friends

Jim is trying to keep the family funds coming in faster than they're going out. It's enjoyable for the most part but he's waiting for some contracts to finalize so things are a little slow right now. He's also enjoying working as the priest quorum adviser. They're all great young men and they're all pretty active. He's also working with Will on his pinewood derby and he's always up for watching BYU sports.

The Jensen's almost Quarterly Report

This year is already going so fast, and with the warmer weather here we have been ready for spring. The kids have loved getting out their scooters and Janie just wants to walk (they of course go in 4 different directions at various speeds). Janie's favorite word is "Luna" so she always watches for Luna animals outside. She loves fuzzy things like stuffed animals, her new cute lamby coat, and her fuzzy pruple scarf. As shown in the video, Janie's favorite thing to do is climb and stand up on the highest place she can. Notice the laugh with delight when she reaches the top.
Stryder still loves fuzzy things. He likes to do a lot of imaginary play with anything ranging from fuzzy animals, toy star wars figures, or even his colored spelling tiles. One day he wanted Ari to play with him and Stryder told him which tiles were fighting the other ones and Ari said "I just wanted to make words." Stryder wants to take karate classes but the gym we looked into was $120 per month - he may need to take some community classes first!
Isaac is finally working on potty training. When we would talk about wearing underwear instead of diapers he would just say "Nah" and "I'm just a little boy." He was being a little lazy boy! Now if we say he needs to wear a diaper like at bedtime he laughs and says "That's silly, I don't wear diapers!" If he can tell I'm mad he says "mom, I love you." But if he gets mad he says "Mom I hate you." He wants to build a slide from our new house to Grandma and Grandpa Browning's.
Ari still comes up with funny phrases... Ari-isms. I think he's past the "yesternight" but he does get confused about eating dinner in the morning. He still calls oranges "orange berries" (like blueberries or blackberries) He even says apple berries. Ari loves mom and dad "infinity and beyond years", and thinks it takes infinity and beyond hours to get home from Springville. He insisted that "Who let the Dog's Out?" was really "Who Likes a Dog Sound?" He is stuck on "us want to do something" rather than "we". He is incredible at head stands, back handsprings on the tramp, climbing the walls and just being brave and crazy. His video shows doing a flip going down two slides and the subsequent adrenaline rush!
The big news for our family is that we are building a house in South East Provo. It will still be a few more months, but we are hoping to have some Seven Peaks time at this house.

Dear kids,

Just a little more information about the quilts that Dad posted. I actually sent 11 of my own quilts plus one from Renee Thackeray and one from a quilting friend which is a ""matching" quilt like some of the little ones got for Christmas. I had Dad take pictures of the different varieties and wrote the measurements on the back of the photos so that I had the information for future quilts. I have started two of a different pattern after sending these off and hope to have enough finished to mail another box in a two or three months. I machine quilted these quilts so much more time is involved than tied quilts. Dad said he will help with some tied quilts while he watches TV--so I will have to get some ready while he is in Russia.

Love,

Mom

Grandma's Palestinian baby quilts

Just posting mom's pictures to make sure this works. --dad

Note from dad and mom/grandpa and grandma

With a lot of help from Google's Blogger Setup, I created this blog as a starter. We can improve it as we go along. I like Debi's idea of a monthly blog from each family (or individual, if you wish) entered near the first of each month. Maybe we could post January's blogs now, even though they will be a tad late. As I understand things, the idea would be simply to keep one another up on what we consider at all noteworthy, interesting, or entertaining. I'm going to post a few pictures of Joan's quilts which she made for Palestinian families. She worked like a beaver getting them ready, and they are beautiful! --Much love, dad/grandpa