Merry Christmas!

We hope you all had a merry Christmas! We did! We started with Christmas Eve at Else’s house. Magnus came in and got right down to business examining and tasting all the presents.

Dinner was ham and fingerling potatoes followed by the traditional Christmas Eve dessert, ris a’lamond. Else won the first time in many years. Magnus gave out high-fives to all.

After dinner we took the obligatory pictures by the tree. Aren’t we cute?

And Dana read us the Christmas story.

We opened our presents and Magnus made sure to help corral the wrapping paper.

The next morning Santa had brought us some gifts so we opened those before going to church with Else. It was a nice (and very full) meeting.

Dana was especially pleased to get this Lego Star Wars minifigure encyclopedia.

After brunch we drove down to Salem for Christmas dinner with Ivan and Terry.

The table was set beautifully for a dinner of spare ribs and all the fixings. Many thanks to the various cooks who helped out in the kitchen!

We didn’t get a chance to get a picture around the table before we were done eating; we were just too excited about the yummy food!

Merry Christmas from the Jensens!

Christmas Wishes

Merry Christmas, loved ones! We hope The holiday was meaningful and enjoyable; it sure gave Magnus a lot to think about.

Magnus Stands Alone

Magnus stands alone

Magnus has many fans cheering on his efforts towards walking. Anton stopped by and helped with some of the practice.

Ruth’s birthday bash!

It was my birthday last week and we celebrated in a grand fashion.

On Wednesday we went ice skating with Ivan and Elina. Magnus was good and napped during the majority of the outing, being swapped from person to person as we took turns skating.

Here is Dana and I on the ice.

On Friday we went out to the gorge to see pretty things. We went to Latourell Falls and hiked up behind the falls. It was chilly but not too cold.

Magnus had a blast riding on Dana’s shoulders in the outdoors. He giggled and bounced and talked during the walk up. On the hike down, I carried him in the baby carrier and he fell asleep almost immediately.

We came home and went to dinner at Red Robin and then Else took me shopping to get some socks (yay, new socks!) and then we went home and ate chocolate-peppermint cake. I made it myself. The filling is like York peppermint patty filling and the frosting has candy canes in it. It was yummy!

Thanks for the great birthday, everybody!

Day of Thanks for all the fish! And everything else.

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving…we did! We have so many things to be thankful for, like all you guys!

We were able to go down to Salem on Wednesday to relax and start making some food. Magnus helped by crawling all over the place and entertaining the dog, Chuck. He really loved to pet Chuck. Chuck did not seem to enjoy it as much.

We also took a break to dance. Here Elina and Ivan are doing the Monster Mash.

Terry worked very hard and made a wonderful meal. But she made it look like it took no effort at all! Way to go, Terry! The turkey was wonderful!

Our Thanksgiving feast (Magnus was taking a nap).

Magnus got some after-dinner-climb-on-Grandpa time:

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it’s time to get ready for for Christmas!

End of our trip! (It’s about time!)

So we’re finally getting the end of our trip posted about… After Colorado we made a stop in Salt Lake City to see the things we missed.

We stopped by temple square and got to go to the top of church office building, something I had never done before.

We also stopped to see some friends of ours. We saw my former roommate, Jackie and her family. Her baby Gordon is two months younger than Magnus. We stopped by and saw my friend Bethany and her baby Dylan.

And finally we stopped in to see Dana’s former roommates Devin and Jordan and his family. We had fun seeing everybody.

On the drive home we stopped in Brigham City to see the temple under construction! It was pretty.

Thank you to Aunt Mary and family for letting us crash the night there in Boise! Magnus was excited to meet his Great Grant-pa! And we all had a good visit.

 

It was a good trip and we are glad to be home.

Day of the Dinosaur! 2

October 4 marked the 96th anniversary of Dinosaur becoming a National Monument. This was also the day that the park held the grand opening of it’s new Dinosaur Quarry building. Five years ago they had to close the old one due to the poor structural integrity of the quarry (to the point that windows were falling out, walls exploded, and one side of the building was 15 ft. higher than the other). We were happy that we were able to go to the opening of the remade Quarry and new visitor center.

Inside the Quarry is the famous Wall of Bones. It is a hillside that contains over 1500 dinosaur bones that were left where they lie. There are about 15 species of dinosaur, including the stegosaurus (pictured below on the far right). There are also baby dinosaurs. It is very cool to see.

Magnus helped to celebrate by breaking in his Halloween costume. The costume didn’t specify what sort of green, spiny creature it was, so we decided he was a dinosaur.

There was a very nice ceremony that included a blessing from a Uintah Indian Chieftain. The keynote speaker was Governor Gary Herbert of Utah, who also cut the ribbon.

We got to meet him and he was impressed (as was everyone else) by Magnus’s dinosaur awesome-ness.

After the ceremony we headed out into the park again.

We stopped by some very nice petroglyphs that are over 1000 years old. You try and figure out what they are pictures of (we liked the jazz hands):

We had a good time wandering around trying to find as many as we could. They were all over the cliff face.

We thought this view of Split Mountain and the Green River was cool. Dinosaur really has some neat rock formations.

 

We couldn’t pass this up: 

We did one more long drive down a dirt road to see the well-known McKee Spring Petroglyphs. They were very cool. The first spot had some sort of buffalo on it.

These are the main ones. I really like the little guy by the big one’s left foot. He seems so excited about something. Also, The big one has a cool shield.

That was our Dinosaur adventure.