Merry Christmas from the Jensens.
We hope all our family and friends are doing well and we send our best wishes to you.
We will leave you with some fun pictures of Magnus as he gets excited for this wonderful holiday:
Here Magnus shows off one of the elf gifts he received. He thought the reindeer were delicious. 
Magnus also wishes you all Season’s Greetings!
I really like building and decorating gingerbread houses. But I don’t actually like gingerbread – neither does Dana. Also, Dana’s creative prowess is such that we don’t really construct houses either. So I think a more accurate title for this would be “Building Edible Holiday Structures.”
So here are our edible holiday structures:
As is tradition, I finished mine before Dana really got started.
I built a schoolhouse with a bell. But it must have been built of shoddy materials because it fell down.
It was refashioned into a tent. 
Dana built a log cabin with sled and puffy marshmallow smoke.
Magnus liked helping by sampling the array of candies.
And here are some cute pictures of Magnus from the last few weeks:
My good friend Brian recently moved to Carson, WA in the Columbia River Gorge for his work. Last week we finally had a chance to go and see him. We started in the morning with a quick stop at Cape Horn, a very nice view point.
We asked Brian if he would help us find a Christmas tree in the National Forest. So, we headed up in to the woods to find our perfect tree. Here is Magnus helping us with our search:
Finally we found one that was the right size.
A little further up the road we found some snow. Magnus thought the stuff was weird, but he liked stomping around in it.
Brian and Magnus playing in the snow.
On the way down the mountain we stopped briefly at Panther Creek Falls. All the recent rains had made it very full (especially compared to when we were here in June). It was a very awesome thing to see.
Brian took us to a great little restaurant in Stevenson (my burger’s patty was half beef and half bacon and it was delicious). He also showed us his family’s house there that they rent out. The house was cool and the view from there was amazing.
Magnus liked this big chunk of petrified wood and Dana liked these cute little mushrooms.
On the way back home we took in a view of Beacon Rock.
And Cape Horn in the evening.
It was a good day. Thanks, Brian for helping get our Christmas Tree.
Ivan wrote this song a few years ago and just recently had it made into a children’s Christmas book. He hired an illustrator himself and got it published. We are so proud! You can find the book on Amazon – it would make a great Christmas gift 
On October 26, we headed up to Seattle to go to the King Tut exhibit at the Seattle Science Center. We went with my sister Elina, my dad, Terry, and several of Terry’s children and grand children. There is a full group shot below.
We had a lot of fun. The exhibit was amazing with everything from ancient statues, gold jewelry, furniture from the tomb, a cat sarcophagus, and a very cool gold death mask. It was also very busy.
After going through the King Tut part we spent some time seeing some other things in the museum. I naturally gravitated to the invertebrate exhibit with the butterfly zoo. It was very fun to have the butterflies land on you. Though Magnus was a little confused by what was happening.
Here are some of the pretty butterflies:
Magnus really enjoyed this big robot scorpion. He watched it for a long time. There was some other live bugs, including this honeybee hive. Ryan and Rachel are showing how to be a bee.
Outside again, we got some cotton candy and Magnus chased the pigeons quite vigorously.
Here we are posing in front of the Space Needle:
And a cool sand mural Ruth found as they prepared for Dia De Los Muertos.
Soon, we all headed over to Pike’s Place Market. We bought this really cool Romanesco Broccoli (but it tastes more like cauliflower). We ate it a few days later and it was very delicious. We also watched some fish mongers tossing the fish around.
We ended on the waterfront for salmon at the Salmon Cooker (mine and my dad’s favorite).
Thanks to everyone for making this such an awesome adventure.
