Brothers

Gideon Orion on the Left; Magnus Thor on the Right:

They might be brothers…

Gideon Orion Jensen in Here!

Gideon Orion Jensen was born at 6:38 PM on 11/27/13. He weighed 9 lb. 13 oz. and was 20 and 1/2 inches long. His head was 13 and 3/4 inches around. Both he and Mommy are doing very well.

Big Brother Magnus seems to like him so far. He thought Gideon’s tiny fingers were very cute.

Here is our whole family:

November Gorge

A few weeks ago, Dana wanted to take a trip to the Gorge. He was going to go on a short hike to see some waterfalls. Ruth and Magnus decided to come to get out of the house for a while. The hike was to Elowah Falls and Upper McCord Creek Falls. This is a favorite hike of ours, but we have never gone to the second waterfall. Magnus took a nap in the car, so Dana headed to the upper falls. The trail gets pretty high and has some great views, including a view into the amphitheater surrounding Elowah.

The weather was nice and there was plenty of green. Upper McCord Creek Falls is a very nice twin waterfall.

Dana met up with Ruth and Magnus heading to Elowah. The hike is almost a mile in and a mile out, and both Magnus and pregnant Ruth made it the whole way.

While Dana took climbed around taking pictures, Magnus threw rocks in the water and Ruth rested. Everybody had a great time.

 

We took a second trip to the Gorge this month just to have a nice drive. We stopped at some of the main spots on the Historic Highway. Crown Point was particularly windy that day. The kind of windy where it is difficult to stand. Magnus tried it for just a second and wanted to get back in the car exclaiming, “I not want to fly away.”

 

 

Latourell Falls was much less windy and Dana and Magnus had a nice stroll down to the falls. Parts of the trail were very icy and Magnus thought that was silly.

He also wanted to climb on these rocks we really like.

Multnomah Falls had a lot of ice on it, making it look a little different. 

We found some icicles that made very handy swords.

This was Halloween!

We went to the local pumpkin patch again this year to get some pumpkins for Halloween. We really liked it last year, but this year was much more crowded and a little less fun. But Magnus did enjoy all the tractors and the petting zoo. And we did find some nice pumpkins.

 

 

The night before Halloween was the night our church held Trunk’or’Treat. This worked out well because Dana was free that night, but had to work the next night. Ruth sat and handed out candy, while Dana took Magnus to each car. He was dressed as a “Cockridil” (crocodile). On our way to the church Magnus fell asleep, so when we started trick-or-treating he was still a little drowsy. It was funny to watch him in a sleepy daze see all the costume. He seemed very confused. He soon figured out what was happening and had a great time. He kept wanting to go and talk to all the characters he knew. And he was very pleased at the ones that would say “hi” to him. His favorites were the super heroes like Hulk, Wolverine, and Batman.

We had a lot of fun carving our pumpkins this year. Ruth did the three on the bottom and Dana did the three on top.

Magnus liked the pumpkins too. The small bumpy one is his.

Our little crocodile:

Ruth was able to take Magnus out on Halloween, and once Magnus learned that each house gave him candy he was adamant about going just a few more after each one.

The End of a Wonderful Adventure

After getting back from New York and Vermont, we had just a few days in Rhode Island before we had to go home.

Rosanne got a day off of work for Columbus Day and came with us to Massachusetts. Dana really wanted to see some cranberry bogs, so he used Google Earth images to locate where some were. We lucked out and found one that was in the process of a wet harvest. That is where they fill the bog with water and skim the berries off the surface. The farmers were nice enough to let us watch. It was really neat seeing the berries on the water.

We then hiked on the Ponkapoag Bog Walk. It was fun to walk from the parking lot by the freeway into the quiet of the woods and then on to a little board walk out to the Ponkapoag Pond. The trees and plants were very nice.

One of the big reasons Dana wanted to go here was to find the carnivorous plants that grow there. We all had fun searching the mossy mounds among the trees to find these pitcher plants.

The carnivorous sundews were much harder to spot. Thanks to some internet searching on our phones we found out more about how small they were: very small. On the left is a sundew plant, on the right is Dana’s camera taking the picture (can you see the sundew?).

We had dinner at Friendly’s and Magnus really liked his ice cream. So much that he wouldn’t eat it till I took a picture of him with it.

We ended the day with a visit to the Boston LDS Temple, where we got married 7 years ago.

We packed most of the next day, but we did take some time to go to the beach. It ended up being one of the nicest days at a beach we have had and we wish we had had more time.

We also went along Ocean Drive in Newport and stopped at Brenton Point, a place Dana really loves.

Before heading to the airport the next day, Ruth took Dana to see the Breakers, one of the mansions in Newport. It was Dana’s first visit in a mansion and it reminded him a lot of the castles in Europe.

We also liked this old beech tree on the grounds:

Grandma Rose took us to the airport and it was time to say “good-bye.” We are so glad we could spend time in New England with everyone. Thank you for letting us stay with you Grandma and Grandpa!