Hanging out in the backyard, enjoying the BEAUTIFUL April weather

For most of this year, we've seen more sun than expected.  The past few days, we have had clear skies and have reached the mid-70's, so everyone has been outside enjoying the warm, sunny weather.  Meanwhile, it is still snowing in much of the midwest.  I have been sure to text my brother-in-law Matt about mowing my lawn (he responds by saying he has used his snowblower recently!)

One of the best parts of warm, sunny weather is popcicles!!!

  

Lots of popcicles

Jacob and Claire like to get different flavors so they can each try the others' flavor.  

For the record, we are purposefully not closing the hole in the fence because our neighbors kids enjoy hopping through the fence to play with our kids, and vice versa.

For Claire, sometimes it feels a little TOO warm, so she goes and reads in the sliver of shade by the back fence.

Our azaleas (I think) near the front porch have been in full bloom and look nice.

Dani enjoys spending lunchtime outside on days like these.

Stylish Kate

Kate is really into shoes.  She also loves hats.  Recently, she's been into doing both at the same time.

What a little cutie!

Jared taught Kate to say, "WAZZUP"  Here's how she says it.

We got this cute picture of Kate playing drums with her daddy.  

Favorite Words and Phrases

The babies are very vocal and opinionated.  Here is a sampling of some of the most-heard words and phrases.

KATE
"Cuddle Mommy... CUDDLE MOMMY!!!" - I want Mama to hold me.  Right Now.
"Da Momma Bone" - Dani's Phone
"OKAY" (pronounced "O-Kie")
"NO MEE-AM!!!" (No Liam!)
"Coo" - Claire
"Little Snack" - Kate thinks she needs a snack in order to sit quietly in the car

LIAM
"Buddy" - Jacob
"BAAAAAAAAA!"  - yelling this is an after-dinner tradition.
"NO ______ NO!"  he's very opinionated and expresses quite well the things he does not want.  For example, if you say, "I love you" when he's in a bad mood, he'll respond "NO DAB-OO NO!"
"Comp-kah" (an audio book grandma Vicki gave us)

BOTH
They love to identify whose drink is whose.  "Da Mama Adoo?" (mama's water)
"NANA!!!!!"  i.e. - the phone is ringing!!!

Happy Birthday Claire and Jacob!

April 18, we celebrated Jacob and Claire's real birthday.  The day started with a yummy breakfast of a Mickey Mouse pancake, sausage, and fruit in their room.

For dinner, the birthday kids requested shrimp, salad, and mangos (a step up from last year's shrimp and hot dogs!).  We had birthday cake (singing Happy Birthday, since it was actually their birthday), and we opened presents from Nana and Papa and from one another.

The next day, they each invited a friend from the neighborhood and we went and saw The Croods.  I can't say the movie was anything special, but it was hilarious watching the 4 kids' reaction to the movie.  At various points, all 4 were literally on the edge of their seats and looked very nervous.  At another point, both Jacob and his friend (who are kindred spirits) were covering their ears.  And at another point, we could see little tears on Jacob's friend's cheeks, and Jacob looked like he was about to join in. In the end, all was good, and they were all talking enthusiastically about the movie.

We went and got pizza at a little place in town.  They happened to have an extremely old arcade, where the kids took turns playing bowling, millipede, and other games.  Claire was sure to inform one of the people working at the pizza place that it wasn't actually their birthday.

We came home to have Princess Leia cupcakes (they looked awesome!).  Jacob and his friend are huge Star Wars fans, but they weren't sure about the Leia cupcakes, so they took off the Oreos and proclaimed them to be Luke Skywalker cupcakes, which, I guess works since Luke and Leia are twins (fitting for Jacob and Claire to be obsessed with them!).

It was a pretty low-key birthday party, but it was a lot of fun to take our kids and their friends to celebrate, and we are happy they have friends who are good influences and they share interests with.

This last year has seen a lot of growth academically, personally, and spiritually.  We are so proud of the strong commitment both kids have to choosing the right and to treating others kindly.  We look forward to what the next year brings.  

Happy 7th birthday kiddos!!!  

As many of you know, my youngest brother, Andrew, who is now serving a mission for our church in Houston, Texas, was diagnosed with Type I diabetes when he was 12. It affects his everyday life with monitoring his blood sugar level and complicates even the simplest activities like sitting down to a meal or eating a snack. JDRF is the leading global organization dedicated to Type I diabetes research. The goal of JDRF is to improve the lives of every person affected by T1D by accelerating progress on the most promising opportunities for curing, better treating, and preventing T1D.

My parents have been heavily involved in raising funds in Cincinnati, and they were the top individual fundraising team for 5 years. In recognition of their dedication to the organization, my parents are being honored this year at a formal gala, to be attended by over 750 people, as "Cincinnatians of the Year" by JDRF. All of my siblings and I are looking forward to joining them for the event in a few weeks.

My parents will be making a generous personal donation that evening, as will Dani and I and each of my siblings. We will also be presenting a "friends and family" donation the night of the gala, and we wanted to ask each of you to consider making a donation as part of this effort. Any amount helps, as JDRF contributes more than 80% of all donations directly to research. It would mean a lot to me and my family if our close friends would consider donating to JDRF to fund research for Type I diabetes.

You can contribute by going online at jdrf-cincinnati.ejoinme.org/Jensen. We look forward to presenting this friends and family contribution at the Gala on May 11th, so we need to have all contributions by May 6th.

The theme of the Gala is “Oz, Journey to the Cure”. Like Dorothy’s three intrepid companions, we seek to touch your heart to support those who have a brain doing the research to give Andrew and others the courage to deal with this disease.

Thank you for your love and support!

Jared and Dani

Time with Grandparents

John and Vicki came and spent a few days with us.  On Friday, the boys (minus Liam) went to watch the Blazers play against Oklahoma City at the Rose Garden.  Our tickets were quite high, but it was still impressive to watch such talent.  The Blazers kept it close in the first half until the Thunder ran away with it in the second half.

We went to Jacob's baseball game, went to the tulip festival, went shopping, celebrated Jacob and Claire's birthday, and John and Vicki got to read with the grandkids.  Normally, Kate only has Dani to read with, but for these days, she had more willing readers, and she took advantage of that!

Claire and Vicki also read a book together.

John was excited for a yummy Sunday dinner.

Hammin' it up with Liam

Liam has been kind of a ham recently.  Tonight, while eating some ice cream cake, Liam may have gotten a little bit too big of a bite and made a face like he had brain freeze.  Dani laughed, so Liam decided to hold the face.  And make it again, and again, and again... while trying not to smile!  It was Hilarious! 

Later, he was still in quite a good mood and was making all sorts of funny and cute faces.

Later, before we got his pajamas on, he was showing off the belly, with Jacob's Scrappers hat on backwards.  What a cool dude!

Happy Present Day to Kiddos

It's not Claire and Jacob's birthday.  Claire wants to make sure that was clear.  She is a very literal child and wants to make sure everyone's facts are straight.  There is an Old Navy commercial (link) that reminds us so much of Claire - the little girl on the commercial even looks a little like Claire!

Anyway, we decided to celebrate Jacob and Claire's not birthday with presents.  Before the unwrapping got underway, Liam had to organize and reorganize a few times.  And Kate had to yell.

Then Jacob started to yell because he got "i, ii, and iii" (pronounced with the letter I, not 1, 2 and 3).  Claire was excited and quite surprised to get her very own light saber.  It is purple, so we figured it's a good light saber for Claire, though the purple light saber belongs to Mace Windu, who was played by Samuel Jackson.

Claire was equally as excited to have the other Star Wars movies!  They know the basics of the plot from their Lego Star Wars game and from conversations on the bus with friends, but they're excited to see them.

Jacob also got a Lego Star Wars encyclopedia with all the characters.  Claire was equally excited to go through all of the characters.  They seemed to forget about all of all their other presents at that point.

Liam was quite helpful in picking up all of the papers.  He and Grandpa were a great team.  Liam also dumped some of the new presents, his milk cup, and some boxes Dani wanted to keep into the garbage, so Grandpa had to pay attention!

We sang "Happy Present Day" to Claire and Jacob, just to be clear it wasn't actually their birthday.

After the cake was served (DQ ice cream cake!), the Lego Star Wars encyclopedia became too enticing, and the cake was forgotten.

Lest we think that all they got was Star Wars and Lego stuff, they also got a couple games and some clothes, which Jacob put forth a sweet, valiant effort to be excited for before tossing them on the couch to go back to the Star Wars stuff.

Tulip Festival with John and Vicki

After spending the morning at the opening day festivities, we went south to the wooden shoe tulip festival.  While it was pretty chilly and windy and drizzled a few times and threatened to rain most of the time we were there, we saw enough pockets of sun that Liam wound up with a little sunburn!  It's a good thing we don't live in Arizona with our redheads!

Kiddos found their own wooden shoes to take a ride in.

We took a bunch of pictures of flowers

and kids in front of flowers.

Jacob was being quite cute, so we wound up with a number of good pictures of him.

  

We got some good pictures of the sets of twins, including one that we will be sure to bookmark for a wedding video at some point.

Claire was a little impatient but was smiling early on (and later on as well). 

It was fun to have John and Vicki visiting with us!

John was especially excited to see the steam tractors.  They had 5-6 of them, and they would move them around every now and again.

Kate and Liam thought the flowers were quite pretty and enjoyed walking around the uneven surfaces of the field and looking at the flowers.

We even saw a pink John Deere tractor!  We were afraid Uncle Travis would have a fit about it, but he thought it was pretty cool when we sent him the picture.

I think Liam was born to drive a tractor - he was quite happy sitting up there.  He threw a fit when it was time to leave!

After strolling around the tulips and getting lunch, we went over to where there were some games and activities.  Jacob decided that this year, he was going to do the zip line.  The weight requirement was 60 pounds, and Jacob weighed in exactly at 60.  While we were getting the tickets (thanks Vicki!), Jacob was telling me that he was, "Feeling quite proud."  I was, too.  We talked about how he might feel a little nervous at the top, but that he could do it, and he really didn't seem scared.

He got his harness on, gave us a little wave, and off he went!  He was concentrating quite a bit, and then when he was slowed at the bottom, he lost his grip and hit his head on the rope, but he was smiling and decided he would do it again next year.  His favorite part, he said, was the very start, going off of the tower.  What a brave guy!!!

Claire weighed in at 47 pounds (sweatshirt, shoes, hot dog from lunch and all), so she decided to do the trampolines.  It was a good decision.  She had SO much fun!!!  We got her to try doing some tricks (like walking in the air and froggy hops), and she thought that was pretty funny.  

Kate and Liam got to do some slides and had fun with that, too.  They were pretty well spent by the end of the day, but we had a great time.