She started it....

See this tall hot rod standing on the right, that's my mom.  My Dad calls her Barb, I think it is short for Barbie but he'd never admit it.  Well about 100 years ago she had this brood of children, 7 to be exact.  She had a hard time keeping track of all of us, so in her cunning wisdom, she lined us up and put us in matching outfits - just to have a better shot of keeping a handle on things.  It almost worked.  Even with the matching outfits Ryan still managed to burn half of the house down.  So although it may look like I have had generations of matching Easter outfits engrained within me, it is actually a secret tracking system I learned from mom.  The best dog gone mother of 7 the world could ask for.

I chose lime green, not because it is trendy, but less than stealth. 

So this post is for you mom... the author of my newest secret weapon.  I couldn't love you more.

 Notice her choice of green in the above photo??? Hummm.....

 Oh look, there I am wearing green again....

Easter at Aunt Becky's

What can possibly be more fun than utter chaos and permanent dye surrounding a kitchen table?  Uh, nothing I suppose.  What an Easter!  We had a Jenson family gathering at Aunt Becky's and it was FUN.  The boys had a ball playing with cousins, eating "walking tacos" and hunting for Easter treasures.

Adam and Matthew dippn' in on the dyn' 

Zach was Andrew's 'bestest' big cousin and helped him dye all of his eggs

How can a heart not love the Grandpa that takes the time to make a masterpiece?  Friday morning we awoke to snow.  Grandpa and Andrew were not deterred by our April surprise, but rather reveled and rolled in it.  Frosty was up and running in no time.  Speaking of running, you should have seen the boy cousins mass attack on poor Uncle David.  It was a snowball fight of the season.  Right down to the 100% true blue face washes in the snow.  Uncle David was outnumbered but the man held his own quite nicely.   

Along with the egg dying, and snowball fighting we made time for egg finding and candy munching.  Michael made himself at home with his own little stache from the basket.

 So you think he can fit another piece in those cheeks?

Cousin roll call complete with baskets.  There they are, every last Jenson descendant we could cram into a corner.

We decided to take in another adventure while we were at Aunt Becky's with all of the cousins.  Went to down town Salt Lake's newest mall, City Creek.  What made it super cool was getting ride the DART.

 Matthew playing in the fountains... yes, this is the day after the snowfall.

 All the cousins lined up hoping they get to have chance in the water, but not certain it is worth getting wet for the rest of the day.

 The beautiful Christus at Temple Square.  A picture of the Christus hung in my bedroom growing up.  Now I hang it in my kid's.  I love this statue.  

Picture Perfect

Sometimes is takes a motivating factor to bring a herd of people together that live thousand's of miles apart and the above photograph just so happens to be that motivating factor.  Grandma Jenson was sure it would be the death of her or Grandpa Jenson that would gather the family together long enough to take a family picture.  And well, we were determined to prove her wrong.  And we did.  It was a little too cold, and a little to cloudy, and a little too breezy, and the kids were a little too sad, but you know none of that really mattered.  We were together like a REAL family doing the best we could with what we had.  We weren't perfectly posed, or perfectly matching or perfectly happy, but I guess that is why this is such a PERFECT picture to me.  Because it is imperfect like every last one of us really are.  We yearn for perfection, yearn to have a picture perfect paradigm to live in, but we DON'T and we WON'T at least not in this life.  We are REAL family, striving for a perfection that we have faith exists, but are cluttered with the foibles of the natural man and women, heavy laden at times, imperfect all the time.  But as a family united in a faith that through an atonement all of the imperfections will melt away as dross and the miracle of a sealing power will take effect.  Our lives will become perfected one by one, some may take longer than others, but the faith that binds us, pulls us along together.  So here we are... imperfectly as one can perceive, but blessed to know that together we can become something greater.

Our Bees Swarmed - Super Awesome!