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!

Turning 8... entering the gate.

I love being a mother and I love watching my children grow. I especially love my Adam. He is a noble spirit in a little man's body but as the days pass his tabernacle is catching up with man that lies within him. His desires for righteousness lie near the surface and span to his inner core. He has the gift of a strong mind. His love for reading has already proved to be a tremendous blessing in his life. He recalls random facts and I am finding he knows more on certain subject than I do. He is a natural nurturer and the desire to love each of his brothers is evident every day. He favors none, but loves everyone equally and shows his love often. This is a soul that was saved for this day. I love him and I look up to him. I want to be able to love as freely and as purely as he does some day. It is a gift to have a child that I aspire to be like. It has often been said that our children are our greatest teachers. That they are.

Adam was baptized on March 24th, 2012 by his father Jonathan E. Jenson. It was a beautiful baptism. We were thankful to have had Grandma and Grandpa Jenson and Aunt Wendy make the efforts to join us for his baptism. Jonathan and Grandpa Jenson spoke and Adam picked his two favorite songs, "Scripture Power" and "Praise to the Man" to be sung at his baptism. We were thankful for a beautiful day and for our Savior Jesus Christ that lived a life of perfection and showed us a way to follow.

Happy 8th Birthday Adam!

He's 8! And madly obsessed with the idea that he is a cub scout. This adoration for the scouting program is a legacy that has been passed down from his Grandpa Jenson, to his father and now to Adam. I cannot count the number of times he has asked when he will be able to go with Dad and be a part of the scouting program. For Adam's birthday he received all of his cub scout uniform and his first set of scriptures engraved with his name. He LOVES his scout uniform. Every morning after his birthday he would get dressed and then put his scout uniform on over the top complete with kerchief and slide. He is one proud scouter. Two weeks before Adam's birthday the Wolf Leader asked Adam if he wanted to join them a little early and come to scouts. He was thrilled. When he and his dad got home from the church Adam earned his Bobcat before he went to bed that night. He even earned a point for going bowling on his birthday. He is fired up and ready to go!

Birthday buds Owen and Jake

Adam wanted hamburgers and watermelon for his birthday dinner followed up with bowling with his buds.

This is Adam's Bobcat cake. He wanted a cub scout cake with a bobcat on it. That was a bit tricky. Lucky for me Grandma Jenson got creative with chocolate licorice while I was at the boy's parent teacher conferences and I came home to a masterpiece. Way to go Grandma!

The long awaited scout shirt

Adam's first set of scriptures

Adam and his brothers... and below the bowling buds. It got late before we were done bowling and they were all getting tired, but they all hung in there like champs.

Happy Birthday Adam-Adam-O

Beeswax + Honey + Pine = The Passing of Winter

I am coming to realize that there are few smells that have a searing indication of the return of life. A beehive is one of them. We had a day up in the 70's this week so we were able to open our hives (it has to be over 60 degrees). One whiff inside washed away every thought of winter and brought a complete renewal of life. It was amazing. Due to the warm weather the bees were extremely active. It has been interesting for me to learn to predict outside temperature by the activity level of the bees. When I want to know what the weather is like outside I find myself looking to the hives. Or I will find myself surprised to see the bees emerging and realize it is warmer than I had anticipated it was outside. They have been fascinating to have sitting right outside my sliding glass door. Close enough to watch on a regular basis. We had one hive that did not survive the winter which is not a-typical. Usually only 50% of hives overwinter successfully. The hive that died we brought inside to extract honey from. Below is a bit of a low down on the extraction process for any that may be interested.

Our first glimpse of the hives. The little dears were just clamoring all over those hives. Oh sweet succulence.

This hive made some crazy combs on a screen in their hive. They were running out of space to make new comb so they got a little creative. We have since added another box for them to grow into.

This frame was extremely interesting for me to look at. It shows our transplant of the bees to a new area. The light honey is nectar collected in Iowa. The dark honey is Oregon honey. Isn't that just crazy!! Depending upon what they eat the color of their honey is effected. The taste is drastically different as well. The darker honey has an "earthier" taste. The Iowa honey is SUPER sweet. Fascinating huh?

This is the decapping knife. You can see the wax caps that Jonathan had not quite cut off yet. We try to preserve as much of the comb as possible. Wax is 5 times more costly for a bee to make than honey. In other words if they don't have to remake the comb we get more honey.

This is our bowl of cappings. It has a lot of honey in it as well because we dropped one frame and the comb was crushed. Usually there are more cappings than honey in this bowl. We strain this and eat the honey and keep the wax for fun stuff like candles and chapstick.

Adam is turning the extractor while Jonathan held it steady. The frames were not equally filled on the hive that had died so the extractor was a little off balance. When the frames are all filled up it doesn't have the wobbling problem.

We spin out the honey and it collects inside the extractor. When the frames are empty we open the valve on the extractor and pour the honey out into a double strainer. One gets big chunks of wax and the other is a very, very, fine strainer.

After the honey has been strained we pour it into pint and quart jars and eat it like wild and crazy bandits. It is so delicious!! We have had several people ask if we will sell them some of our honey, but I don't know if I am willing to part with any of it yet.

This is a frame after is has been extracted. Every cute little hexagon cell is empty.

My sticky kitchen line-up. Anybody want to help scrub the place when we are done?

After the cappings have been dripping and the majority of the honey has been removed, we put the sticky wax outside and let the bees lick it clean. And they literally do. When they are done with it, we bring back in a nice pile of fluffy dry wax. It is REMARKABLE!!

And here is the line up. I want to thank Mr. Jenson for his incredible stacking skills. Can you guess which honey came from where? There is still 4-5 pints of honey in the bucket that needs to be put in jars. If you come visit me I'll give ya a lick :)