New decade

March 14, 2010 March came in like a lamb, and 1/2 the month is almost gone. Our new baby Hallee Elizabeth Jensen born December 8, 2009 and beautiful, with cute smiles and goo-goo baby talk all ready at 3 mo. old. She was due Jan 10, but ready to come and join us early. Gary, Yvonne and the 6 kids, Josh and Jessica and 3 dtrs. and Taralee and Richard and 4 kids (13 grandchildren, 6 boys and 7 girls), had a surprise party Sat. march 6th for Terral's 70th birthday, at 10:30 pm after games in Nampa, the Idaho Boy's State bbchampionship games. They all really love their "Papa". Carter fell asleep and missed it all. Terral made HPGL today at church. Tomorrow night we are hosting the empty nesters "Fun Bunch" here. Daylight savings time started last night so we are all tired. Lauren goes with her 8th grade class to NYC, Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia in April, Jack will turn 11 March 25th, Anderson will be 8 Arpil 9th and will be baptized April 10th in Carson City. Brennan will turn 7 May 27th. Ella is 2 April 24th, Connor will be 2 June 10th. We'll have our family reunion at Bear Lake July 6-9 in a rented cabin,and Rex and Thora Jensen Family reunion in Malad July 10th. Spring is almost here, we have robins and crocus and hyacinths, tulips and daffodils coming up. Dorothy's 50th class reunion looming July 2 in Malad, we just lost another classmate, Sheila Colton Swenson on March 5th. Every day is a good day, is our new motto.

November 5th, 2008

The election has left us stunned, as we now have our tv programs back. November arrived sooner than expected. Kinsie had a great 4th birthday party with a royalty party with attendees in their finest castle wear. I wore the famous Dana rhinestone jewelry pieces of necklace, earrings, and bracelets, and fur coat, lace tunic over the satin dress. Grandma Sheri came as "Queen Princess" and Grandpa Randy as "King Charming." Kinsie opened her presents and the card we gave her with 4 dollar bills which she proceeded to hand out one to each of the other children. She is so generous. The kids gave it all back. Jessica made a castle cake that was pretty spectacular, with white palace and pink and purple turret towers on the four corners. We had hoagie sandwhiches and cake and ice cream. Our birthday girl had a kids party with her friends earlier. We are preparing for winter, Terral busy getting the yard ready and we took all the old flowers, still pretty, to the dump today and have laid in the first ton of wood pellets for the stove in the family room. $239.00 this year per ton. We are going to BSUvsReno game Nov. 22 at Reno.

October 25, 2008

We haven't been doing well catching up and keep up with the grandchildren's blogs so will try to summarize a few events. Gary had his 44th birthday Sept 6th and Josh was given a big surprise party in Nampa Sept 7th on his 27th birthday, we had a BSU theme, slash tailgate party at Seam and Kelly Powell's home. See Ashtyn's blog for pictures. I had the privilege on our 45th anniversary, which was Sept 13th, of playing the organ for our friend Larry Hansen's funeral. A huge crowd filled the chapel and cultural hall. He was laid to rest at Weiser's Hillview Cemetery. We were able to attend Terral's 50th class reunion held at Maddox's in Brigham City on Sept.20th and enjoyed seeing lots of people we both knew. It was great fun and I won a prize for knowing the most popular car of 1958 which was a Chevy Impala. We stayed at Yvonne and Sheldon's in Malad. The day before on the 19th we attended a temple session at the new Twin Fall's Temple. While we were gone it rained a gully washer in Weiser and our camper inside got water damage from leaky vents. We decided our new car would have to be our big 45th anniversary gift. Our trip to Carson City eventful, great to see the grandkids and Trey's game, altho I stayed in the car with a sleeping Conner, and stayed out of the very cold, strong wind. We made the 8 hr trip home ok. It's always so great to get to Jordan Valley. Nancy reports she and David piecing out the old trailer home in Malad, Judy working ok, to quote, "At least it's a job." We're thankful for cheaper gas, it was $3.31 in Carson City. Today in Weiser gas for Regular @ $2.94. Yesterday it was $3.05. What a deal!!!!!! We've survived the gas crunch, spending >$500.00 a month so far, that's if we go somehwere, so I can imagine what everyone else is feeling. Will post a picture of the new darling car. We tried to go 4 wheeling 10 days ago, it was so cold in the mountains up 4th of July Creek. Never again will we try that. Josh and his ward Elder's Quorum of 12 brethern went on 4 wheelers to Silver City, starting at Rabbit Creek trailhead 25 miles in and back out. Terral busy with stake conference this weekend. I tended Kinsie all day for Josh. They stayed overnight along with Sean Powell here last night and now Josh got here about 8;30 tonight and too tired to drive back to Nampa.

Summary of August, 2008

The month of August proved to be a month of unexpected losses. My friend, Sally Kay Hodges, passed away on August 7th and buried on August 12th in Salt Lake City. We were roommates at St. Mark's Hospital nursing school. Since she had moved back to SLC after her husband Les' death we were able to e-mail a lot and get together at conference time in SLC at least once a year. She would have been 66 Sept. 7th. On the 12th while in Boise attending temple sessions for our stake temple week we decided to check out new Hondas down the street from the Temple. We found a great CR-V and got a good trade in on the Civic. It's silver and rides great, with good gas mileage. We attended the Temple again on the 14th. That evening and after I had tried to get in touch with Tom on his cell phone just to talk, because I hadn't heard from him for awhile, he would usually e-mail us or call, and we got the bad news from his Dad Jerry, that Tom had died. They were treating it as a homicide until the autopsy was completed and then it showed natural causes. We are all heart broken. On August 23, 2008 at 2:00 pm with 22 family members we had a short service in Malad, Idaho at his grandpa Raiford Benson's funeral home (now Horsley Funeral Home). Josh Jensen conducted the services, Dorothy Jensen gave the life sketch, Taralee, Jessica, Ashtyn and Kinsie sang Tom's favorite song, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", Judy spoke, Josh spoke and we sang "I Am a Child of God." He was laid to rest next to his grandparents, Raiford and Dana Benson and his mother Irene Benson Wagstaff at the Malad City Cemetery. Prayers were by Kelly Baker of Boise and Adron Parkinson of Pocatello. Josh dedicated the grave.
The rest of August is a blur. We did drive up to McCall wed. Aug. 27th to look things over. Terral very disappointed with the condition of the Stake Church Camp. The grass is all gone. We found a great little area with an old general store, museum and antiques at Roseberry, east of Donnelly. We then stopped at Council to visit with Keith and Jackie Trappett at their hilltop home. September 3 we attended the Boise Temple with the High Council and Stake Presidency and all went to dinner after at the Macaroni Grill. Our friend, Larry B. Hansen, is gravely ill in Utah at his daughter LaReen's home in Highland. He's on Hospice and being kept comfortable. He and his wife Rolaine have been great friends since we moved to Weiser. Larry taught biology at WHS, was a guidance counselor, an assistant coach with Terral, has been a bishop, stake president and now a stake patriarch, also our Home Teacher. He and Terral retired in 1999. They taught together 20 years. When Josh was preparing to go on his mission in Sept of 2000 Larry advised us that he had entered the mission home in SLC on Oct. 10, 1960. I spoke up and said, "Terral isn't that when you went into the mission home?" Terral's journal confirmed it. Larry found that mission home picture and Larry is on the bottom row and Terral on the top corner. Not that they ever met each other then but their paths had crossed. Terral was 20, Larry was 19. I have a new job as grandma in tending Conner on Thurs and Friday mornings. Taralee teaches half day kindergarten and she and Brennan home at 1230. Conner is such a good, good baby. This week-end Gary will be 44 on the 6th and Josh will turn 27 on the 7th. Our 45th anniversary is on Sept 13th. Gary and Yvonne's 19th anniversary on the 6th. Trey is 16 on the 22nd and Lauren is 13 on the 24th. So lots to look forward to. Terral is driving onion truck starting today.

July 24-27.2008

We've returned home from our big trip to see the new Twin Falls Temple and attended the open house Friday am. Josh and Jessica and girls, Taralee and Richard and 4 children, & Terral and I stayed at Jerome, Id. the night before and made it to Twin Falls by 0830. Our tour group was well organized and we were done by 0920. Our friends from Highe School Sheila and Alan Swenson were supervisors there so we got to visit with them. We lingered for another 1/2 hr taking pictures and Kinsie making friends. We went in our 3 car caravan & drove to Shoshone Falls, which are still flowing immense amounts of water, making rainbows and awing all the children. We then traveled to Lava Hot Springs to check in the 2 families because we could only reserve 2 rooms for Friday. Terral and I traveled to Malad to meet Gary and Yvonne and 6 kids from Carson City at the Village Inn motel to stay over for the Jensen family reunion on Sat. Jeannine Mills and daughter Teri Sue and her son Jeff and wife Doreen and son Jordan all drove up from Sacramento. We all got together with Sheldon's family on Mill street and visited. It cools down so great at night in Malad.
Saturday found us in the Pioneer Park behind the old Malad High School and updated tennis courts. We had lots of shade, nice picnic shelter and lots of relatives. We caught up on all the new babies born since July, 2006. Approximately 66 family members out of 78 present. I got to visit with Nancy and Judy who drove up from Ogden. Most everyone but me made it to the Malad Drive-in for drinks, mostly Ironport and Cherry drinks. We had great fried chicken and relish dishes, fruit and the works. It was all so well organized by Terral's sister Dian Sines from Springville, Ut (and her family) The only thing wrong, it was pretty darn hot. Guess I'm old after all. The airconditioner in our car had been "fixed" on Tuesday but quit on us on Friday so we are glad to get home. Read Ashtyn's blogspot (ashtynfitz.blogspot.com) for her 11 yr old take on the trip. They sort of loved swimming at Lava. They have good EMT's in Lava. The good new is Ashtyn is okay, just got the wind knocked out of her. Everyone has reported in this pm that they have gotten home ok, Gary and family traveled to SLC to visit with Yvonne's family until Wed, then they'll come up to Weiser for 4 days. Conner Fitzsimonds will be blessed this coming Sunday. bye for now.

July 13, 2008

The past 2 weeks have found us spending one day on the atvs in the mountains above Manns Creek. We traveled the dusty trails, looked at huge "mormon" crickets that are not good looking and saw the top of 4th of July area and traveled over to Bare (or Bear) Road that took us back to the loop, down at the creek. We went up the main road to Spring Creek campground to look over some of the larger potential camping spots for when Gary and Yvonne and 6 kids, Taralee and Ritch's family and Josh and Jessica's family. We've camped there before with not quite so many kids. We had an exciting moment while we had parked our ATVs and I thought I was on a level spot. We visited with the camp's hosts, probably 30 minutes, and got up to leave when all of a sudden my green ATV went whizzing by backwards in front of us missed the camp hosts ATV and trailer went about 15 feet more, made a sharp left turn, missed a sign, hopped a tiny stream and came to rest on a slight incline and just sat there. Terral had been chasing it, and it still had the brake on. It seemed to be quite a miracle that it didn't keep on going down the road to the main road and into the large creek. What a fright. So now I put a rock behind the wheels to park it.

With the 2 new baby's we have six grandsons and six granddaughters. Wow, what a tribe. In the valley it's been very hot but up in the mountains it stayed around 74 degrees. We tried an overnight trip last Wednesday at Anthony Lakes campground with our old camper on the pickup. I had sewed new green curtains for the camper. The highway was under construction (or destruction) with a 45 minute wait,and the campground wasn't quite open yet. The ice had been off the lake only 10 days, there were a lot of pine trees still down and so darn many huge black flies and mosquitos, it was miserable. Ritch and Taralee and kids and baby spent Tuesday night up there and about froze to pieces. It was 38 degrees that night and Taralee and the baby slept in the cab of the pickup, with everyone else in their large tent. So by the time we got there Wed. at noon they were ready to go home. We blew up the raft with the air pump and Terral tried it out on the lake and the girls went wading and semi swimming with their clothes on. They had to pull grandpa in the raft off of a rock, the water was pretty shallow. Taralee and Ritch and Brennan tried the boat but the water was very cold. It's fed by the glaciers and snowbanks still very prominent on the tall mountain crags. Terral, Ritch, Taralee and kids, and their little dog Tyler too, hiked up the trail to see the waterfalls and snow banks. Grandma stayed at camp to tend the baby. There was a little, very fat chipmunk, who kept me and Conner company in camp while everyone hiked. Conner slept very well, the chipmunk ate very well, carrots and chips, and ran all over the table. Sure not afraid of me. The Fitzsimonds' left after lunch and we stuck it out at our camp until 8:45 pm and picked up and left for home. It was too miserable to sit outside with all the flying, stinging critters. I'm content to stay home for now.