Wednesday, October 31, 2012

New Food Storage

First, happy Halloween! That's out of the way, so on to the real reason for posting.

Now that we live in a green and growing wonderland rather than the urban jungle, I have time and room for food storage.  The leaders in our church have been counseling us to have a year's supply of food and other necessities for decades, so I'm glad that I can finally comply with that counsel.

First, we needed supplies.  I was able to get these huge buckets for a steal off Craigslist (I love Craigslist!).
Now to fill them...

Hmmm...

I hear that fruit is a good thing to freeze and store.  What does Oregon have to offer?  Let's go to the local park!  Blackberries, growing wild!  We were able to pick two big buckets full of them.
The kids grew bored of picking after a while, so they found other ways to entertain themselves.  L2 fell asleep, and A1 and A2 decided to pick him some flowers.  Wasn't that nice?
And here's A1's interpretation of our activity:
[I like to pick blackberese. I got poked allot. A 5 9000 Pinke]
We're still working on spelling! A is for her name, 5 is for how old she is, 9000 is her estimate of how many berries we picked, and Pinke (pink) is her favorite color.

Well, now that we have discovered that we can fill these buckets with food, let's look for other places to do it, shall we?  What?  You have a friend that told you about Salem Harvest, a not-for-profit organization that helps local farmers pick their crops and in return the farmers donate their crops to food banks throughout the city?  Let's get involved!

The way it works is farmers harvest the easily-harvestable (yes, that is a word I just made up) part of their crop and sell it.  The rest would just go to waste, so they allow Salem Harvest volunteers to pick the rest of their crop which is completely donated to whichever food banks need it.  Salem Harvest entices volunteers to show up by allowing us to keep half of what we pick, free of charge.

Here we are picking onions with Salem Harvest.
As a family, we were able to pick 150 lbs of onions.  We decided to only keep 50 lbs, which now that I look at the buckets of onions in my garage is way more than we really need.  So if anyone has any good recipes that involve a lot of onions, I would be interested.

We also participated in an apple harvest and were able to keep about 50 lbs of apples.  As I was using my handy peeler-corer-slicer to prepare the apples for apple pie filling, I ran my hand through the slicer part.  Three knuckles needed repair; luckily R was home so he whipped out his medical kit and stitched me up.  I'm just now getting the use of those fingers back.  Next time I'll have to be a little more careful.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Our New House

As promised, here are pictures of our house now that we are moved in.
A2 helping R fix the kitchen table
A1's room
the boys' room
the toy room
the living room, all decorated for Halloween
(I'm so excited that I have a place to decorate for each holiday now)
A2 also loves the living room; I often find him sleeping on these couches instead of going to bed.
the "Man Cave"

Funny story: when we were first looking at this house, we found a random door from the backyard into the basement area, but it was locked.  We asked what was behind the door; the sellers told us it was a small crawl space where they stored their lawnmower.  Thinking that we might be able to squeeze in a few boxes of decorations along with a lawnmower, R decided to check it out.  When he opened the door, he found this gigantic room (pictured above); it's about the size of our kitchen and living room combined.  R has claimed it as his future media room/man cave.  This space has sealed this house as ours for the rest of our lives.  We will not be moving away from this house because it now has the potential for everything we ever wanted (the lack of a man cave was the one drawback about this house).  We still can't figure out why the sellers told us it was a small crawl space rather than room to expand the house; wouldn't you think that would be a good selling point?

We love our new house.  I'm sure I will be posting more pictures as we finish emptying boxes and finally deciding where to hang our pictures.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Family Picture Outtakes

Jon Woodbury is an amazing photographer and makes family pictures look like no big deal; these people always casually look this good and he just happened upon them like that.

Yeah, right!

We had so many problems with our shoot; I'm amazed it even happened.  So I will share our problems so that you can feel in good company if you've had a rough photo shoot before.  Don't worry; you're in good company.

It was raining!
It was cold!
We were supposed to be fishing!
Some of us had car trouble (I'm amazed these two are still smiling after the rough time they had just getting to the photo shoot)!
Some of us were being naughty!
Others of us were being naughty!
We were supposed to be fishing!
We were hungry!
We were tired!
We didn't feel like smiling!
And did I mention?  We were supposed to be fishing!

But our photo shoot came together, we had a good time, and now we have some awesome memories with photographic evidence!  Isn't that what family pictures are all about?

Monday, October 22, 2012

Preview to Jensen Family Pictures

The Jensen clan decided to go fishing this summer, as we always do when we're together during the warmer months.  This time, though, we took Jon Woodbury with us; he is an amazing photographer and can get the best shots of anyone in any location (he's not even paying me to say all that; he truly is incredible).  After he gets the shots, he does some magic with his magic photography tools (I believe Photoshop is involved somehow, but that could just be the dumbed down version that he told me because I wouldn't understand what he was talking about anyway) and magically makes his amazing shots look even more amazing.  R followed him around and took some of the same shots so we could compare his magic to our camera.  So while we wait for him to finish his magic editing (can you tell that I really have no idea what he does, post-session?), here are the previews for our Jensen Family Photo Shoot.
Grandma and Grandpa, the clan leaders
Don't I have a beautiful mother-in-law?
Steve and Tracie, the funniest couple I have ever met
Bridger, able to out-mischief even Dallen
Shaylie, the sweetest niece ever
L1 and L2
A1, the cutest little girl in the whole wide world
Emily - what a hottie!
Emily teaching the kids how to fly fish
Dallen, the biggest teddy bear of a brother-in-law you could ask for
Dallen with all the kids

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Pioneer Day, Megan-Style

My sister Megan decided to throw a wonderful Pioneer Day celebration at her house.  She invited a bunch of friends and family to enjoy good food, play with new friends, and watch the fireworks just down the street at the junior high school.  A1 and A2 loved playing on her lawn, rolling down her hill.

And L2 enjoyed his first fireworks show.  He didn't even cry during the loud bangs (he didn't sleep either, but can you really expect someone to sleep during such fun things?).
Thanks, Aunt Meggie, for inviting us to your celebration!

Saturday, October 20, 2012

The New Bubble

Before moving away forever, we visited with family for a month in Utah.  While we were there, we went swimming with R's brother Steve and his family at the Bubble.*  What a blast we had at the indoor Lazy River...
...and the Splash Pad.
I haven't seen such huge smiles on these kids faces since the last time we went swimming before I was too pregnant to fit into my swimsuit.  And we just haven't gone since L2 was born.

Then we went to their outdoor pool, which had a really cool pirate ship with multiple water slides, water cannons to shoot, and lots of splashing.
And R was there to give the kids a lift any time they felt like the pool wasn't awesome enough.  Isn't my husband amazing?
The kids had fun swimming with their cousins...
...while I stayed on the sidelines with L2, enjoying a good book.  My dad has finally convinced me to give James Michener a try; my verdict: very good!
And the love of my life still takes my breath away when I look at him.  Don't you think he's the most handsome man you've ever seen?



*Note: the facility is no longer called the Bubble since its renovation years ago, but I refuse to call it by its true, absurdly-long name.  I grew up with it called the Bubble, and the crotchety old person in me refuses to change.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Orange Smiles

While we were at the San Diego Zoo, R taught the kids how to turn orange slices into the greatest smiles in the world.  And so began the goofiness of orange smiles!

Even Grandma had to get in on the act!
Of course, she's always marched to the beat of her own drum.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Sea World, Take Two

I've shown the pictures of animals from our last visit to Sea World, so we won't focus on animals in this post.  We'll focus on the fun time we had in the 100 degree weather!

The kids' favorite place was the polar bear exhibit, because it was made of ice walls and was nice and cool inside.

The penguin exhibit was also a favorite, but it was too dark for pictures.  Some of the workers were out on the lawn trying to help some new penguins become accustome to people constantly walking past them, so they were letting the kids pet the penguins.  That was HUGE!!! for the kids, but alas, no pictures because I was too busy petting the penguin myself (did I say HUGE!!!).

We also enjoyed the walk through the shark exhibit.  There's a tube that goes through the aquarium, so basically you are completely surrounded by fish.  So cool!  (And, yes, R did have to make us pose to take this "candid" shot.  Hee hee!)
Even L2 had a really good time looking at the fish and watching the dolphins jump.  I mean, look at that happy face!
It was a really hot day, so we were glad when the final show ended and we could go back to the beach and just relax.  I wish I could end every day saying that I just went back to the beach to relax!