Life is Busy!

I guess it has been a month since the last posting. Life has been predictable and busy. My job at the middle school is great. But being a new teacher creates a lot of extra work. I go in early and stay late every day. But the students are wonderful. They try hard, they are smart, they are respectful, they are fun to be around. I am so grateful for this job. The first quarter of school ends on Friday. That means that 25% of the school year is over! Next week is fall break so it will be nice to catch up on things around the house.

Grant is getting the hang of going to middle school. He is acing his math class and Spanish class. His math teacher has turtles, I can't remember which kind, so now Grant really wants a turtle too. This particular turtle happens to live 150 years. So he could potentially have a pet for the rest of his life. Too bad all the turtle babies were sold before Grant could get one! Actually, Grant would really like to have any pet that was his own. He even claims he would take care of it 100% of the time. Maybe he will get a pet someday. I'm hoping when he does, it will be more cuddly than a turtle.

Mitchell has made many friends this quarter. He still loves BMX biking and would like to have his own bike shop some day. Mitchell will be going on a pioneer trek with our stake next week. He will get to spend 3 days pulling a handcart, dressing like a pioneer, eating like a pioneer and sleeping out under the Heber, AZ stars. It may be a little cold in the evenings. One of the days, each kid will receive letters from their parents. Brent and I already submitted our letters; however, if you would like to write a "love" letter to Mitchell, just mail it to me ASAP and I will get it to the lady in charge of the letters (she is my neighbor). Then Mitchell will receive it while he is out on the trek. He could really use the positive encouragement and a little moral boost to know that lots of people care about him.

Brent has been creating our new side gate. It has to be 10 feet wide, I think. But it will have a 4 foot section and a 6 foot section. On Saturday Brent and Mitchell welded the frame together. It looks great. There is still quite a bit of welding left to do on it though. But once the gate is installed, we can move Brent's trailer out of the garage and start organizing the garage. It is a DISASTER! And most of you know how I feel about things that are unorganized...

So here we are out in Chandler just going to school, going to work, and chipping away at organizing our new life together. Not very exciting at all but its all good!

Mitchell's Birthday!

August 28th, 2008, Mitchell turned 15 years old.

Mitchell is my first child, he is my parent's and his dad's parent's first grandchild, he is Grandma Sweeney's first great-grandchild, he is the one that made Toni, Amy, Sarah & Julie aunts and he made Michael, Joe, Daniel, Jacob & David uncles. He is a pretty special boy. He has an important part to play in our family.

He changed my life 15 years ago arriving on the day he was due by emergency C-Section at 8:07am. As a baby he was anxious to walk and move like everyone else in his life. He got frustrated when he couldn't do it quick enough. Mitchell always wore a smile when he was a toddler. He loved to be chased around the house and to be tickled.

But now he is a big 15 year old teenager. He is 5 foot 11 inches tall. Just last week I chased him around the house and up and down the stairs. He loved it! He hates being tickled now but loves to flash his cute smile. Despite the typical challenges teenagers bring to one's life, Mitchell is a pretty good kid.

For his birthday we went to Arriba's Mexican Grill for a delicious dinner. We all ate too much food and went home stuffed.

Next, we opened the exciting cards sent by Grandma & Gramps, Great-Grandma Sweeney, and Nana & Popo. Then he opened the big gifts. Mitchell enjoys BMX biking and there is a track a few miles away from our home. So his first gift was biking pants and shirt to wear at the track.

The next gift was Guitar Hero and an extra wireless guitar. Grant was probably more excited about this gift than Mitchell. Grant was with me when I bought it. So he had to keep it a secret for a whole week. He begged me to let him tell Mitchell what it was before Mitchell opened the gift. Guitar Hero has been a big hit at our home ever since. This may shock you, but I even played it and I never play video games!

The boys are pretty intense when they are playing. Lastly, we had Lucious Angel Roll. This was Mitchell's special request dessert. It is angel food cake rolled up with a lemon, cream cheese, whipped topping and strawberry filling. It is very YUMMY!

The School Adventure

Today was the first day of school for the boys and I. What a busy day!

Mitchell starts school at 7:30am at Corona del Sol High School. The streets around the high school were packed with cars. I wasn't sure if they were parents dropping off their kids or if these were students driving to school. It was a very busy place. Mitchell states that he had a pretty good first day. None of the kids he met at church are in any of his classes but he ran into some of them at lunch. Mitchell no longer has to take early morning seminary. Seminary is one of his classes during the day. He gets "release time" to go to the seminary building which is down the street from the school. One day down, only 179 to go!

I'm pretty sure he is awake in this picture.

Grant wanted to take the bus to school. His bus stop is 0.06 miles from the house. Not a far walk. Lucky! The bus was there right on time - 7:48am. Grant is in 6th grade at Pueblo Middle School. His frist day didn't go as well as he liked. There was an annoying kid in his band class and he wanted more food in his lunch box. He also seems to be having some conflict with one of his teachers. This was not the fresh start he stated he wanted to have. Brent and I spoke with him tonight about how to have better day tomorrow and that he can still have a good school year. Unfortunately, he was stuck on the injustices of the day. How do you help your kids get past that? How do you help them forgive, not get offended by what others say and not care what others think? Challenging problem. I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get a better report tomorrow.

Grant the 6th grader!

My first day went pretty well. I teach 8th graders at Aprende Middle School. I have a great group of students. So far only one of them are annoying. Not bad since I have over 110 students. Hopefully, the kids stay charming and quiet the rest of the year :) I like all the teachers I get to work with this year. It's really a great place to work.
This is me at the back of my classroom. I put up a bunch of stuff so the kids can get to know me. I really need an updated family picture with all 10 of us kids in it. The one I have is from 2001!


I hope everyone else has a great first day of school!

One "Hail" of a Campout!

July 25th and 26th we went on the "Twelve Oaks 2nd Ward" family campout. The campout was up on the Mogillon Rim at the Canyon Point Campground. We arrived in the early afternoon so there would be plenty of play time for the boys. To our surprise there were several teenagers already there. They had met Mitchell earlier that week at a youth activity and were excited that he arrived.

Mitchell and the teenagers...Notice that many of them are girls!

After we set up camp and met a few people, the storm clouds rolled in. I was hoping that the rain wouldn't be as bad as it was when we went camping 2 weeks ago. I took cover in the car to wait out the storm. Not only did it rain heavily, it started hailing. The hail pounded the car. The hail was marble sized and would bounce as it hit the ground. It was the longest hail storm I have ever sat through. The ground, roads, and cars were covered with hail. It looked like it had just snowed in July.

It looks like snow, but it's really hail. There was so much of it that the next day you could still find piles of hail on the ground.

One of the members of our ward is a great magician. Grant loved watching all of the tricks and trying to figure them out. He followed this man around the entire evening and the next day. Grant showed him a few magic tricks too.

Due to the hail and rain, the inside of Mitchell and Grant's tent got wet. We held their sleeping bags up around the campfire to attempt to dry them out. Both boys had dry sleeping bags but their tent was too wet to sleep in. The boys slept in the car. Grant slept in the passenger seat with it fully reclined. Mitchell slept in the trunk with one of the seats down so he could stretch out. He didn't want me taking a picture of him sleeping in the car the next morning. Since he refused to get up in the morning, I mentioned to the teenage girls that Mitchell was in the car and asked if they could go and wake him up. They eagerly ran from the breakfast line and woke him up. It was pretty funny. He did get up and he was smiling.

Despite the amazing hail storm, it was a fun ward campout!

Chopped!

There are lots of reasons women chop off their hair. Some do it during/after they are pregnant. Some do it because they get old. Some do it because they actually believe they look better with short hair. So now you are wondering which reason applies to me. Why would I be crazy enough to get rid of my wonderful long locks? They weren't that long but it took a long time to grow my hair out below my shoulders. Well, I'm not pregnant, I look old but I shouldn't, and I never thought I would look better with short hair. My little world has been super crazy this summer. My house has been a unorganized mess for longer than I can bear, my health has been crummy, I've been worried about things I shouldn't be worried about and each time I went to get my hair trimmed, I asked to get it cut shorter and shorter. Maybe it was the one thing I had some control over??? Anyway, for now, I have short hair. I've been trying different ways of styling it but with the humidity it just ends up super straight. Maybe I'll cut it shorter???

The Annual Robles Family Campout

This year's family campout was held on the Mogillon Rim near Woods Canyon Lake from July 11th until July 13th. Our family was able to get to the campground around 5:30pm. The campground was a busy place. Each camp site was full, no vacancies. Thank goodness David came up early to reserve all of the sites for our big family. The strange thing about where we were camped out on the Rim was the fog. Even at 6PM it was foggy. The clouds were very low. At one in the morning when I got up to go the the luxurious out-house, it was so foggy, my little lantern barely could shine 3 feet in front of me. It was very spooky. So I made Brent get out of bed and walk with me. He is so wonderful!Mitchell and Grant took off as soon as we got to the campsite to start exploring. Their cousins were right there with them. They decided to build a "boys" fort with all of the logs they found in the forest. Grant and Mitchell had fun using the hatchet, and most of the time they were careful with it. :) On Saturday, Camber was upset that it was a "boys fort." So we changed the name to the "cousins fort" and they had to let her come and play too. Another exciting thing they did with all of the wood in the forest was to find worms or grubs. Mitchell would chip away at the dead wood and Joseph, Joshua and Colby would find the grubs hiding in the wood. They collected the disgusting critters and put them in an empty water bottle to be used for fishing. Yum! This kept them busy for hours.

We knew that camping on the Rim brought some risk. We all expected it to rain, you know, a nice afternoon shower. Well, instead of that we ended up with a huge rain storm. Everything got wet. Most of us took shelter in our vehicles because the tarps and tents weren't keeping out the torrential rain. Even after the down pour let up, it rained and sprinkled all the way through the next day. Kind of put a "damper" on some of the excitement. The boys learned how to dry out wood so it could burn. You can see the puddles on the other side of the fire as well as Daniel packing up his tent. His tent seemed to have gotten extra wet, so him and his family went home a day early.

Our tent ended up getting water in it too. But Brent managed to get all of the important stuff off of the floor so we could still be dry and warm at night. When we got home the next day, we were so lucky to unpack all of the camping supplies and wash off all of the layers of mud. Not a fun thing to do!

Despite the rain, Joe challenged Mitchell and Grant to a peach cobbler bake off. The goal was to see who could make the better cobbler. Grant had the smaller cobbler and so his was done first. He had a very nice cake layer and it tasted pretty good despite the extra butter and peach juice he snuck in. Mitchell, on the other hand, didn't follow directions and mixed all of the ingredients together. So his cobbler was more of a mush of stuff. However, it still tasted good. We will have to try it again next year. Thanks Joe for bringing all of the supplies. We all loved eating the cobbler no matter how it looked!

Our family is looking forward to next year's campout. More family time, more fishing, and more forts to build in the forest!

Terrific Trip to Utah!

On Sunday, June 29th, the Jensen - Ward family headed up to Utah to visit and get to know Brent's family better. We stayed in Utah for a week and had many outings and activities. We were able to spend time with Brent's parents, his sister Barb and her family, his sister Lynda and her family, as well as his sister Sheri and her family. Here are some pictures from our fun-filled adventure!

Monday, June 30thThe newleyweds embark are on their first family activity. We visited the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. This museum is VERY kid friendly. If you were to ask Grant, we should have stayed there the ENTIRE day!
Brent is getting attacked by a Utahraptor.

Which is taller, the dinosaur leg or Mitchell?

Grant, Amy, and Mitchell with T-Rex at the entrance of the museum.

Tuesday, July 1st

Early Tuesday morning we hiked 1.5 miles up the side of Mount Timpanogus to the Timpanogus Caves. It is a wet cave with amazing stalagmites, stalagtites and helectolites. It also has really cool soda straws. The cave is 43 degrees year round. So you always bring a sweatshirt to the cave even though it can be a warm hike.

Grandpa & Grandma Jensen with Brent and Grant. The trail was paved and had incredible views all the way up to the cave.

Brent and I posed in this spot last year when we went through the cave. However, this year I don't look like I'm shivering in the picture.

Later that day, Shawn and Barb took us out shooting in the forest. Shawn's military background allowed us the privilege of shooting a variety of guns. Grant's eyes were huge as he helped Shawn pick out the guns to take, load the ammo, and setting up the targets. It was fun to see so much enthusiasm. We learned that Grant has great aim with any gun. In the picture above he is shooting an M4 and hitting the target with almost every shot.

Mitchell also like shooting with the M4. This gun is very loud. Mitchell attempted to shoot at a soda can that was further away from the target boards we brought up. He did a super job! While we were taking turns shooting, a deer ran right behind the targets. You would have thought that all of the noise would have scared it away from our little shooting range.

I may look like I can shoot this Biathalon 22 Rifle, but it took a lot of practice to shoot the closest target. So if you see me with a gun, you don't need to be afraid!

Wednesday, July 2nd

Our day started with a visit to Ray and Betty Ward. Ray and Betty are Mitchell and Grant's great-grandparents on their dad's side of the family. We belive that the last time they saw each other was when Grant was a baby. It was a fun visit. Ray told us about his service in the military and in World War II. Mitchell and Brent helped Ray set up a computer. Although Betty's health isn't the best, she did make it across the room and kissed Grant on the forehead. Grant is very kissable. We wished we could have visited longer, but we had a packed schedule for the day.

One of our goals for the day was to get a tour of the Conference Center. The last time we watched general conference, both Mitchell and Grant stated that they would like to go inside it. While we were on tour there, we were able to listen to an organ concert. It was pretty amazing to listen to. We were all impressed at the size of the building. The roof of the building is spectacular too. Its hard to imagine how much weight the roof is holding up when you see all of the fountains, trees, flowers, stairs, and monuments there. After touring the Conference Center, we went across the street to the Tabernacle building. We wanted to compare the sizes between the two. When you walk into the Tablernacle building, you can see the entire room from the doorway. In comparison, the conference center significantly larger and requires a tour.

It was a breezey day on top of the Conference Center.

Grant is posing with the bust of Prophet Heber J. Grant. Do you think they look alike?

The water fountain behind the guys is huge! I love listening to it!

Next we visited a little hidden park a few blocks from Temple Square. This park is where President Brigham Young is burried. Brent is standing next to his burial site. There are a few other people burried in this little park too like Eliza R. Snow.

That night we went to dinner with my friend's the Lee's. Grace and her family lived in Surprise a few years ago but now live in Northern Utah. We met up at Trolley Square and ate dinner at the Speghetti Company. Grace and I are a week apart in age and both have 11 year old's. It was great to catch up with each other and eat such yummy food. Unfortuantely, our visit was cut short when Grant got sick and we had to take off.

Saturday, July 5th

Before we left Alpine, UT, Grandpa Jensen gave Mitchell a lesson on how to drive a 50 year old tractor. Mitchell was a great student and had no trouble learning to drive it. Unfortunately, Grant was only allowed to go for a ride on the tractor with Grandpa Jensen driving. Maybe in a few years he will graduate to driver.

On our way back to Arizona, we stopped by Cove Fort. This fort was built in 1867 by Ira Hinckley, Gordon B. Hinkley's grandfather. The fort was built with volcanic rock and the mortor. It has 12 rooms total. The fort was used as a stopping place between the towns of Beaver and Fillmore, Utah. The church restored the fort in the 1990's. If you need a break from the long drive between Utah and Arizona, stop here for a great history lesson.