The Jensen Family

Ty had is third birthday. The eve of his birthday, after he went to bed, the girls and I wrapped his presents, blew up balloons, and made his cake and some cupcakes to take to nursery. When he woke up the morning of his birthday, he was so excited about the balloons on the wall (it was suppose to look like a 3). Then, he saw his presents sitting on the table and said, "Christmas"! We kept saying Ty its your birthday! He was a little confused, but by the end of the day he understood it was his birthday. The day after his birthday he kept saying, "It's Tys Birthday!"

Ty loved his presents. He got 3 new planes from the movie planes (Dusty Crop hopper, Blade, and Gunner) Those were probably his favorite presents. He also got a car ramp thing for his cars, a teenage mutant ninja turtles movie, the little engine that could movie, and a new cars bed.

Ty was so animated and excited about every gift.

Now that Ty has a new big boy bed he is no longer sleeping in his crib. Willow needs the crib, otherwise he probably would have been content to stay in the crib for a while longer. He never once in three years tried climbing out of it. That is why it took me so long to transition him to a bed. He was perfectly content with the crib, but I decided it was time for Willow to move out of the pack n play and have a crib. I might regret this decision when nap time rolls around for Ty.

I made him this cute car/3 cake. He loved it.

Ty blew out his candle after we sang about four words to the song, 'Happy Birthday'

He loved his cake and icecream. His birthday was on a Sunday this year so we also took cupcakes to nursery during church for him to share with all the nursery kids. So he got double the cake this year!

We took the kids to the park (one of Ty's favorite things to do) to burn off some of the sugar from his birthday cake and ice cream sugar high.

When we got home from the park, Ty totally crashed in his new big boy bed. He was exhausted from all the birthday festivities. We absolutely love our Ty man and we are so happy we have him in our family. Life just wouldn't be the same without him. He is energetic, funny, stubborn (could be the age), strong willed (also could be the age), sweet, loving.. . to name a few of his personality traits. He is obsessed with cars, airplanes, tractors, dinosaurs, and trains. He loves apple juice. He is a junk food junkie like Addison and is a picky eater. I am working on introducing new foods to him, but he has his 5 staples (chicken nuggets, mac n cheese, yogurt, bacon, cereal). He will eat a few other foods on a regular basis, but those are his favorites. Ty potty trained a few weeks ago and to my surprise is was pretty easy. I thought he would be a nightmare to potty train, but he did it in about a week and hasn't had any accidents since. He even stays dry at night. This was a huge blessing. I was so dreading potty training him, that probably why I waited until he was almost 3, but it worked out in my favor because he was ready and it was easy on both of us. Ty loves playing outside. He loves our dog fluffy. He is a great kid. I hope we can survive his year of the terrible 3's though. This is the year when kids are hard, but I have high hopes. We LOVE Ty.

Our family went on our first real family vacation outside of Idaho, Utah, or Wyoming. Marshall and I decided we want to try to take a family vacation every summer. Every year it may be something different depending our family dynamics that year. We feel like our girls are at fun ages and we wanted to start creating those family memories with them. This year With Ty being in the terrible two's, and willow not even a year old, we knew our options were limited. We tried to think of something to accommodate the two youngest kids. We had a few ideas and then decided to go to visit McKenzie & Ryan's family in North Dakota. Usually the Larsens come home every summer, but this year they weren't able to so it worked out great for us to go see them. Most people laughed when we told them we were taking a vacation to North Dakota :) It isn't a place most people probably go on vacation, but the people make the vacation and we knew that we would have a great time visiting the Larsen family.

My kids were so excited to ride on an airplane for the first time. Addison rode on an airplane once when she was about 6 months old, but this was her first time that she will remember. When we booked our tickets we booked them to fly out of Idaho Falls, but Delta Airlines changed our flights so we were able to fly in and out of Pocatello for no additional cost.

This is us waiting to board our flight. It was bright and early! We had to be at the airport at 6:00 am so we left our house at 5:40.

The kids were unexpectedly really good on the airplane. I wasn't worried about the girls, but Ty is always a wild card. He did good though thanks to the inflight wifi and movies on the iphone. The girls used their ipods and watched movies on them. We also got them a few surprise travel games to play with on the flight.

We flew into Minnesota first. We knew we wanted to go see a few things in Minnesota so we planned our trip so that we stopped there first. The Larsens met us there and picked us up at the airport. In Minnesota we went to the Mall of America. This was one of the things my older girls were most anticipating because the Mall of America has an American girl doll store in it. It is 2 levels of doll heaven! My girls each picked a doll (it was part of their birthday this year). Eden picked a look alike doll. It is a doll that you customize to look like you. Hers has light skin, medium length brown hair, brown eyes. Addy got a bitty baby boy doll. We were so sad that somewhere on our trip Addy's doll got lost. We tried calling the hotels we stayed at, the zoo, the resteraunts we ate at to see if anyone had turned it into lost and found, and we had no luck. So that was a bummer.

The kids at Mall of America with the amusement park area in the background. There were full on roller coasters and all.

Squid word from sponge bob square pants was in the mall. My kids aren't really into sponge bob but they thought he was cool still.

Eden in American girl heaven.

The boys were a little out of their element but they were good sports.

Marshall and Ty needed to do something a little more manly after the American Girl store so they threw some balls to try to win a stuffed animal.

We went to the Mall of America twice. The 2nd time we went it was just McKenzie and I and our girls. When we finished shopping we were heading back to our car and Eden said she had to go to the bathroom. So we stopped real quick on our way out. I took her into the women's bathroom and then I went out and took willow into the family restroom to change her diaper. McKenzie and all the girls were waiting outside the restrooms on a bench. I finished changing Willow and went out to the bench to wait for Eden. We waited and waited and waited and finally I said I was going to go see if she was ok. I called out her name and no one responded, so I yelled again, "Eden!" She didn't answer again so I started to look underneath each stall for her shoes. I looked and there wasn't a stall with her feet! I went back out and asked McKenzie if Eden had come out yet, and she said No. I started to panic! We left Lilly and the other girls at the bench incase Eden came looking and then McKenzie and I set off in separate directions looking for Eden. We made a complete circle around the amusement park area (that's were we had been, and neither of us found her). I ran over to a worker and told them I had lost my daughter and asked them to call security. They immediately picked up their phone to call security, and then I hear McKenzie yell "we found her!" At this point she was crying and I was crying. It was a really scary feeling to loose a child in the biggest Mall in America! I guess she had come out of the bathroom before I finished changing Willow and didn't see McKenzie and the girls sitting on the bench and they must have missed seeing her walk out and so she just kept walking. She finally got scared and found a person who was working in the amusement part ride area and told them she couldn't find me. They took her over to a booth area and helped her find us. I was sure glad she did the right thing!

We had one other funny/crazy thing that happened the first day on our trip. McKenzie and Ryan drove 2 vehicles to Minnesota so that we didn't have to rent a car (so nice of them). The first day of our trip Marshall and Ryan planned to go to a Minnesota Twins Baseball game. We left the Mall of America (McKenzie in one vehicle with a load of kids and me in the other vehicle with a load of kids) Marshall and Ryan were taking public transportation to get to the game. McKenzie and I were driving to our hotel to check in with all the kids and low and behold as I am driving in the middle of the busy interstate I blew a tire! And to add to the craziness my cell phone only had 5% battery left after a busy day of traveling. I knew I had like one maybe two phone calls before my phone was dead, so I called McKenzie. She got off the next exit to turn around to help me. She called Marshall and Ryan and they had to come and rescue us and missed the Twins game. After a vehicle tow and a couple of hours later (not to mention it happened to be a record 105 degrees that day in Minnesota) we got all fixed up and back to the hotel. It was a crazy start to our vacation, but it was all much better after that experience.

We went to church in Minnesota. We found a chapel and attended sacrament meeting. The ward was really small. Right after the sacrament meeting was over we had several people grab us and ask (hopingly) if we were new. As small as the congregation was, I think they hope any new faces are new members of the ward, haha. The missionaries also eagerly asked us if were visiting. We let them down and told them we were already members just visiting. haha. The bishop of the ward came over and introduced himself. We got talking about where we were from and to our surprise, he also grew up in Blackfoot and attended school at Snake River. His Dad, Mr. Moss, taught me in Jr. High Math. It is such a small world.

After church we walked around the Minnesota Zoo. It is a nice big zoo that is free to the public. It was hot and humid, but the kids didn't seem to mind. Willow blew out of her diaper while at the zoo so she got to sport just a diaper the rest of the day.

When we were in the monkey exhibit the zoo worker fed the monkeys. It was fun to watch them eat their food.

After spending a couple of days in the Main City of Minnesota, we drove to a Lake House a couple hours from Minneapolis. The Lake House is owned by the Larsen's bishop. They family is close friends with the Larsen's. McKenzie told her friend that we were coming to visit and she told her to take us to their lake house while we were in town. It was so beautiful and fun. We were so grateful for their generosity because we had a blast. The kids spent most of the time playing in the lake. Both my girls tried knee boarding. Their favorite things were the paddle boards and canoes. This Lake house had everything you can imagine. It had a bunk room with 4 sets of bunk beds. Which all the cousins loved. The beach area had tons of sand toys. Canoes, paddle boards, jet skis, ski boat, and a pontoon. The yard had a trampoline, and a fire pit. They had 4 wheelers, and bikes. The lake house had so many fun toys. My kids had such a blast! We planned to stay at the Lake house 3 days but we ended up staying 4 because the first day we got there was really cold so we couldn't do much of anything.

Marshall and Ryan getting their paddle boarding on.

Late night smores.

Ty and McCoy caught a frog...poor frog.

Mckenzie getting a little sun

The girls on the pontoon. They were all brave (except Sophie 😉) and jumped off the platform.

Willow hated her life jacket.

Ty wasn't about to jump in. It was cold water!

Addy and Maggie were prettying inseparable all week long.

Girl cousins at the lake house!

Marshall on his cleaning duties. We cleaned it all spic n span before we left. Nothing more attractive than a man with a broom on his hand 😉

After the lake house stay, we drove to Fargo to stay at McKenzie and Ryan's house for two days and one night. It was fun to see where they lived.

The high in Fargo when we were there was like 58 degrees but the kids still swam in the larsens pool. We got to go to dinner one night at a yummy restaurant called Granite City. We took Willow and Lilly babysat the rest of the kids. We went to church with the Larsen's on our last day. We had to fly back home Sunday night so after Sunday dinner we packed up. McKenzie and Ryan drove us to the airport. It was hard to say goodbye, but we had a wonderful time and we made some great memories.