Here Evelyn and Felicity are playing in a patch of snow left over from the first snow storm.  It has actually been a fairly harsh winter this year, with a lot of snow.  Unfortunately, the girls have a hard time keeping their gloves on, and don't like it much when it's too deep to walk on.  But they love to eat it!

We actually had to wake the girls up Christmas morning, because we were eager to see their reactions to their new toys!  Here they are playing with the doll house I painted for them and the fisher price Grandma Marie gave to them.  

Here they are playing with the playhouse Matt made for them out of card board.  They play with this everyday!  Felicity in particular loves playing peek-a-boo through the door and windows!

We let the girls play with their toys as they opened each present.  We were opening presents well into lunch time!

Matt drew this beautiful portrait of Felicity for me!

Around New Years, we went to Tucson to spend time with the Streeter side of the family.  Unfortunately, we forgot to bring our camera!  We had a great time though, the girls especially!  Felicity turned a year old the day after we got back.  Here she is eating the cake Matt made for her!  Isn't she a doll? 

Usually, the girls are too jealous to share reading time with Daddy, so I took advantage of this rare moment.

Thank you all who made our holidays special!

In honor of Grandpa Bob's 80th Birthday, all of the Jensen clan was in town Thanksgiving weekend.  So we invited my parents, siblings and their families to our tiny home for Thanksgiving.  It was a lot of fun!

While waiting for dinner, family members chatted and played.

 To make it so everyone could sit at the same table, we had to move most of our furniture out of the living room, line up every table we had, plus one my parents bought for the occasion, and gather all the chairs we could find, including the coffee table.  There were nineteen people there: my parents their children and spouses, and all 7 grandchildren.  Everyone contributed to the dinner, so Matt and I hardly had to make anything!

That night we played games and ate pie and ice cream!

Friday we took pictures!  Here are some of my favorites!

Evelyn turned 2 on Friday! Here are the two girls getting ready for the birthday party on Saturday.

 Evelyn "chose" her cake and her party theme. Clarisse gave her a few suggestions and went with the ones that Evelyn repeated back. So Evelyn had a princess party, and here is her pink castle cake.

 Of course, it's no surprise that she requested a chocolate cake. Yum!

 And here she is playing with her toys... Evelyn is still very excited to have new things to play with.

She loves her horses, and look, this one is big enough to ride!

We had so much snow this weekend, and Evelyn and Felicity enjoyed playing in it. Here is their little snowman. They didn't seem to mind the cold. Not as much as I did, any way. I was the one who decided it was time to go in....

As you can see, the snow was really falling!

Thanks so much to all of our family members who helped to make Evelyn's birthday special!

Here's a quick update on the vacation! We stayed with Grandma Marie for a week at her cabin. The cabin is by Navajo Lake if you know where that is...it's east of Cedar City. Anyway, We had a great time together, and Evelyn and Felicity really bonded with their great grandma.

 Evelyn was really intrigued by Grandma's big teddy bear. At first she was too shy to touch it, but eventually she warmed up to it. It was cute!
Evelyn loved being outdoors, and her favorite place was the meadow. She loved finding flowers and filling holes with rocks. She found a few horny toads which she called "corner toads."

 Clarisse and I were able to go out and do some exploring due to Grandma's kind babysitting. We were able to see some amazing sites including Cascade Falls.

 The hike to Cascade Falls has great mountain views as well as strange red rock formations. The falls are unusual; the water comes out of a hole in the cliff.

 We also visited Strawberry Point and looked out on those amazing red cliffs. I didn't go out onto the "point" of Strawberry Point at the request of Grandma and Clarisse. Instead I just observed the view from a safe distance.

There's so much we could tell about the vacation, but I am out of time and pictures. We really enjoyed playing board games with Grandma as well as eating cookies and delicious meals. Thanks for all you did to make the trip special for us Grandma Marie!

 We had a great week with Dennis and Robin being in town! The girls loved spending time with Grandma and Grandpa Jensen. We really appreciate all you guys did for us while you were up here.

 Here we are feeding the ducks at Liberty Park. We had kind of a funny experience... At first no ducks would come and eat our bread, but we noticed that some very large fish were ceasing the opportunity. Eventually we lured in a few ducks, and then the geese that had been ignoring us the whole time decided to join in.

 As is the custom, Clarisse took the opportunity to sing in church wile her parents were there to listen. It was AMAZING! I had goose bumps.

OK, I ought to say a bit about all that the girls are learning even though I don't have a lot of cute pictures to go along with it. Evelyn is getting better at making sentences. Some examples are "I did it!" "I see you" and "I get you". She can alter tenses a bit too. For example, it we say "you did it" she will say "I did it" in response. She also can put words together like "sleep, bed" or "sleep, grass" when lying on the grass. She is getting more imaginative too. She has a little orange stuffed cat, and Clarisse and I were recently discussing a name for it. I suggested Ginger and Evelyn picked up on it immediately and started repeating the name over and over. She likes the cat so much more than she use to now that it has a name. Maybe it makes her toy seem more like a real cat.

Felicity has developed a lot too. She can actually sit herself up now, and she is often on her hands and knees trying to learn to crawl. She can't really crawl yet, but she gets around by sort of flop-rolling like a fish on land in slow motion. She really likes to be held in a standing position and has pretty good balance.

 On Saturday, we took the family to the Cathedral of the Madeline here in Salt Lake. Our objective was to finally get a look at the famous stained glass windows. I won't bore you with the details, but I thought you might like to see some pictures.

The rose window pictured above was Clarisse's favorite. My window if choice was the one shown below.

 I have one funny experience to share from our visit to the cathedral. When we first walked inside, Evelyn seemed nervous and clung tight. After she got comfortable, she started looking around and saying "sacrifice?" I have no idea where she got that from. I think that it's a word that she associates with Jesus. Or maybe it was the altars. Anyway, she surprises us.