One of the highlights of our summer was a visit to Utah to see Brittney’s family in July. It was the first time we were all together since Papa and Nonna left for Russia 18 months earlier. We are so happy to have them back in the US (though we are missing visiting them in California and hope we can arrange a family reunion there soon). They brought the grandkids some cool Russian costumes. We tried to get some photos with all 9 grandkids but it wasn’t easy. Either the under 2 set were all asleep.
Or it was super windy.
Or everyone wanted to run around the yard.
We decided to visit some pros who miraculously got these photos.
And then the babies lost interest (and some of the bigger kids were on the verge).
Just Max and Julie.
My favorite of Julie (& love Breanne’s face too).
We are excited to have Nonna and Papa come visit us in our new house this weekend (and help celebrate Max’s birthday). Tons more photos from our trip coming soon.
The kids just finished six weeks of an awesome day camp, and I had big plans for projects I was going to catch up on, like this blog and getting 6,000 photos off my phone. That didn’t happen, and now we are getting ready to fly to Utah tomorrow to see most of the Jensen family. Kids are super excited to relive some of the highlights from last summer (that I am just now posting about), like checking out the new children’s museum at Thanksgiving point. Lots of climbing and scary tunnels and rope bridges, but the cousins helped each other out. The girls all have matching pink dresses and Sidon and Max had matching orange polo shirts so we could keep track of them all.
Julie made Mommy go down Leading him to a dark scary tunnel
Max helping his cousins rock climb (they don’t really need any help)
The ladies lunching and the boys hanging.
Sophie shared her sno cone with Julie, then Max shared his with Breanne, and Maya shared with Max and Julie. And everyone was happy (and fortunately healthy). Julie talked about it for months.
And everyone had blue tongues for the group shots.
Sidon, Max and Papa checked out the puppet theater, trains, and a maze (Max loooves mazes).
Julie liked pulling and letting go of pullies & weights with Sophie. And diving into the sandpit. Twice.
She was fine…
On Sidon’s birthday we went to the local aquarium.
Lots of cool animals, but Julie was most interested in playing some body part game with Sophie.
She found a good reading spot, then got trapped in a shark’s mouth,
The cousins rescued her and made it across another rope bridge.
The highlight of the trip for certain nieces may have been the discovery of some old dance costumes in the basement and the ensuing dance parties.
We had a fun picnic with the extended family on my dad’s side including an old family tradition, a chicken dinner, where you eat like a chicken. Max played his part well. And we got a Jensen family photo without the kids (much easier).
Chicken dinner at the Jensen reunion – an old family tradition
Back to the Children’s museum for a presentation of the original ‘The Pirate and Little Red Riding Hood’ and more rope bridges.
Max and Julie got to celebrate pioneer day ( a commemoration of the first Mormon pioneers reaching Utah in the 1840s) with a prade and picnic featuring old fashioned games.
Play and posing at the splash park and silly songs by Sophie.
And the neighbor’s backyard train and pool.
Lots of hugs and important lessons learned.
We are looking forward to more adventures with our family this week. Max still has to be careful not to get kicked in the face (so maybe not climbing through the rain forest at the children’s museum), but can swim and run around and eat everything except really hard foods like nuts & raw veggies. And we’ll try to keep the dance parties under control…
On Christmas Eve we made cookies for Santa (chocolate chip of course, though not quite as good as Nonna’s). Breanne and Maya were great at making the dough into balls while Max cleaned the beater.
Dancing off the chocolate chips.
We opened up one present Christmas Eve, matching pjs! Kids had fun picking out stockings, riding pj trains, and dancing while Breanne, Sophie and Maya sang all the songs from their school’s holiday program.
Christmas morning we opened a few presents while we waited for everyone else to get up/come over. Max asked for ‘Santa’ from Santa, so he got a Santa puzzle. Apparently Santa is a Michigan fan.
It got pretty chaotic once all nine grandkids were together with presents to open.
We skyped with Nonna and Papa in Moscow who got to witness the tree almost falling on Soren after some kids snuck behind it.
Julie was excited about an Elmo dress (she wants to wear her Elmo shirt everyday) and all her stocking loot – candy cane , artichoke (it’s a Jensen family tradition), expandable dinosaurs, and most of all her bowl.
We made graham cracker houses with peanut butter and healthy snacks. Max and Breanne were the only ones that completed their house without eating it.
Five siblings all grown up (sort of). We missed our parents but managed to pull off a pretty awesome Christmas with only minor injuries and food fiascos. Glad we are all friends and our kids like to party together.
We also enjoyed getting to spend lots of time as a family of four.
Max and Julie liked all their presents, especially all the Michigan gear.
But of course the best present was so much playtime, dance parties, singing, laughing, trains, cooking and eating with family. Here’s the best we could do with an all-grandkid photo.
We’ll try again next year, with Nonna and Papa to help.
So we’re a little behind on our posts, Brittney’s been busy working on kidonthetown.com and it takes so long to get ready to go anywhere in this brutal weather. Here are some photos from our Christmas trip to Utah, and we hope to catch up on everything else soon. Both kids were very excited to go on the airplane to see their relatives. The security line is still one of the most exciting things ever for Max, and Julie has a new favorite word.
Max and Julie had so much fun playing with their 7 cousins between the ages of 1 and 5.
Uncle Jeff is fun too. Julie convinced him to play ‘ten little piggies’ with her.
Max was surprisingly good at this game where you guess what’s on your forehead. The kids don’t quite understand competition yet, they just helped each other figure it out.
Loving the trampoline in Jeff’s basement
Good we had so many indoor options as it snowed (and snowed) most of the time we were there. Mark was not looking forward to shoveling it and found some teenage boys on the block to help out. They offered to do it for free as a service, baffling Mark, who insisted on paying them Manhattan rates.
Max was so excited to make a snowman.
We got creative with what we had and turned it into a snow princess with a tiara, boa and banana mouth.
The roads were too icy for the California cars to get to Temple Square in Salt Lake as planned, so we saw the lights at nearby Thanksgiving Point. Julie loved the ‘neigh-neighs’ that drove our wagon.
We also went to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point, we’re pretty lucky to have so much kids stuff nearby.
Brittney’s parents couldn’t make it from Russia so it was just the five siblings organizing everything. Courtney and her family are staying in Jon and Janet’s house and were great hosts to our family. We ended up eating pretty well and even eventually figured out how to set up the Christmas tree.
Does the tree stay up? Do we ever get a photo of all nine grandkids? Find out in our Christmas Eve/Day post coming soon.
We all had such fun during our daddy/son – mommy/daughter weekend in June that in August we decided to split up again (and finally wean Julie). This time Mommy and Son headed to Haverford to visit Aunt Ashly. We enjoyed walking around the lovely squares in Philadelphia and looking at sculptures.
We indulged in some favorite nephew/aunt activities including shopping (and pretending to nap on this silly couch in the elevator at Anthropologie) and lots of yummy local food, including gelato.
For dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant from chef whose food we’d loved in Atlantic City. We were pretty excited to find a taxi in the restaurant, and even more excited that we got to eat in it!
Max rotated between eating fish tacos and guac and joyously running around and exploring the taxi . He decided that the stroller needed a ride. The waiters said they had never seen anyone so enjoy the vehicular dining experience.
Ashly lives in a pretty college town right outside Philadelphia with a geese-filled lake in her front yard.
Back in Philly we went to the Reading Terminal Market to try Philly Cheese Steak and Amish pretzels and feed a life-size piggy bank.
Ashly and Brittney were crazy into colonial history as children, so we took Max to Independence Hall and saw the Liberty Bell. Max was very interested in the crack. We watched a weird movie about the founding fathers and saw lots of statues of George Washington, and the perhaps equally famous Rocky.
Max talked a lot before we came about seeing his dear friend Edie. Max liked playing with her and Barak’s dog Cyan.
Perfect weather for a walk around Fairmount Park before we got on the train home.
Back in NYC, Julie and Mark had a super fun time not wearing pants at playgrounds and playspaces and just being silly around the apartment. Julie only asked for Mama once and adapted nicely to bottle-only drinking (coconut milk, she may or may still be allergic to dairy, trying to figure that out).
We love having one-on-one time with our cuties and Max was a great traveler.
