Our Life as Sunbeam Teachers.

So as you know, Tyler and I teach the sunbeams (3 year old class) at our church. It's seriously so fun! Today since it was Mother's Day all of the men in the church took over for the women in Primary and in Young Women's so that all of the ladies could go to Relief Society and Sunday School. It was so nice but last night I helped Tyler get prepared for his lesson today since it was going to be just him and a substitute. After church he came back and told me that it went awesome and all of the kids loved the activity so I thought I would share it in off chance that someone else teaching little kids might be needing some ideas. The lesson today was about how we have bodies and how important it is to take care of them (Deep doctrine I know!)

So, for the bodies part, we just made a blank face and then cut out things to put on it. Things like eyes, hair, nose, mouths, ears, etc. The kids just drew all of these items out of a bag and then stuck it onto the face. Tyler said that they loved it. I made boy face items and girl face items and they had fun with it. They put the girls hair on the boy as a mustache and etc. I'm glad they had so much fun and it was so easy to make! The best part about it is that even if you can't color and draw well, it doesn't matter! It's just the activity that they enjoy! (I'm proof of that!) 

The next activity that we prepared for them is about the things you put in your body. I made healthy foods and then not so healthy foods. They would draw these one of these out of the bags and put it in the "Healthy-eat whenever" pile or else in the "Not so Healthy- eat only every once in while" pile. They loved this one as well! I'm so glad! 

The last activity I got ready for them was for Mother's Day. I just got these fuzzy pipe lines for them to make flowers for their Mom's with. Tyler said he had to help them a little with the twisting and making it look good (our class is so funny, even when making things with playdough they want it to look perfect.). It still went well, it's just an activity you have to help them a bit more with.
We stayed up late Saturday night working on all of it. We watched a movie, did some arts and crafts for the class and just made it a cute date. Here is a picture of Tyler at like 1:30 in the morning once we were all done. He's such a great husband!

our happy Sunday School Teacher the night before! 

Well that is our happy Sunday School update and here is one of our happy Sunday Schoolers... he also is my nephew which is why this photo isn't in a church setting at all. This picture actually has nothing to do with anything but I thought I would add it because it's just too cute to exclude!

Once again, thanks for reading! 

Love, 

Dog Sitting (well Kind of...)

My Brother and Sister in Law went out of town this weekend for her last track meet. While they were gone they asked us to watch their dogs. As a side note, I've been craving some puppy time so we brought the little dog, Cocoa home one night and just spoiled her. It was her turn since the other day I took the big one out on a run through this awesome trail by our house. So we brought Cocoa home, gave her a bath, and gave her good dog-rubs the rest of the night. Then, of course when it was time to go to sleep she cried most of the night because attention time was over and she's used to her night life outside. I thought she was out of her puppy crying stage but I guess not. Oh well, it was still fun. Needless to say though after I dropped her off back at her house I scrubbed and vacuumed the entire apartment so that there wouldn't be any left over dog smell or hair. I guess that's a good way to motivate my spring cleaning. After that we took both of the dogs on walks and then since last night was the last time to feed them we also gave them some rawhide bones. They loved it.

They were too excited to stand or sit still for even two seconds. Oh, and beware: Layla is still a puppy, but you can tell from her size she's already a huge boxer, so when she jumps up on you and is knocking you over she doesn't even realize that you are trying to push her off.

Here she is on one of our runs. She's a great running partner. She'll
pull you along to a run even if you're wanting to walk.

 Crazy dog ruined my outfit with slobber and dirt every time I went over. But she's still awesome :). We had a lot of fun with them both.

Thanks Caleb for letting us watch your dogs! We had fun!

Belated Gorden Graduation Party

So when I know I had a post about graduating already but this last weekend we had a graduation party with the Gorden family. My Sister in Law, Becca graduated from University of Arkansas so my family threw a graduation party for both of us. My Dad made some delicious BBQ (Tyler said it's his new favorite -good job Dad!) and then my Dad made this awesome graduation cake for me. So since I only got my associates degree the running joke has been that I've "half graduated" so my Dad made this "half graduation" cake.

So creative right! Go Dad! 

My awesome nephew Gorden. After everyone scarfed the cake down, he convinced
everyone to go outside and play soccer with him as a fam. So fun. :) 

So with that said it was a good weekend! The night before this (on Saturday) we all went as a family to this El Salvadoran restaurant and needless to say we all ate some interesting things, but my Dad's meal won. Look at this big ol' nasty.

 

....and on that note! Thanks for reading!

Just... Just enjoy this...

Just... Think about this picture when you're having a bad day... maybe even use it for a meme... 

Doughnut Cupcakes

So today we tried out a new recipe (thanks Pinterest!) and Tyler loved it so I thought I would share it. They are called Doughnut Cupcakes!

3/4 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking power

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup milk (low fat is fine)

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp butter, melted

1/2 cup sugar, for rolling

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a muffin tin with cooking spray or vegetable oil.

In a large bowl, beat together sugar and egg until light in color.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Pour into egg mixture and stir to combine. Pour in vegetable oil, milk and vanilla extract.

Divide batter evenly into 10 muffin cups or ~24 mini-muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full.

Bake for 15-18 minutes for standard-sized muffins or 11-12 minutes for mini-muffins, until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

While muffins are baking, melt butter and pour remaining sugar into a small bowl.

When muffins are done, lightly brush the top of each with some melted butter, remove from the pan and roll in sugar. Cool on a wire rack.

Yield:  ~10 standard muffins or ~24 mini-muffins  

Tyler loves them! He wants it to be one of those recipes that our kids  think of as a family classic.

Our Planning Picnic!

So naturally, after making some yummies, we went outside to have a picnic and plan some future goals. I would say that it was a successful Sunday and the relaxation was needed especially after having taught our sunbeams class this morning. I don't know if it's because it was perfect weather today but they were at the top of the levels for energy so we felt completely dead after church. And now here we are, sitting on the couch watching Prison Break, our new addiction TV Show. Seriously. It's so good and my brain won't turn off thinking about it ever. At night in bed when I should be sleeping I'm wondering what will happen next and during work I'm just raving about it to my co-workers. My name is Rifka Jensen and I'm an addict! ha! Well until next time! Thanks for reading!

Love, the Jensen's

Well I guess I have some catching up to do...

Well hello friends!

Sorry I haven't updated this in forever! These past couple of weeks have been busy. Well, for one I graduated! Actually, I only half-graduated because it was my associates degree, but according to Tyler, that's still worth celebrating! Tyler and I flew out to Utah and drove up to Rexburg, Idaho with his parents. I was able to walk at BYUI, along with my brother and sister in law, who both graduated also. It was a good trip. All of Tyler's family was able to come including grandparents, aunts, parents and some cousins. It was great hanging out with them. While in Rexburg, we were able to stay with my second family growing up, the Dunlops, and Tyler was able to get to know them better. It was great. I think he saw a new side of me while hanging out with them because I may have resorted back to my childhood ways while being with Hannah. I've known her since I was probably four years old, so it's always a good time hanging out with her and her Mom. We love them. Thanks again for having us!

Tyler, me, Travis and Cami

This is from last summer when Tyler graduated. 

Hannah and Robin Dunlop. Love Them!

The Monday following graduation, Tyler's cousin got married so we were able to make it to the ceremony and part of the reception before catching our plane back home. It was a nice treat to see them seal the deal and see all of the family that was there for the ceremony. They got married in the SLC Temple so visiting temple square and the going in the temple is always a treat.

Okay, for update #2: I got a haircut! I did it right before graduation and I know that by no means is this nearly as big as news, but it's a change! As most of you know I've had long hair for forever so its been nice to chop it and start fresh, but every now and then I miss it a little. Here is the before and after picture:

Looks much better right? Get some style back to it! 

Okay update #3 - We're training for a 5K! Not a huge run but it's much more than what I've been doing! My co-worker Katie found it online and so I think that we may run it as an office but Tyler is going to join! I'll be sure to take some pre-training photos and some post photos so that we can see some before and after progress (hopefully we'll see some progress!!). Katie and I are going to start training this week and we're both looking forward to losing this winter warmth weight! 

Update #4 I got a sewing machine as a graduation gift from in-laws and I love it! I've been going at is with my craft projects and it also got me into finishing up some decoration ideas that I've had for my apartment. My first project was to make a bag holder for all of those pesky Wal-Mart bags that come home from every shopping trip and have no place. It was my first sewing project in a while but it fills its purpose!

This is the machine I picked out. Project Runway Edition. AWESOME.

The next project that I worked on as far as our apartment was in our bedroom. Got the walls all spruced up and I finally found some of the colors that I've been looking for. We splurged and got it the way we want it for now while in this little apartment.

We also finally used up some of our gift cards that we've been saving and got the things we need for our kitchen! Yay! It was time!

Food scale, cherry pitter, pizza cutter, garlic mincer and can opener! 

Okay, last update: Tyler has gotten better at hiding. You are probably wondering what in the world I am talking about. We are such goofballs and what we do to make our lives a little more exciting is hide and jump out or just hide from each other. I know it sounds dumb but it's actually pretty challenging if you have ever seen our apartment. It's 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom and the living room and kitchen are connected. There seriously are not very many places to hide. So the other day I came out and could not find Tyler anywhere and after like 15 minutes and even checking outside I found him. This is where he was:

My crazy 6'2'' husband was able to fit underneath our couch. Impressive honestly! 

Well those are our updates. Sorry that they aren't very exciting! You can tell life isn't very crazy for us yet. We are currently in the process of hearing back on and making some life plans so maybe bigger and better updates will be coming soon... we'll just have to see! Keep us in your prayers though. Thanks for reading! 

Love, Tyler and Rifka

Warm Weekend Fun

This weekend was great! It finally got a little warmer and sunny so we took full advantage. On Friday night we went out for sushi again with my brother Caleb and his wife Becca. They introduced us to this place that is delicious and has the quickest service and great atmosphere. We're addicted.

Yummy!!! 

This is the man that originally introduced me to Sushi! Bless him! 

  

Anyways, after that we went to Fastlanes and went go carting and played some arcade games. We felt like teenagers again, except that there was no dropping me off at home and saying goodbye afterwards. We like that change. :) The next day Tyler went golfing while I finished homework. After that we gave him a much needed haircut and then... wait for it... shot our BOW and ARROWS! So awesome! That was my Christmas present but since it's been so cold we haven't gone out to use it. Seriously. So much fun. After that we just had a game night at my sisters house. It was overall a pretty good day minus me getting sick later that night. This has pretty much been our weekend though. I don't know if I mentioned this earlier but Tyler has applied for a job in Utah and we are still waiting back to hear on that. We'll let you know with any updates there. I'll post again soon! Hopefully with more interesting news :) 

Thanks for reading! Until next time- Love the Jensens!

Girls Camp... Again? ....Well Don't Mind If I Do!

So some of you may know that my Mom is the Stake President over the young women in our church and little did I know she has been bringing my name up in the meetings preparing for girls camp in the summer. So she briefly tells me about how the Spanish Branch doesn't have a camp mom/director and that they have been talking about me and I may be getting a call from them. Sure enough last weekend I get a call from their bishop thanking me for volunteering and officially welcoming me to the job.

Soo. Girls Camp. It's seriously awesome! But I've only been as a youth, never as the adult leader! Little to say I'm pretty excited but I'm pretty nervous all the same. The theme this year is based off of Dr. Seuss and it's "Oh to the Temple we Go" (like "Oh the places you'll go") and our wards theme is based off of the Grinch. I already have some awesome ideas of what we can do with that. I meet with my girls next Wednesday to get the ball rolling. Hopefully they'll like, hopefully they all know English and hopefully they won't make fun of my Spanglish and instead will help my poor Spanish skills.

I'm pretty excited! Tyler isn't quite sure how he feels about me being gone for a whole week, but I'm sure he won't mind. He'll probably play golf everyday, go to bed early like he loves and play our Wii all the time. (Did I mention we got a Wii this week?) - I have to say that in my opinion the new Donkey Kong game is pretty awesome, but then again I like the cheesy games like that. Tyler's opinion is a little different :).

That's pretty much the newest update for now. We went down to Houston last week to visit Tyler's Mom and Step-Dad but a post on that is soon to come! Thanks for reading!

Happy Valentines Sunbeams!

So Tyler and I are the sunbeams teachers at church (Sunday school for the 3 year olds) and since Valentines Day is coming up I made little Valentines bags and bought some Dr. Seuss Valentines for the kids to give to each other. I probably spent 2 hours on Saturday night making the little bags and cookies to go with them. Tyler was in charge of the cookies and one batch was really good but the first batch was pretty crispy. When we got to church on Sunday it turned out that more than half of our class wasn't there because they were sick. We ended up having a lot of fun with the two that we had, but we decided to postpone our Valentines Day party until next week so that everyone could be there. Here are the little bags that I made though. I can't wait for when my kids are making their Valentines buckets for school... I'm going to try really hard to not take over... but no promises to my poor kids, it's just too fun! 

Our Getaway Weekend to Eureka Springs

So I decided to spice it up a little last week and planned a spontaneous getaway to Eureka Springs, AR. I planned the whole thing without telling Tyler. I only told him that I was going to be spending around $110 dollars and to not worry about anything else. When he got home from work on Friday I was sitting in the parking lot hiding and once he went up the stairs into the apartment I put all of my stuff in the car and waited. I had left some notes in the apartment telling him to change out of his work clothes and then leading him to his already packed bags and then back down to the car. We went out for a quick bite and then drove about an hour to Eureka Springs. I bought tickets to this haunted ghost tour that my boss told me about. It was awesome and I think that I should share the story:

Let me know if you see anything spooky! 

You can tell we were the goofs of the group :) 

Back in the day the water of Eureka Springs was believed to have healing properties so the town grew and received a lot of tourism based on that. There was a hotel there that was a resort for the really upper class so people from up east would come down and stay there and just have a blast. In the off season it was a junior college for women. When the depression hit a man named Norman Baker bought the abandoned hotel and turned it into a hospital for cancer patients, especially with brain cancer. He wrote letters to rich families up east letting them know to send their friends and family who have that problem to him. He made it a resort as well as a hotel telling people to bring golf clubs and swim suits. When they got there he told them that they would be so busy that they need to write about 20 letters to their friends and family upfront so they would make up stories and letters talking about how much fun they were having. Here's the twist: Norman Baker wasn't really a Doctor but he let people think that he was. After a while he started to believe that he was a Doctor and started to doing surgeries and experiments trying to cure the patients. He would open their heads and pour the "Eureka Springs Healing Water" into their skulls and he ended up killing a lot of people. After they had died he would continue sending out their letters to their families so that we would continue receiving fatty checks. He eventually got arrested for mail fraud since he used to US Postal service to lie to people. Now the hospital is a hotel once again and the most requested rooms are the most haunted ones.

So with all of that said we went on the tour and the whole time our tour guide talked about ghosts and how often guests will catch a ghost on their cameras. So obviously I snapped photos the whole time to see if I could catch one. Tyler was a skeptic the whole time and I just thought the whole thing was funny. I didn't really get anything big in any of my pictures... but then, the last picture we took I caught this:

Spooky right! The tour guide said it is an "orb". You tell me what you think. Perhaps my husband had a ghost on his head.. perhaps not. :)


So after that we stayed the night in this really ghetto hotel and then the next day I planned for us to go to a chocolate festival. We went into this convention center where there were tables and tables of chocolate fountains, chocolate samples of anything you could ever imagine (including Dark Chocolate Vinegar.. blech!) They gave us a box and set us free.

It was such a great idea in the beginning but afterwards I don't know how good we were feeling about it. I ended up giving half of my box away to my Mom when we got home because no one needs that much chocolate.

Needless to say I think it was a successful weekend. He's taking his turn now with the surprises considering it's Valentines this week. He went out on some secret errands today so I'll guess we'll find out soon what they were. He's doing a pretty good job and not slipping up and telling me even though I try to catch him off guard when I ask.

Hope you guys are having a good week also! Thanks for reading!

Did I Do That?

So, the other day Tyler and I were rough housing, and I ended up stepping on his computer and breaking the screen. I know, I know, we should have learned out lesson back in elementary school about rough housing, but oh well. So I ended up researching how to install new laptop screens and I ordered one. It came in the mail today and we tag team replaced it. Lets just say I'm feeling pretty technology capable today. Oh.. and we still haven't learned our lesson. We were rough housing again the next day and I totally got slammed in the nose ( FYI it was an accident, not abuse!) Maybe one day we'll learn. :)

About to find out if his computer works....

The new screen

Success!!