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!!

Arkansas Weather and Some Auntie Rif- Uncle Ty Time

Okay, I just want to do a short post about my crazy hometown. So today it was snowing. Yesterday we had tornadoes. The day before it was really warm and perfect outside. I'm just saying that I have no idea what type of attire to put on in the mornings and I have no idea what to expect when I walk out the door in the afternoons. I wouldn't mind some snow to go with the cold. But if there isn't going to be any snow then the cold can just leave and the warm can come. Got that mother nature? Cold + Snow = Okay. Cold - Snow = NO. .... And yes, I do fully realize that I just wrote a whole paragraph ranting about the weather. It's definitely been a long day.

So in other news, my sister was in the hospital this past week (she's home and better now) but one of the days while she was gone I watched my niece Camilla. Gosh. She is adorable. She has Tyler wrapped around her finger and me too.

It's been so fun to see Tyler with all of my nieces and nephews. (Don't worry, this might sound like a baby hungry post but it will be a while before anything like that happens.) He is so good with them and they all adore him. We also just got called to be sunbeam teachers at church so we watch all of the 3-4 year old's. Let's just say, as adorable as they all are, we are dead tired once we get home. If there were ever a time where I wish I could wear sweats at church, that's it. Hopefully we will get better at teaching. So far we burn through the little lessons within the first half of class so by time the second half rolls around we are just trying to manage chaos. We'll get better though. Just give us time and some more crayons.

Thanks for reading!
With Love,

That One Special Day

Okay, so since this blog pretty much replaces my journal (considering I never pull that thing out to update it) I figure I will post about my wedding day on here. So Tyler and I got married on December 18 of 2012 in the San Diego, California LDS Temple. Which is this big, unreal, gorgeous place in this picture below. A funny part about that day is that it rained. From what I understand about California is that 95% of the time it is perfect weather: sunny and fairly warm. On our wedding day it was overcast and really rainy for California standards. From what I understand it's good luck to have rain on your wedding day, so I'll take it then! It caused some communication  errors though so when we came out of the temple doors. The first time we came out, no one was there to greet us. Tyler and I thought were a little confused, turned around, laughed for a little bit, and then a few minutes later, tried again. By that time the family had started to run towards our door (they had all been at the other door) so we had a some friends there to greet us and then the rest soon followed. After having a short and rainy photo shoot, we headed over to our reception spot. It was BEAUTIFUL! Tyler's parents made the California reception hall a surprise and it was amazing. It was a restaurant right on the beach with huge windows showing the ocean. At the reception we had the delicious food, and then the famous roast! I had never heard of a roast before meeting Tyler and his family but it's an event at the wedding where everyone stands up and.. well.. basically roasts you! They tell any and all embarrassing stories that they can think of regarding you. They had too much fun with it but it was a blast and I highly recommend roasts at weddings now. Here are some pictures of some of our roasters:

So after getting completely roasted we cut the cake, danced our dance, had another little photo shoot, and went on our way! The best part about that day though, other than getting married to the man of my dreams, was being able to celebrate it with both of our families and some of our friends. It honestly made the occasion 100 times better that had it just been Tyler and I. Here are some pictures of the great people that came to our special day. I can't post a picture of everyone that came, because that would be overwhelming, but here are a few of my favorite shots.

Some of our whole big awesome family! 

We love our family! We can't express it enough! Sometimes we aren't the best at calling and communicating with everyone since we get caught up in our busy lives, so it was nice to have an event that brought everyone to the same vicinity again. We also love that we got married. That's a big plus too! ;)


Thanks for reading! I'll try to post again soon, I promise!
With Love,

Our Story

This is when we were at Tyler's cousin's
wedding when we first started dating. 

So before I post about the wedding day and all of those events, I want to go in order and post our story of how we first met! I'm trying hard to not jump the gun so here goes nothing: Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a place called Rexburg, Idaho. It was magical with it's snowy mountains and tender winds.... Just kidding! We really did meet in Rexburg, Idaho, but it definitely doesn't have tender winds. We met there in the January during the winter semester. That is when Rexburg is most freezing and icy. Tyler was in my Family Home Evening group and he was also my home teacher. It took a while for us to actually start dating. I kind of crushed on him for a while and then one day I saw his twin brother, Travis, and his wife, Cami, out on campus. They were holding hands and I politely waved at Travis (thinking it was Tyler, since I didn't know about his twin brother) just to say hi (even though in my head I was wondering what the heck was he doing holding another girls hand) and he didn't even acknowledge me. Needless to say, I felt like an idiot and I was irritated at Tyler for flirting with me all the time and leading me on. Not long after that though I was around Tyler at FHE and I overheard him mentioning his twin brother and sister-in-law. After that I was into him again. On our first date we went rock climbing and out for ice cream. I remember thinking that he was fun but things probably won't work out because he was too cheap. Ha! But, I kept dating him just because he was fun to be around. Slowly like turned into love, and I guess he felt the same way because before you know it we were exclusively dating. His parents flew us out to California so I could get to know them better, and while we were there, Tyler took me on a date to the beach and told me he loved me on the pier. The thing that really makes it a "Rifka-ish" experience though is that before he said that, I got bitten or stung by some sort of sea creature, so I had a nice swollen foot that I was limping on to the pier with. I refused to say anything though because I knew what was coming, and by gosh, if there's a time to sacrifice the little for the big, that was it! So, fast forward, Tyler was graduating at the end of spring semester, and with him being from California and I being from Arkansas, we both knew we wouldn't be in the same vicinity again. After discussing, he and I decided that we didn't really want to cut things off... but we weren't ready for engagement, so his solution was that he was going to move to Arkansas and see how things went from there. So he came to my family reunion, met everyone (they all loved him to death) and ended up lining up a job and housing while he was here, and then two weeks later he moved here to Arkansas! A few months after that he proposed, and then a few months after that we had our dream wedding! (That post is on the way.) The proposal story is kind of long and funny but pictures will just have to do for now! :)

And yes, that is my Mom in the background, crying. She's a sweetie. 

Thanks for reading!

With love,

A Little Introduction About The New Mr. and Mrs....

Well hello friends, family and perhaps strangers,

This is my first time writing on a blog in a while and I'm upgrading from my single life blog to a married life one, so that Tyler can be in the picture here as well. The update right now is we are here living in Rogers, AR close to my family. Tyler graduated from BYU-Idaho last summer and is now working at Hyundai as a service writer, so that he can get some dealership experience (his end goal is to own a dealership). I am currently working at Gibby Law Firm as a legal assistant, and I am also still going to school. By the end of this semester my associates will be complete and then I should be able to transfer easily to other universities that fall in the plans for Tyler and I. Right now we are working on the plans for the next step in life! Choosing which college to go to for my bachelors and his MBA, which internships to apply for, which jobs are best and which cities seem most appealing for us! Everything is a big adventure and feeling like big decisions.. but with that said, we're in this together so everything will work out; but feel free to remind me of that. :) I'll try to keep this updated so that you know where we are and what we are doing! Thanks for being involved in our newlywed adventures!