Christmas Eve Party

I had heard about the Jensen's Christmas Eve festivities and traditions from the time I started dating Taylor two years ago. This year Taylor and I were in Cincinnati to enjoy it together. The decor and ambiance and not to mention the delicious food made me feel like I was in a Christmas celebration captured in a magazine.

Before dinner there was caroling and a talent show. Taylor had worked all week on his slide whistle performance which was a hit.

Look at that dining room. How could you not feel the magic of Christmas eating in that dining room. Nan sure knows how to through a party!

Cincy-style vacation

When in Cincy, there are some essential things to do. Greaters, Skyline, and Montgomery Inn are all on the list. Also on the list are sleeping in, movies, Wii, and eating! Here are some snippets of what we've been up to so far:

1. Skyline-- a MUST.

2: Greaters Ice Cream. We got it the first night here! And the second. Yum!

3: the Nutcracker Ballet at the Arnoff Center downtown. Dad had some extra tickets to the matinee and they were out of town, so we made an afternoon date out of it! The audience was filled with kids, which added to the fun and excitement of it. 

4. Tree Worship. We have a great tree to worship this year!

5. Preparing our christmas eve program songs/pieces/poems, etc. We, per K-Train's request, are singing a song all together. It isn't turning out so well, but hopefully some Christmas spirit will make it better than it is!

Christmas Ornaments

Every year in the Jensen home, we children get a new ornament to commemorate something that has happened in our lives in the past year. Ornaments that I have gotten in years past include a car, an eagle, a tent, a bike, a school bus, a penguin, a suitcase, and many other unique and special ornaments. This christmas, as you may have guessed, Hayley and I got a nice wedding cake ornament from my mom.

As we unwrapped it, she told us the story of Dani and Jared's wedding cake ornament that they got when first married. This ornament fell victim to a fallen-over tree years later. Unfortunately, neither Dani nor my mother can find that same ornament. With that tale in mind, Hayley and I decide to protect our new little cake.

The next night, we decide to take the ornament out of the box. My mom takes it to cut off the tag. Unfortunately, the string she was holding as she cut was attached to the piece she cut, so the ornament fell and shattered on the kitchen floor! After feeling terrible for about 30 seconds, she jumped online and a minute later announced that a new one of the same ornament was on the way! Crisis averted.

 Following my mother's tradition, I also picked up an ornament for Hayley. Surprise! Its another wedding-themed ornament.

AFG Christmas Party

Hay and I originally booked our flights to be home in time for the Montgomery Ward christmas brunch that was suposed to happen last Saturday. Unfortunately, they moved it up a week, so we missed it. But, thanks to my clutch dad, we got tickets to the annual AFG Christmas party. It is a swanky event put on and they always have a concert. This year? Tim McGraw. To make matters even better, we scored seats in the first row! It was a blast, and we were impressed. Hayley was starstruck. Every time I looked over at her, she was singing right along to all these songs.

After the concert, we had the chance to go take our picture with Tim McGraw. Hayley told him it was so great to meet him. He was a nice guy and we now have a picture of us with good ol' Tim McGraw! Thanks, Mom and Dad! After the picture, we had a solid buffet dinner. It was delicious! We decided we need to come to cincy during the holidays more often!

Finals are DONE!

It was a great week for Hayley and I. We are DONE with finals! And, I daresay, I think we did pretty well! We both feel pretty relieved and are ready to relax! I am particularly relieved as the two finals I wrote for the 2 classes I TA for went over well and were not disasters. Now I have to grade 50+ exams, 25 6-9 page papers and 4 8-10 page papers. That can all wait till next week.

Yesterday, Hay and I flew out to Cincinnati for Christmas. I took advantage of already being done with finals and went skiing with Eric. It was a great day-- we found lots of good snow everywhere we went. We got pretty worn out again. Maybe we are getting old? When we were freshmen, we used to ski from the second the lifts open at 9 AM and were the last ones off the mountain at 4:30 PM. We didn't stop for lunch, and felt guilty when we had to stop to go to the bathroom! Now we get on the mountain around 10 and are done between 2 and 3. We are getting soft!

Yesterday, we ended at 2, and Eric dropped me off in a parking lot in Sandy where Hayley and Chelsea/Clayton picked me up and we headed straight to the airport. Later that night, we landed here in Cincy. What a great way to cap off finals week! Poor Hayley had to take one more final, so she had a very busy day. But-- time to RELAX! With Greaters :)

Finals!

The semester is soon coming to an end, which means that its finals time! Hayley and I have done really well in our classes this semester, so hopefully that means that we won't have to study as hard for finals! Thats wishful thinking, huh? Hayley and I generally eat pretty healthy food, but during finals week and this past week, we don't quite as much. Hayley caught me in my onesie sneaking some chocolate chips. Turns out I had done this at an earlier point in my life as well...

As tradition mandates, I went skiing with Eric yesterday on a reading day. We were THRILLED to have 7 inches of new snow while we were skiing! It made for one incredible day. We were spent--we are skiing some really challenging stuff and pushing ourselves hard. We didn't have nearly as many rock scrapes and scratches on our skis as we did last saturday when we went up for the first time this season. Having a day like yesterday this early in the season is absolutely welcome! We put up our christmas tree to celebrate the winter season:

Earlier this week, I had a big moment in my life. Ever since I was a freshman, I had the goal of winning a BYU intramural champion T-shirt each of my four years. My freshman year, I won it with our men's volleyball team. Sophomore year, it was co-ed soccer. Junior year it was Dodgeball. And now, I am proud to announce that our men's soccer team has won the upper division soccer championship!!!! It was a crazy run to the title. Since we lost our second tournament game, we had to beat this team twice in order to secure the title. We did so, and it was a proud proud moment for us. We entered the tournament as the #1 seed, something I had never had happen before. We had some moments of drama and controversy on the way to the top, but the T-shirt feels good to have. Here is the proud picture:

Now its time to start crunching for finals! (PS. Hay and I are voice-less today after an EPIC comeback victory from the Cougar's basketball team against Utah last night. Wow!)