Our last events in NY

Okay so I'm really catching up here since we moved almost a month ago! But I wanted to document some things from New York that were really great!

The first was our going away party that the ward threw us! There was a great turn-out of many friends that we've made the last year while in the Bronx:

Salinas and Diaz families. Such incredible families who were the heart and blood of the ward.

The awesome sister missionaries! We met so many amazing young men and women who dedicated their time to serving a mission. They were so dedicated and we just loved having them in our home!

Yolanda- she loved Auralia and would buy her little gifts and bring them to church! So sweet :)

You know how you meet those really special people who represent goodness and when you look at them you see the Light of Christ shining through? That's what I found in my good friend, Carla Bonilla. Love this lady & her cute family!!

Susanna & Cari became our friends from the first day. They were starting PhD students as well. We didn't see Susanna much, but she was a lot of fun when we did. And Cari was such a special person in our lives. She is so sweet and kind. She helped us move- just came over for lunch and ended up sticking around all day! Such a wonderful lady!

Living in the Bronx was incredibly challenging; being a member of the church was very demanding and some of the hardest service I've ever done. But it helped us grow and develop in ways that I couldn't have experienced any other way. I'm grateful for our time there.

The last "New York" experience that we had was taking my mom to the Top of the Rock observation deck for spectacular views of the city! I felt satisfied with having this as my "goodbye New York"/ last hoorah in the city.

Had to tickle her to get her to smile. Not my mom, Auralia.

Thank you New York for all the good times and all the life lessons. It's an interesting chapter in our book of life that we're happy we had. Also one we are happy to have over as it was so hard to raise a family there. Farewell NYC!

My mom's visit to help us move!

Wow it has been forever since I did a post.  My quick 10 minute posts turn into an hour so I never sit down and do it.

But as I'm sure anyone reading this knows, we left the Bronx and moved to Coralville, Iowa (it's part of Iowa City) on the 22nd of October. The funding for Tyron's research at the school in NY fell through, leaving us to find another option. So we contacted the University of Iowa (the other school that accepted Tyron last year) and they are working on getting him transferred! It probably won't be until Fall 2013 so we decided to have faith and move anyways. We wanted to get settled here so Tyron could find a job for the next year.

We were HUGELY blessed to have my mom fly out and help for 2 1/2 weeks! When she first came out, her and I took a girls trip down to Washington D.C. since she had never seen it before! It was a quick 2 day trip, but we saw alot of things!

We also did a harbor cruise around Manhattan island and went to the 9/11 Memorial:

Auralia loved picking up rocks from the tree planter boxes at the memorial. She would walk from one to the next getting and leaving rocks.

My mom helped us pack boxes, did a ton of the actual loading and unloading of the truck, along with a ton of unpacking. Auralia knew something was changing and she clung to me during the whole move so I actually wasn't much help at all. My mom was so wonderful and did so so much to help us accomplish this move! I love my mom so much. I know she loves me, Tyron, and Auralia- it's always so easily found in her kindness and sacrifices to help us with whatever we need. She helped us pay for food along the way and groceries & other items once we got here. She is such an incredible woman and I'm proud that she's my momma!

Yummy pumpkin dessert recipe

Today's high was only 55 degrees so I wanted something warm. And since it's fall and I love pumpkins, I decided to do a yummy pumpkin treat! Luckily I bought some cans of pumpkin a couple of days ago :)  Here's the recipe in case anyone wants to try it!

Pumpkin Treat
 
Crust:
1 c. bisquick
1/2 c. quick rolled oats (I used regular oats chopped up)
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. butter

Mix until crumbly then press into 9x13 pan. Bake 10 mins at 375.

Middle Layer:
15 oz can of pumpkin
1 can evaporated milk (12 fl. oz)
2 eggs
3/4 c. sugar (I used closer to 1/2 cup to decrease the sugar content in this recipe!)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves

Beat until well mixed. Pour over crust. Return to over and bake 25 more minutes.

Topping:
1/2 c. pecans, chopped
1/2 c. brown sugar
2 T butter

Mix until crumbly. Sprinkle over pumpkin. Return to over and bake 15-20 minutes longer. Cool.
Serve with ice cream or whipped topping

A whole month later...sheesh! A crafty post!

Ya it's been a month since I posted last. Crazy. It's not that it's really time consuming, it's just one of those things that I keep putting off because I need to gather pictures from phones and the camera and take 10 minutes to sit down and type up what we've been up to lately. And when I wait a month it actually does become a time consuming process!


September flew by- which is great because I LOVE the fall, I LOVE October, and I LOVE Halloween! I started working on some fun fall/Halloween craft projects. There are some more that I plan on finishing- I'll have to post those later :) I'm hoping to decorate the apartment sometime this week!!

Hand sewn felt leaves. I added hooks at the end so I could hang as a garland. I just googled leaf templates and printed them out...then cut them out on felt and whipstitched the edges and did a freestyle stitch in the middles.

Awesome free subway art printable in a painted mat. Need some ribbon for hanging! You can search pinterest for autumn or fall subway art and you'll find others that you may like even more!

Frankenstein & witch silhouettes. Printed and cut out on paper then taped onto off-white cardstock and put in cheap frames (seriously, they are so cheap they are chipping. Oh well.). I may paint the frames at some future point...

Happy Fall and Halloween crafting!

Update on Auralia

I haven't done a post in a while about Auralia and all of her many many changes! She is 14 months. She took her first step the day before Father's Day, and now she is a speed walker!  She still has only 7 teeth, only takes one nap during the day now, loves blueberries and peas, is very shy around strangers, says "dada" constantly, but is really attached to mama. She is signing a few things- milk, more, all done, please, and eat. We are working on thank you :) She has started a phase where she points to things she wants and she is constantly shaking her head "no" to things she doesn't want. She is allergic to eggplant and doesn't love veggies as much as we'd like her to. She loves her fruit and milk.

She is totally over her toys- she rarely plays with any of them. Instead she gets into my craft corner and finds something fun, which I usually have to take away from her because it's a choking hazard, etc. She also likes to get into the towels and throw them all on the floor. She sometimes goes into our bedroom to our floor length mirror and yells at herself in the mirror; maybe she feels threatened by another child in the house? Hope she doesn't continue this yelling at herself in the mirror thing as a teenager!

Nana Jensen bought her some baby keens when she was here visiting with Farfar! Auralia loves her shoes- the velcro and how fast she can walk in them!

She is getting better with her baths. She used to cry the whole way through it, but now she gets a little anxious at the start and then relaxes once she is in and playing.

She sleeps like a champ. All through the night and plays by herself in her crib for about an hour in the morning so we can keep sleeping.

She was eating and it went really quiet so I checked up on her and she had zonked out! Food still all over the place.

Our most recent picture together. We really need to get pictures taken this Fall.

She slept 12 hours and when she got up I thought she was just glowing! So we had a photo shoot. She was in a really good mood so I was able to capture some fun pictures (see below).

She is going to be a heartbreaker when she's older!

Smeared spaghetti sauce all over her face

At the beach- yep, pretty sure she ate some sand.

She pounded down a hot dog at the Yankees Game! It was SO hot and then a storm came in and it poured. We at least made it through the 7th inning before the rain came!

Still pounding it down and Uncle Nathan taught her how to do a fist pound.

We went to some outlet malls about an hour north. They had a Toys R' Us so we took Auralia in to find some new toys. She LOVED this stroller. It was cute to watch her treat sock monkey like her baby. We ended up leaving with a xylophone, stroller, sock monkey, figurines, and a ball. I may have had more fun in the store than she did :)

OntarioCanada/Niagara Falls Trip!

On Friday, July 27th we got up at 4am and headed out to Ontario, Canada (about 30 minutes over the border) to see our friend Heather! She got married earlier in the summer and since we were sad we missed her wedding, we decided to go to her reception in Ontario. Initially it was supposed to be a surprise, but we had to tell her a month in advance to make sure they would have the time to hang out with us when we were there.

It was a really short trip (we headed home on Sunday evening) and it was about 7 hours one way, so there was a ton of driving. But Auralia was a champ and we were glad we did it. On Sunday, we stopped in Niagara Falls and did all of that- it was amazing! I was surprised at how much I liked it. Tyron was awesome and researched it beforehand, which helped. Viewing it from the Canadian side is the only way to go. The views are much more spectacular. We did the Maid of the Mist boat ride- would definitely recommend that as well! Auralia didn't love the noise of running water- probably reminded her of the bath which she doesn't like. But she snuggled up to Tyron in her little baby rain poncho and sucked on her soother and was fine. Here's some pictures of our trip:

Tyron loves swimming so at 9am he wakes up and decides to take a swim with Auralia in the hotel pool. It was way too cold for me, but Auralia enjoyed it. She doesn't like baths even though there is little water and it's warm and there are toys, but she didn't mind the lifejacket & cold water at the pool- go figure!

We loved seeing Heather & Lyle! We wished we could have had more time to spend with them one-on-one; but life is what it is and so we appreciated the time we did get with them. It made us really miss our old life of having many good friends who we could spend time with- we really are loners in New York.

The beautiful bride & handsome groom

Niagara Falls! I had no idea there were 2 falls there! The famous horseshoe one (Canadian Falls) and a regular one (American Falls). You can see a Maid of the Mist boat going into the mist- it was a really fun ride!!

Auralia all ready for the boat ride in her baby sized poncho- so cute!

The American in front of the Canadian Falls

The Canadian in front of the American Falls :)

Family Visits

We have been so blessed to have some of Tyron's family members here this summer! JaCobi and Nathan visited in July. We sucked at getting pictures with them, but did get a couple. They had a pretty well rounded NYC experience- Harbor Cruise to see the skyline & Statue of Liberty, Lion King Broadway show, Temple night, Top of the Rock Observation Deck, a Yankees baseball game, America's Got Talent results show, and lots of yummy food!

Mom & Dad Jensen were here for almost a week in early August. It was a little rough as dad had some stomach issues the first day and then I got a stomach bug for a day on the weekend and was throwing up. But we enjoyed the visit in between all the stomach issues :)  Again we sucked at getting pictures!

Now we won't have any visitors until next summer (hopefully someone comes!). We are really looking forward to getting away for a few weeks in December for Christmas in Utah :)