Merry Christmas Eve Eve

I don’t know about you guys, but I am having one fun holiday season. I can’t speak for Rosco….

But I’m sure if he could speak he’d tell you he hates me for this. Oh well. He quickly forgets how ridiculous he looks the second we start playing or go for a walk.



It’s Christmas Eve Eve, and I cannot wait for tomorrow.

I still have a few finishing touches to make to my gifts, but I’m just about there.

There’s one more thing I need to buy, but I really don’t dare venture into the crazed holiday crowd… We’ll see what happens.

Unfortunately I am sick. A few days ago the same horrible head cold I just got over hit me again. I keep hoping I’ll wake up the next day healthier, but I just keep going downhill. This morning I could barely speak and I could tell by the look on Denver’s face that he was surprised by the worsening condition but didn’t want to say anything. He knows I’ll be crushed if I don’t get better by tomorrow night so I can hold his new and adorable niece. Considering we’re only a day away now, things aren’t looking good for me, but I can still hope for a Christmas miracle.

This will be the first year that he and I will be spending Christmas morning together. I’m excited. We’re having Christmas Eve dinner with my family for our traditional feast and then we’ll be going to spend the night at his mother’s house with the rest of his family. Come morning, we’ll open gifts there, then go to my sister’s at 10 to open more gifts, and then hit his Dad’s house for more gifts. We’ll be going back to my parent’s for Christmas leftovers, and somewhere in the mix we’ll have to find time to come home and let Rosco stretch his legs. Poor mutt.. If he weren’t so crazy all the time we might be able to bring him, but I don’t see that happening…



Anywho.

I hope everyone’s season is bright and that the weekend is a familial blast all around. 

Merry Christmas

Christmas 2010 so far.

I've been pretty crafty this holiday season, if I may say so myself.
I've been working on painting my own tree ornaments.
I'm making my own advent calendar.
I (with plenty of help from my wonderful mother) made Den and I stockings.
Oh, and Rosco. Of course Rosco gets a stocking.
I've got the patio decorated with lights.
And that's about it so far- but still- a lot more than I can say for last year.
(It's expensive to decorate for Christmas!!)

Anywho. Here are some pictures to illustrate. :)

I'm still waiting for some cute calendar numbers I ordered on Etsy to arrive to complete my advent calendar. The gems on there now will replace the number of each date passed.

(understand now, Mom?)

Here's my stocking. Isn't it the cutest stocking you've ever seen?

(I know you're jealous.)

 Here's Denver's stocking. Also adorable. In a as-manly-as-Christmas-gets kind of way.

And Rosco's stocking.

(I already got him a treat and put it in there and he's already stolen it once... punk.)

Here are the nutso icicles  outside of our apartment.

They hang right over our downstairs neighbors' walkway.

And we're pretty okay with it of one falls and hits one of the jerks.

(Not very festive of me, but you'd have to understand the entire situation.)

 Here is the decorated patio- lights with silver garland and all.

And the Christmas Tree. Hopefully next year we'll be living somewhere that can accommodate a full size tree- storage wise.

Notice all of the bells at the bottom of the tree.

That's my alarm system for when Rosco;s snooping around in the presents.

Or trying to snag another ornament to destroy...

And that's all for now.

Happy holidays.

:)

Holy winter, Batman!

Hellooooo winter. I welcome you in your Christmas spirit. You brighten the world in your pure, soft white. Rosco bounds in the powder as long as he can in the depth to his torso. I throw snowballs and he catches them with his face.
I laugh and laugh and laugh.
It's time for some hot cocoa. :)

Jensen Family Pictures Sneak Peak

Here's a lil sneak peak of the Jensen family photo shoot from the weekend. The leaves were gorgeous- there was just enough overcast to not make everyone squint and cast harsh shadows.

Twas perfect.

I was having a hard time finding the inspiration for this shoot- not going to lie. The group organization was a daunting idea that had me all sorts of nervous.

Luckily I had Denver to pitch in with his grand choreography.

I do love that boy. <3

Taya (Denver's twin sis) and Mama Jensen

Denver, Braeden, and Toren

Good ol goofy Toren

Braeden, Denver, Mama Jensen,

Prego Jenni (Braeden's wifey), Taya, and Toren.

The whole crew

 Yay.

Still lots of editing ahead of me.

Now that I've posted these I've found flaws that I'm going to go back and edit-

but in all honesty, I am sure I won't bother re-posting them. :)

Soree!

Until next time.

Snow Day

I decided this morning that I’m crossing my fingers for a serious snow day this year.


I literally want to be snowed in. But only if Den and I are both home. It’d suck if it snowed that much while he was working his graveyard shift and was stuck there… So preferably a Sunday night- I want like 6 feet of snow to be dumped all across Salt Lake and prevent anyone from going to work Monday morning.

Instead, they’ll have to sleep in. Make hot cocoa and watch a movie all cozy on the couch with the striking white covered earth glowing from the window.



mmm.



Boo Monday mornings.

I’ll be sure to post a few sneak peeks of Denver’s family photo shoot I did yesterday. They’re not too shabby, I must say.

"I'm never washing this hand..."

You know those crazy 12 year old female hysterical boy band fans? The ones screaming non stop in the front row praying to be one of the lucky girls who grazes fingers with the smokin lead singer high-fiving everyone? And once it happens exclaims, "I AM NEVER WASHING THIS HAND AGAIN!!!" ? You know what I'm saying? I'm feeling a little like that today, in a nastolgic kinda way.

If you read my post yesterday about the Anderson Crew blog I feel in love with, this will make more sense.

After posting that blog I'd emailed the one and only Mama Anderson (aka Emily).
I told her how much I already adored her blog and family and how wickedly awesome her photography is.
I asked a question or two, completely anticipating this email to never even be fully read.

Sometimes I do that.

Just to get my thoughts out there.

And you know what?

She replied that night. Awesome, right? What would the giddy little girl inside of me say to this...
I'm never washing my eyes? That's just absurd. Whatever. you know what I mean. I was pretty excited to see she responded.

I did find out she does not get paid to blog. (But that's not entirely true- she has ads on her blog that are helping fund their adoption- so that's neat). Speaking of which, if I have any generous readers out there who feel the desire to make a contribution to their adoption fund, just go to her blog at http://andersonfamilycrew.blogspot.com/ and there's a donation field on the right side. (I would if my bank account wasn't currently stagnent....)

So yes. She's a rad, rational, really cool, rormal person. So she says. I still look up to her blog as a goal to strive for.

So now that I sound like a stalker fan, let's move on.

It is Friday. HALLELUJAH HOLLA BACK. I'm currently eating a coconut curry tofu lunch from a taco stand outside my work (and it's delish).

It is a gorgeous day here in Murray, Utah. The suns-a-shinin. The mountains are visible. Leaves are falling all around- and the last thing I want to do is sit at my cubicle right now... ugh to the max...

Tomorrow's going to be a superb day, though, and I plan to take full advantage of that. Alone or not. I'm running a 5k in Sandy in the morning. My pal, Jackie (in earlier posts), was supposed to go with- we registered together and I got our shirts today- but now she's crazy sick. Just talking to her on the phone made me want to sanitize my hands... so we'll see if she miraculously gets better over night. I'll run by myself if needs be. I already dropped the 16 bucks ont he deal and got an awesome "Turkey Trot" shirt out of it, so might as well. I just hope I don't forget my iPod at work... I'll pull that out now to avoid such a tradegy.

Sunday i'm doing a family photo shoot of Denver's clan. I'm a tad bit nervous, to be frank. I'm not too hot nor experienced with the group photos... I did theirs' last year and I wasn't proud of a single frame... :( I may be pulling myself down right now with those daunting failures lurking in my head... I better study Braeden and Jenni's prego couple shoot to boost my confidence.

I swear I'll post some of those one day.
They're on my fb, if you want to bother looking there.

And now I'm going to stop my Friday rambling.

Is it 5 yet?


ugh.

TGIF.
Take advantage of the last lovely weekend of the year!

Obsession

So I have recently discovered a blog that has thoroughly swallowed my attention for the last 48 hours.
It's called the Anderson Crew and it's about an adorable family that I now adore.

There are 4 chillins and 1 adoptee baby girl from Ethiopia on the way.
The papa's asian and mama's white and the 4 children are so cute you want to eat them up.

I absolutely love the photography style Mama Anderson has, and I wish I could shadow her for a week to see how she does everything she does while making it all look so effortless.

I think she's one of those lucky jerks mothers who get paid to blog.

I envy her.

I will find a way to have 4 children, take millions of pictures of them, find time to photoshop them and maintain a fabulous blog and get paid for it one day.

Only thing is time. ugh.

Stupid time and money.
They hold me back from so many things in life.
(Sorry I haven't posted lately! If I ever want to get paid for this I better practice, eh?)

I did a photoshoot of Denver's brother and prego sister-in-law refcently. I'm about halfway through the editing process, and if I ever find the time and patience to upload a few on here, I will do just that.

IT'S ALMOST FRIDAY!! hip hip, HOORAY!

Carrie's Crazy Crack-head Dreams

So yesterday morning I didn't sleep worth crap past 4 a.m. between Rosco crying because he was sick and this crazy dream I was having.

This dream/nightmare kept waking me up because it was just too intense and scary to sleep peacefully. The frustrating thing was that it was one of those dreams that no matter how many times I woke up or how long I stayed awake in each interval, the dang thing picked right back up where it left off as soon as my eyes shut again...

The dream started at my apartment in the middle of the night. These two ladies were knocking on our door and I was wondering why the heck they would be there at that time. As they were walking away I stepped out onto the porch in my robe to get a better look at them and heard one talking on a phone in a very serious tone saying, "Number six isn't answering but-" and mid-sentence they both stopped and looked back and saw me standing there. They turned around and started coming back towards me.

At this point Denver's hovering just inside the open door to see what was going on. All of a sudden the women start rudely accusing me of having stolen something of theirs and that they wanted it back. This tone of theirs took a much more white-trash approach however; not at all how the one had sounded on the phone. I began to yell back at them for so boorishly interrupting our sleep for this load of crap they were making up. Denver came out and announced the cops were on their way.

The two women did not appreciate this one bit, and things began to accelerate quickly.

All of a sudden I was in a parking garage with all of my direct siblings. I have no idea what happened with the porch situation- but I guess that's how dreams roll- at any point the setting and situation can change entirely.

The two women had apparently been scouting for me while other similar agents were tracking my siblings down. They had successfully gotten all six of us into this colossal parking garage and there the hunt began.

This is where I partly blame the new TV show, 'The Event', because this government employed group of agents was hunting my family down because we had powers. We didn't know they knew about our secrets and boy, were they prepared.

Marcy could make us all invisible, but we had to be within a certain distance from her for it to work.
Chris could break anything shatterable, like glass and mirrors, just by thought.
Kim could change the surrounding structure, like to incorporate a passage way through a wall or floor.
I could create an illusion and make us camouflage or appear as someone else.
I don't recall what powers Randy or Bobby housed, but I do know we could all communicate through our thoughts.

The agents' goal was to separate us as much as possible and they were doing a decent job. I remember at one point I was camouflaging a sibling and I to blend in with a concrete pillar in the garage, waiting for a particularly creepy female agent to pass. She turned the other way but all of a sudden she turned the mirror on a side of a truck right up towards us and stared into my eyes. They’d discovered my illusions failed when seen through a mirror…

At this point, Marcy and Chris roamed the parking garage, invisible, as Chris shattered every mirror in the place.

We tried so many times to escape and overcome the agents, but they were too prepared and knowledgeable of our powers and weaknesses.

The most frustrating part about the entire dream was that no matter what we did- no matter what powers we used to try and escape, they were one step ahead of us, ready to deter our abilities from saving us.

We eventually had to call in the parents. We were doing everything we could to handle the situation ourselves and leave them out of harm, but we were all growing tired and our powers were draining with our strength. We knew that if we waited too much longer, we would all be doomed.

My parents were the most powerful of us all.

My Dad could make machinery stop working- such as the guns the agents were carrying and all of the sources of their technology.
My Mom could straight up make people’s hearts stop all together.

I don’t remember the end of the dream- I actually don’t think there was an end. Eventually I just woke up and got ready for work because I just couldn’t take anymore of the action.
That dream was exhausting me and doing no good sleep wise.

So then began Monday.

Yay.

Yay for this week!!!!

I cannot say enough how excited I am for this week. And here are the 3 reasons in no specific order- my excitement for each is equal.

1-Chris, my older brother, got home from Alaska Sunday night. He's been gone for 6 months, and I missed him like crazy. He has such an adventerous personality that I can't help but hold my breath a bit until I see him, knowing he could easily get himself into scary situations. I love that about him, though. He is the one person I know who will never let anything get in the way of him living his life to the fullest extent. He is such a role model for me in that aspect. I wish I had the spontaineity he possesses to just go do whatever he wants.

2-Bobby, my oldest brother, and his girlfriend of 6+ years, Clybe, are tying the knot this Saturday!!! We've known this day would come for a long time now, and we are all so excited for them and this official addition to our clan.

3-Because of this exciting event, Marcy and her husband, Chris, are in town. They got here yesterday and leave Monday, the 11th. We actually get a decent chunk of time to see them, and I am so happy for it. They did live in Philadelphia, PA, but they just moved to Portland, Maine- so they have had a lot on thier plate lately, and I'm hoping this will be a nice time for them to relax.

All in all- my entire family is in one place at the same time for the first time in a few years, and I plan on taking advantage of every second that I can.

p.s.- I am LOVING the new job. I really do feel like this is where I belong. When I started at Fortis, I cried my first two weeks there and I assumed it was because I had a difficult time managing the change. Now I know that was not the case at all, because I love coming to work at Marquette. I love my coworkers and I truely feel this is the first job I've ever had that will utilize my skills to their fullest, most personally rewarding level possible. The amount of camaraderie and employee moral here is unbelievable and I could not be happier with my choice to accept this position.

I think Rosco is a German Shepherd/Husky mix

So I was surfing KSL puppies yesterday for female cuties that would be ideal for Rosco to play with.
I came across these German Shepherd/Husky mix puppies that I fell in love with. They are SO cute. And then I realized they look exactly like Rosco did when he was that size- that I've already fallen in love with the same puppy! Look at these:

Rosco-

KSL Pup-

Rosco-















KSL Pup-

The resemblence is uncanny, right? So, we firgure that's what he is. We're ALWAYS asked if he is part german shepherd. But we're not going to tell our current apartment complex or wherever we go next, because german shepherds are not allowed many places, including the current apartment complex. :D

By the way, my puppy is huge, already. When we first got him, the seller told us he was a husky/mini australian shepherd mix. They told us, that along with that, he should only get to be about 35 lbs max.

That was crap. I last weighed him in at 45 lbs, but that was some time ago. I have been too paranoid that he's now over 50 lbs to weigh him again... Plus he's just stinkin heavy to pick up.

So yes. He is a big boy now, but I do love him, oh so much.

On a side note- the new job is going great. I am loving the atmosphere and my coworkers. I can't wait until I know what I'm doing!

Marcy and Chris fly in on Oct. 4th for Bobby and Clybe's wedding and are here till the 11th. I am so excited. Chris Taylor is also on his way home from Alaska right now, so we'll have the whole gang in town, at least for a short while. I cannot wait.

Hope everyone's having a good week. :)

more pictures and a new job

Hello  friends.
I pulled up this window to post some more pictures (there are SOOO many to pot that will never make it up here..) and I realized I haven't done a very good job just keeping you up to speed with my life.

Tuesday of next week, the 14th, will be my last day at Fortis.
Wednesday, the 15th, will be my first day at Marquette Equipment Finance.

Yes I am nervous. I think you all know how well I don't handle change.
But I'm feeling more confident than I did when starting at Fortis, so that's a plus.

Mostly I'm excited. I'm excited for the new opportunity. I'm excited to experience something that's not the front desk environment I'm so accustomed to. I'm excited to work with the people at Marquette. I'm excited for my team specifically, which will consist of 3 gals, including myself. Kristina's my boss and Jessica will be my equal. They are both very cool girls that I'm excited to better get to know- and I'm confident in their training abilities- unlike Fortis where it was all baptism by fire... That's not how I best learn. I cried for the first two weeks at Fortis... Seriously. I left my second interview with Marquette (I had to go through three) just grinning ear to ear because I enjoyed Kristina and Jessica so much. I'm also going to be working with my aforementioned friend, Jackie Pendleton. She's actually the one who brought my resume to their attention, and after that was history.
I wish I could have a break in between the two jobs, but instead I'll be stepping into this new job running. I guess that's life, right?

That's the biggest news in my life right now.
My brother Bobby is marrying his girlfriend of six years next month. I am so happy for them and cannot wait for their big day.

Denver and I are doing swell. Rosco is huge. I haven't weighed him recently but I think that is in part due to my fear that he is now over 45 lbs... I do love that pup, though. He is a doll and he really does quite adore Denver and me. It is sweet. (He's seven months old as of four days ago and is currently chasing his tail.)

I've recently purchased a dandy camera. It's a digital SLR- the Canon Rebel EOS T2i series. It is beyond awesome. I really need to learn how to use it to it's fullest potential. I'm really hoping this will be a good start for a potentially beautiful future in photography.

And on that note, here are some pictures.
First of all, here are the earrings I ordered a few weeks ago. O love them. (pictures taken on old digital Canon.)

They came in this adorable canister

I'm wearing these as I type.

And this pair came complimentary. Cute right?

So not only do I love those earrings, but I also loved taking pictures of them on my patio table. :) Unfortunately, I don't think my new camera could have taken those pictures. Not yet at least. The lens I have for it isn't capable o macro. :( I will get one one day, though. I do love macro, so, so much.

Moving on.

Ethan just turned 9 years old! We all went bowling at Fat Cats to celebrate.

Then I got the new camera and had to play with it. :)

I love the picture I got of this duck!

This is the one and only, beautiful Jackie that I live by, and am dear friends with, and will soon work next to. :)

I do love this girl.

Rosco's lovely paws.

Fortis, my current job, had a luau this week. It was pretty fun. Let me just say how much I am going to miss Nerima Pasic. She is the registrar there, and an amazing one at that, let alone a good friend.

And there you have it.

A tip off the iceberg and a very small portion of my recent pictures. :)

hope everyone has a great weekend.