HERRINGS

General Conference

I love General Conference for lots of reasons! One of the many things I like to do is put together a packet of activities for my kids to help them (and me) focus and get more out of the sessions. I found some really great activity packets and wanted to share them with you ~ ENJOY!

LDS Resources Activity Packet

Sugardoodle Conference Cards

Meridian Magazine Conference Notebook

GOOD EATS!!

I am by NO MEANS a fine foods connoisseur. I am picky and a vegetarian and cheep and very under exposed to fine foods. That all said I have to talk about my 2 FAVORITE restaurants on the planet. PIZZERIA 712 and COMMUNAL our friend and neighbor Joseph McRae owns both these awesome places.

PIZZERIA 712 is wonderful and has been my favorite for the almost 2 years it has been open.

The food is wonderful. Awesome, authentic style pizza, with a variety of classy, yummy toppings, REAL panini sandwiches and mouth watering deserts just to start the list. Everything is made from scratch, lots of local products (fruits, veggies, dairy, etc), and all cooked in a wood fired oven. PIZZERIA 712 is THE place I want to go to eat for any and every special occasion, even the occasions I create :-) I love the up scale but NOT stuck up feel of the place and ALL the people are so wonderful.

NOW these same awesome, talented, visionary people have opened a second place COMMUNAL.

Mom, Julie and I were SOOOO excited to go there after the women's broadcast on sat. We LOVED it!!!!!!!!!! It is all "family style" dinning (that means you order things to share). The food was all WONDERFUL! I loved that I could order just what I wanted and not have to say "could you make that with out____" or "please do not add ___" :-) The food options are familiar, comfortable things but done in a delicious and classy way. We all loved every item we ordered! The feel of COMMUNAL is great to. Very comfortable and nice. Oh and as someone who ALWAYS is FREEZING in restaurants and hates that ~ It was so nice to feel comfortable climate wise.
These are THE BEST restaurants ANYPLACE!! Ok I know I am totally biased but I really do LOVE eating at both of them.

SUMMER 2009

I think I have blogged the "big" things that happened over the summer so I am going to round it out with a general hodgepodge.

Fun in the SPRINKLER!!

Foot Family Reunion

Kevin's FIRST temple trip!
Kevin turned 12 and immediately got his temple recommend so he could go do baptisms for the dead in the Provo temple. He got to go on a morning that his Grandpa Jensen was working in the baptistery and that was really special.

24th of JULY ~ Pioneer Day
Every year we go the pioneer celebration in the park that is run by the Provo missionaries. There are tons of games, food, booths, an old pioneer village and the museum. We all look forward to it.

Nate's Sleepover
Our good friends David and Rachel welcomed a beautiful baby girl to their family this summer. On the day of her birth we got to have her big brother Nate come over. He was SO good and we had lots of fun.

ARTIE
Jason and Anne decided to make a movie this summer. We got to be extras and had lots of fun playing in the park while they worked :-)

Father Son Camp out
We drove home from Veges Friday morning, unloaded quickly and Kevin and Kevin headed up into the hills for a camp out with the men in our ward.

Las Veges

My parents own RIVER WALK MEDIA. We record conventions, edit, duplicate and sell the recordings. Our biggest convention every year is Nature Sunshine Products. Over the 25 years that our family has been recording these conventions we have been able to travel a lot! There is no denying that these are WORKING vacations but I have to admit they have been a highlight in my year for a VERY long time. I have had the chance to go to Washington D.C. (twice) ~ Nashville, TN (twice) ~ Philadelphia, PA ~ Acapulco, Mex ~ Hawaii ~ New Orleans, LA ~ Florida (several cities) ~ California (several cities) ~ San Antonio, TX ~ and more! Going to these conventions at times seems like going to a family reunion. I get to see and visit with people who I have known since I was 12yrs old. They have watched me grow up, get married, and now see my children growing. This convention has had a HUGE impact on my life. My families involvement with natural health, my first "real" job, moving to Indiana (where I met Kevin), the choices I have made about child birth and my childrens health, etc. Convention week is also a time when I get to step into a different roll then my everyday life. I get to be a working professional. I get to dress up (& it stays nice), interact with adults, be the "expert" and over all feel very grown up :-)
This year NSP convention was in Las Veges, NV. The combination of a driveable location and our new schooling lead us to take they whole family. We got to stay in the Paris hotel (thanks Daddy). It was a bit of an adventure to have 6 people in one hotel room but really we had so much fun! This year also marked a milestone for Kevin Lee. Grandpa asked Kevin to help do some of the recording this year. He did SO GREAT! He was super responsible and very reliable. It was a little surreal to see him at 12 doing the same thing I remember doing at that age and that has been such a huge part of my life. Sarah also helped at the sales booth and was huge in helping with the littler kids!!

When I was working Kevin took the kids exploring.

They also went swimming everyday!

In the evenings when I was free we set out again and got to see a little of "the strip" in full swing.

The water show at the Bilagio. The Paris is right across the street and we could hear the water crashing down during the shows.

We went to Cesar's Palace. Kevin enjoyed all the statues of Greek and Roman gods, he loves that mythology. This is us standing in front of The David. Kevin thought it was very funny and Sarah was disgusted :-)

Clark is a BIG fan of motorcycles!!! He saw some every time we went out and always wanted pics. of them.

We had a great week! We had lots of fun times, and it was good on the business end of things!!

Flaming Gorge

Kevin and his good friend Darrin really wanted to go on a fishing trip. We decided to all go and making it a weekend camping trip. So Herrings packed up or 4 kids and Lewis' packed up Conner and we headed to Flaming Gorge.

~Coco lounging in the car with daddy's Ipod~

Conner is a Dinosaur fanatic so our plan included a stop in Vernal at the museum.
The Utah Field House of Natural History was lots of fun. There was hardly anyone there so we could really take our time, relax and let the kids explore. The kids got to do the hands on stuff, and discover all the cool exhibits.

We all thought this display was fun. They had all these rocks in a little side room. They were all tagged with there names and they had some fun coloring but then...

we turned off the lights

and they glowed. It was fun :-)

Along with all the displays inside you can go out side and there is a whole big yard filled with dinosaur replicas.

The museum was fun, educational and perfect timing to give us a little break from driving as we headed to our camp site.

We camped at a place called Antelope Flats. It was appropriately named since there were antelope strolling along the edges of the camp site. We were close enough to the lake to walk but far enough away that we did not have to be on high alert about the kids.

So after our first beautiful night it was time to FISH. Well Kevin, Darrin, Kevin Lee and Sarah went fishing. Joy, Nikki, Conner, Collette and Clark all head out to do a little shopping (purely to keep the little kids out the mens way of course). When we got back to camp we found some board kids and some bummed dads ~ NO FISH :-( We had lunch and then split up. Lewis' went for a drive and Herrings head back out to the water.

The little kids were very excited to get their chance to fish.

Clark found the universal "boys favorite toy" ~ A STICK!! ~ He called it his fishing poll and carried it around all weekend. He had endless fun playing with it and "catching fish". No one wanted tell him it was moss so we just cheered and clapped for him :-)
We had lots of fun playing in the water and once again headed back to camp.

And no matter how cute they all looked with the fishing gear still ~NO FISH.
We had another great evening. Darrin cooked a FABULOUS dutch oven meal for us. Chicken, biscuits and peach cobbler all in dutch ovens. The next morning there was a final attempt to turn this camping trip back into the fishing trip it was meant to be.

They tried hard, lost lots of fishing hooks, floats, etc. but in conclusion.... NO FISH WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS TRIP..... not a single one.

We stopped for a tour of flaming gorge dam as we head back across it. It looked like it would be fun but mother nature decided we had not had enough water so it started to rain. BIG, FAT, HARD HITTING drops that soaked everyone in seconds. The tour across the top of the dam was suppose to last about 20 min. We ran it in about 2 and then headed into and down the dam.

At the bottom of the dam we got to feed the fish. It was crazy to watch the frenzy created when the food was doped in. We had fun even if we were all wet :-)

It was a cool perspective to stand on the dam and look to one side then turn and look to the other side.

We really had a fun weekend. We did not catch any fish but we had good friends, good food, nice weather (when camping) and lots of wonderful family time together.

4th of July SNAKE VALLY STYLE

To celebrate independence day the Jensen family went out to Snake Valley for the weekend. We had 19 people in all. We pitched tents at a campground in Baker and mom and dad rented a hotel room at the same place. Aunt Pam and uncle Steve came up from CA and met us there. We had SOOOO much fun.

We went to Eskdale for the Independence day celebration and a high school reunion. With a high school that small there is just a one big reunion every 10yrs for everyone that has ever gone there. It was so fun to see old friends and be able to show my kids where I had so many good memories. Eskdale always has a great fireworks display and even though it was windy it was lots of fun.

We took a tour of the Lehman caves. Our group was big enough that we no one else was with us (not that anyone would have wanted to with 9 kids 12 and under). It also worked out that our tour guide was one of Julie's best friends from high school.

We also went to the warm springs. This warm spring truly springs up in the middle of the desert. It is so lush and green right around it. There is also a cave that you can swim into.

I put my camera inside a plastic bag so it would not get splashed but did not help the picture much:-)

Joe has a water proof camera so they got some great shots inside the cave!!

I drove the kids up to one of the salt flats and tried to explain how much fun we use to have having bonfires up there. They thought I was silly but they had fun hunting for lizards.

We had a blast spending the weekend in the same valley that the Jensen family lived for 15+ years.

We had no problems even though it did rain while we were camping and with that many people and little kids that is really saying something :-)

But just so the universe could stay happy when we were almost home Colby's had tire problems. The tread pealed right off and did some nasty damage to their car. Normally this could have been pretty bad but we had all just been where it was dirt roads, no shops and no tire stores so we counted our blessings that it waited till we were back into civilization :-)

We had tons of fun on our very full Independence Day weekend. God has and does still, bless America and all those who are blessed to live in this land!!!!

Sarah ~ Our Star ~

This summer Sarah had the opportunity to be in an independent film. She was cast a s a little girl who gets kidnapped and killed, positive I know. The film makers were all really great about making her fell comfortable and not scared. She never had to do anything that would have been scary :-) I had read the whole script and knew the end result but had not yet decided how much to tell her. One of her scenes was of her outside drawing with sidewalk chalk, she is approached by a stranger and goes with him. When I told Sarah what she would be doing her response was "I am dumb I could get killed!" I felt a moment of parental satisfaction and then decided to use the situation to drive home the point. I told her that is exactly what happened.
We drove to Toelle for the filming. We shot at two locations. First was the sidewalk scene.

Second was out in the "desert" at a deserted shack. She was seen walking into the shack. It was actually kind of funny during the filming because the college kids making the film were a bunch of city kids. They all were acting so goofy walking around in the rural area. Sarah did great ignoring them and the cameras and walking in to the cow manure filled shack over and over again :-)