'Sno Fun

I love being on maternity leave (for the most part) and I've planned it well twice, getting Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years off. I go back at the end of this month.  Anyway, so we took our nearly yearly trip to Susanville CA to visit my Auntie Em, whose B-Day is Dec 31st. She lives out in the country with nature all around and without sidewalks and fences(unless you have cows or horses). Normally we stay with them, but they had all their kids, grand kids and my auntie Christine and her kids there, so Em's bishop, who owns two hotels in town offered to let us stay at one for free, which was so generous, plus there was free breakfast. Olivia stayed at Em's with the kids though. It has been raining like crazy in Roseville since before Thanksgiving, which means snow in the mountains and there was a ton. Thankfully roads were smooth, but it was perfectly sunny and cold, no melting snow. Olivia sledded and played in the snow for at least six hours out of each day, she even got a little sunburned. Adam sledded with Benji, but he didn't love the snow. Then Adam and I got to go snowshoeing twice. We went solo once and then took Rachel with us once. I loved it! It was so bright and beautiful and quiet, except for the crunch of snow. We saw  six deer and some rabbit tracks. I think we got the enjoy the snow, as much as you can with little ones. I think as a parent I'm determined to show the world that parenthood does not end your life, nor does it mean you can't have any fun. So here are some pics of that.

Of course we did have a fun party for Em and one of the highlights was the umu.  My Aunt Christine, who married a Samoan and has lived there for 20+ years, and her kids made the umu, an underground oven made my heating river rocks with a huge fire and then digging into the ground, putting the food(meat and bread) wrapped in foil down, covering with banana leaves (which I found frozen at a Fillipino market) and then putting the rocks on top to cook it. Then you cover everything up and let it cook for an hour or so)  It was yum and super cool, but a lot of work for those invovled.  Of course we Jensens love games and played lots of those too. Of course I didn't get pics of any of us-ahhh! I really love how cool my family is.  I love how we can get together after not having seen each other or talked for over a year and we just pick up  and have a blast together, playing hard, cooking, eating, teasing,etc, not just sitting around being awkward and bored.  It's always like this and I think I'm super lucky. It was quite a fun trip and I'm not even going to go into detail about sick kids and lack of sleep.