Jensen Jamboree: July

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

July

I obviously wasn't around much because we didn't take very many pictures. Well, not that I'm all that great at taking pictures either, but Joe is even worse than me. I guess I have some pics on my phone from the 4th. Brek got to do his first sparklers. He loved them. I worked a ton. Like full time, plus some. I got to help my boss's open up a new restaurant location in West Valley. We had tons of new teammates to train and just a whole bunch of stuff to do to get things up and running. It was hard work. But again, I loved it, and miss it.

So, since I don't have any pictures of those things, I do have a couple random ones of Brek, plus a couple we took on his birthday.

I don't check on him often during nap time, but I'm sure glad I did on this day. Such cute little feet sticking out.

We saw this bumper sticker one day. I totally want to get it for Joe.

Another trip to the aquarium. It's nice to have season passes. You can make a short trip of it and not feel like you wasted any money. I love it when he climbs on the frog.

Sometimes, his head really is too big.

We were actually in Evanston, Wyoming during the week of Brek's birthday for MAT Camp 2012. I got to teach my first class this year. It was pretty stressful, and my sum up of the week is that "I survived!" I was teaching a class of ten 4 and 5 year old kids, only 2 of which were girls. I got to come up with the idea of what my class would do, and I thought an aerobic, moving, dancing sort of thing would be perfect. They have lots of energy and it would keep them busy. I called the class "Musically Active." We did a warm-up routine each day that was the same. Then each day had a theme. We did country line dancing, kick boxing, and ribbon dancing. Then we ended each class with some fun yoga stretches. I think that was their favorite part.

To be honest, it really didn't go well. The first day went much better than I expected, but each day after that, fewer and fewer kids would actually participate at all. Day 3, I only had 2 kids that would dance with me, and we were being ninjas, which I thought was super cool. The last day I invited parents to come in and see some of their favorite steps (I had the kids pick their favorites and we made a routine.) Even then, they didn't really participate. Huge thanks to Joe who got all the music put together for me in a legal, non-copywriting fashion.

On a more positive note, Brek was able to attend a toddler class. It was during the same hour as I was teaching, but we made some friends that were able to take him with them. He loved it. Each day the teacher would come and tell me how smart he was. We had several people ask us what sort of training we were doing at home that made him able to keep rhythm and make connections from things in books and in real life, etc. They didn't believe us when we told them we weren't doing any sort of music lessons or pre-school or anything of the sort. He's just a smart boy. But I'm glad he did well in the class and had fun.

I was also able to play viola in the symphony, and then played tuba in the orchestra. Joe played trombone, so we got to sit and play together. That was really fun. Luckily, orchestra was during Brek's nap time, so we didn't have to worry about him then. Joe taught his regular low brass and garage band classes. He had a good week.

We had WONDERFUL hosts (and I was super excited to not be camping this year). They even got us free passes to the rec center and I was able to take Brek swimming on his birthday. He was sung to several times during the day, and one of the kitchen classes made him cupcakes too. He loved blowing out the candles, and tho I don't think he really understood what made that day special, he was a happy boy and we had a lot of fun. Love you little guy!