The Jensen Family: July 2009

Last Saturday we finally had our 1st annual Jensen Family Fear Factor.

There is a lot to be said for hosting and not playing.

I enjoyed watching and my stomach appreciated not participating.

We had four teams:
Kent & Caleb, Chris & Nanette, Aaron & Katie and Naomi & Nick.

The events were:
1. Marshmallows covered with mustard (not much problem with this).
2. M&Ms mixed with ketchup. (Katie had problems with this and said she won't be eating M&Ms for awhile.

3. Bobbing for gummy worms in a tub of pork and beans.

Everyone wore their swimming suits and goggles. (Picture before bobbing.)

Pork & bean faces after bobbing.

4. Clothespin slime. Contestants had to use their feet to pick up as many clothespins and put them in a mug as they could in one minute. Slime=flour and water and food coloring.

5. Spam with chocolate sauce to eat and spaghettios with grapefruit juice to drink. (Most people got the spam down okay but the spaghettios were another story. Chris lost it on this one. Nick ate his so fast he offered to eat Caleb's for extra points since Caleb wouldn't try it.)

6. Obstacle course. The last part of the obstacle course was jumping in the pool and finding a key with their own name on it.

Going into the obstacle course, Nick and Naomi were in the lead and Nanette and Chris were in last place.
After Chris had the best score and Nanette had the 3rd best score in the obstacle course, they took the lead.
Next time we want to have more obstacle course activities and less gross food!
A fun time was had by all.

Kent and I, our 5 kids who are currently in the country, our 2 sons-in-law, and our 3 grandsons went camping in the eastern Uintahs last week. We stayed at Marsh Lake which is near Bridger Lake which is about 30 miles from Fort Bridger.

It looked like it would be a very successful camping trip from the way it began. Nanette, Chris and the boys arrived a couple of hours before us and had already caught me a fish by the time I arrived. Kent grilled it for me after he grilled the hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner. Yum! Ethan was so cute when we drove up and he saw the boat on top of the van. "You brought me a boat!" he said.

Naomi helping Ethan with his life jacket

Logan was happy we brought the van. He was a happy camper when he was playing in the van pretending to drive. Otherwise he didn't care so much for camping.

Caleb wasn't a happy camper either because he had a bad cold:

We had fun riding on the lake in the boat.
(It wasn't helpful for fishing as it turned out.)

Right after we got back from playing at the lake Kent and Naomi made grilled cheese and grilled tuna sandwiches for lunch. They were almost done cooking them when it began to rain. Soon we were all in cars except for Kent and Naomi who were almost done cooking and Katie who was holding a cover over the "Cache Cooker" stove. As they climbed into the van there was a simultaneous bright flash of lightning and clap of thunder. Scary! Within minutes our camp was being pounded by hail. This was July 2nd!

This is what it looked like by our tent when it was all over:

This pond in our campsite grew over the next two days to become a river and never dried up:

To summarize our camping trip:
There was plenty of good food, good family, mosquitoes, rain, nature, squirrels for Wesson to chase, s'mores, pop, mud, wet tents and laughter.

There was not enough dry wood, fish, family that could stay the whole time, dry shoes and socks and the right conditions to play "Melanie's Fear Factor"!