Howdy, family!
We have been keeping very busy here in Phoenix.  For Christmas, Gavin got an RC car - so as we got really excited to be able to interact with him.  The car ended up being a dud... but then Dustin went out and got him a real one, and then got himself one too.  We took it to the next level and built an RC track in our back yard.

Now Dustin and Gavin can race their RC cars in style! :)
Gavin is almost done with Kindergarten and he is doing so well!  He got a perfect attendance award with a free pizza coupon last quarter. :) Moving on up in the world :)
Emily has been getting more and more girly lately and is obsessed with Hello Kitty.

Dustin has been enjoying his promotion at work and is leading his team the most awesome ways he knows how.  My job has given me the opportunity to become the Director of Marketing, which is awesome because I love that kind of stuff.  :)
Lately, I have been dealing with family issues - my grandma on my dad's side is struggling with dementia. And my grandma on my mom's side is losing her battle to cancer. As difficult as it is, I know that we have a plan in place to bring us all together again some day. So I am trying to focus on the happiness they brought to my life. It seems to be working :)
Tonight, Scott and Dustin went to the Suns game, so the kids and I are just hanging out at home.  I am out of things to write, but here are some pictures.

Greetings from Redlands

Sorry we haven't posted for a while, its easy to get caught up in our everyday lives.

Things are good out here in Southern California. After a little downtime during the holidays, things are starting to pick up around here. As usual, our life is pretty much completely devoted to softball & baseball.

Aiyanna's travel team is playing every weekend right now.  This weekend, we head on out to Huntington Beach for a Triple Crown Tournament, hopefully they do well. Her High School team is starting to gear up for the season. She practices with them for about 3hrs every weekday.  The season will start in late February. She is doing well in school, maintaining a good GPA and is currently researching colleges, Wanda & I are hoping she stays in the area and we're glad her top pick right now is UC Riverside, although, she is looking at schools all over the country. She wants to be a Crime Scene Investigator and a friend of mine who happens to be a police officer arranged for her to meet with his departments CSI.

Nia is our little nerd. She complained everyday during the winter break that she didn't have homework and was counting down to school starting again.  In addition to her Rec Softball team that will start up in February, we decided to have her join a travel team. They practice in Chino, which is about 30 miles from here, so we spend a lot of time on the road.  The team is coming together pretty quickly and they play there first games on the 1st.  Once Rec ball starts up, she will play & practice with both teams, so it will probably be a long season, buts she wants to do it. Her position is Catcher and she's probably the best in the Rec league but she has a lot to learn still and the travel team will really work her hard.  She loves that position and she can't wait to play her games.  She is already thinking about college and she wants to play softball for either UCLA or Oklahoma.  If she keeps up her Catching, she should have no problem getting a scholarship for one of those schools or any other Division I school.

Unlike Nia, Zachary enjoyed every minute of having no homework during the holidays and had no desire to go back to school.  But he's doing well.. He is a little more difficult than the girls but he's smart and does well when he's focused.  He will be playing baseball again starting in February. He had his tryouts this past weekend and did pretty well.  We're hoping he gets on a good team that will challenge him and actually win a few games.

Wanda is doing good, just working hard and keeping us all on the right track. She and I really don't do much other than practice softball, watch softball or drive the kids to softball, so there really is much to report about us.

So that's about it, Hope everyone is well. We're looking forward to reading everyone's posts.

Happy New Year

We hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years!! 

Here is a recap of Teague and Jen's family:

Caitlin and Alvaro have been living with us to save money but they are currently apartment hunting and hoping to go to BYU Idaho.  I cannot believe it has been over one year since they were married.  We have enjoyed having them live with us, especially to get to know Alvaro better.

 

Zak is in the last semester of his Senior year and has some pretty easy classes so he does not have much homework.  He recently got a job at Barbacoa (two blocks away) and seems to enjoy it.  He jokes that he is the only employee there who speaks English.  :)  He received his first paycheck and seemed pretty excited about that.  Between sports, choir and band, this is his first job.  He is working on his mission papers right now and will submit them as early as they allow them – he even has a timer on his phone that tells him exactly how many days until he can turn them in.

 

Josh is such a fun person to be around.  He says the funniest things and has such a unique way of looking at life.  He talks non-stop about cars and knows facts about every car we see.  We will be driving in the car and he will stop mid sentence because he just saw some car that he loves…pretty funny.  I took him to the International car Show last Saturday and he loved it.  We spent hours walking around and he told me more facts than I ever wanted to know about each car.  He is excited for lacrosse season to start.

 

Jen continues to do great.  She loves her calling as Gospel Doctrine teacher but is intimidated by the Old Testament (all she wanted for Christmas was Old Testament teaching aides).  It is her birthday this coming Monday and there are a few parties planned for her – that should be fun.  She is substitute teaching 3-4 days per week and seems to enjoy it.

 

Other than traveling all the time, my life is pretty much the same.  I have been to Boston so many times I can drive from the airport to the hotel with my eyes closed (there’s more truth to that than we want to talk about) and when I get to the hotel they welcome me back by name.

 

We love you and hope you are doing well!!



Happy Thanksgiving!

Here is a quick update on the Highland, Utah Bengtzen Family. Jen has been diagnosed with sleep apnea which has caused her several other issues but she is a trooper and is battling through. She is in charge of decorating for a huge fundraising dinner for the high school madrigals. The froo froo things she is doing for it are way over the top so it should be good. She continues to give great lessons in Gospel Doctrine as well as serve many people in the neighborhood.

Zak has been spending several hours each day practicing for West Side Story which starts next week. He has hurt his back, foot, leg and eye during practices – he says many of the people have been hurt. I hope he makes it through alive. We have been discussing when to turn his mission papers in which is exciting and sad (don’t bring it up to Jen!).

Nothing really new with Josh. He continues to make us laugh. We have a really good kind of bread we like called Grandma Sycamore bread. Jen made some bread yesterday. Josh had a couple of bite and said, “This is the best bread ever made.’ Then he yelled, “Take that Grandma Syncamore!” Apparently he thought it was funny because we heard him in the bathroom laughing about it a few minutes later.

I am traveling frequently right now. I was in Boston last week and will be there again next week. I will then be in D.C. in a couple of weeks. It should slow down towards Christmas.

We love you all and hope you have a GREAT Thanksgiving!!

The West Side Bengtzen's

Hi everyone!
We finally decided to get on here. Life is crazy as usual with us. We never slow down. :)
I will start from youngest to oldest and let you know what everyone is up to...

Ian- is 11 now. In the 6th grade and would rather stay home all day and play video games. He only likes to go to school on band days (he is learning the saxophone). Ian loves reading and minecraft. He is helping us teach Sami how to be his service dog and next to Matt, Ian has the most patience for her.

This is Sami not long after we got her. She is half German Shepherd and half Malamute. She is now 6 months old, weighs 50 pounds and pretty much destroys everything in her path. Our house is sooo not big enough for her. She is just recovering from major surgery as well. Let's just say that we no longer have stuffed toys in our house for dogs. Parts come off and puppies swallow them.

Jordan is 14 going on 30 and in 9th grade at AMES (Academy for Math, Engineering and Science.)He loves it there. Some of his classes are with Cottonwood, like all of his band classes. eHE has 2. And right now they are getting ready for the the musical (Tarzan) in which Jordan gets the chance to play percussion instead of the clarinet, and they are getting ready for the Christmas concert.

I think Jordan has grown 3 inches just since school started. He never stops. He is really coming into his own in school this year. He has lots of friends and is always involved in some activity or another. He never stops reminding us that he gets his learners permit in July.

Alex is a Senior at Murray. He will be 18 in March. It is crazy that he is so close to moving out, and keeps trying to get us to let him move in March. I want him to graduate first. Silly me. He loves his car more than anything else right now. And has to work hard to afford it. But he doesn't mind. He still keeps us laughing.

Alex is always busy as well, between work, his girlfriend and practice for lacrosse, we hardly ever see him. But he loves his mommy and always comes to tell me goodnight when he gets home so that I know he made it in. He is a good kid.

Alex and his Firebird.

Matt is busy with work and taking pictures. He is still working hard with school and his choir. He gets to sing in a big concert tomorrow, but I will let him tell you all about that. And I will let Matt post about all of his pictures. He takes a lot.

I am finally done with school (for now) and working  with my clients. I work with disabled adults in supervised housing. I love it. I am still trying to figure out what I am supposed to be doing now that I don't have to juggle school in with everything, although magically it seems that I don't have any more time than I did then, which only cements my belief that it was through the grace of God that I got through school in the first place.  We are still crazy busy with running kids everywhere and training a puppy into a service dog, but honestly, I don't think we would know what to do if it ever slowed down.

We love you all and think that reading through all of these posts is so much fun!!!

The Phoenix (aka surface of the sun) Turners

Hey family! I don't know how taboo it is to post twice before everyone has posted at least once, but we are all about thinking out of the box!
Dustin and I have been very blessed recently. Sometime it's good to just take a look and realize how lucky you truly are. :) We have had lots of time recently to visit with Scott while he is working in our area. We hope to get to see a lot more of Sara, but she is super busy getting a degree (which I GUESS is a good enough excuse) ;)
We are going to be the hosts for Thanksgiving this year and the closer we get to it the closer I realize I am going to have to learn a thing or two about making homemade stuffing... Seems to be a Turner Family favorite.
This year for Halloween we were the scary house on the street (spooky noises and strobe lights to top off the hand crafted ghouls in the front yard). The kids got jipped on candy from our neighbors. I mean, the candy is already almost gone and it's not even half way through November! ;) Here are some pictures from the spooky night:

The Madison Crew

Hi everyone from the Madison's. I have enjoyed reading all the posts as others have said.

We are all doing great. I got a part time job at Nordstrom's Rack to help out and it is going well. My mom is doing an amazing job watching Avery while I am away. Don't know what we would do without her. Adam is still working at C. R. England and they are lucky to have him. Adam recently took the Foreign Service exam to work for the US Embassy in another country and passed it. The next step is a personal narrative and then an oral interview so we will see where life may take us.

Coming up is we are spending Thanksgiving with Adam's family at the Zermatt resort in Midway. Adam's brother planned for the whole family to stay there for two nights and have Thanksgiving dinner. I think it will be a great way to be together considering what happened this year. Well I decided to save the best for last to talk about and that is Avery. She is now almost seven months and couldn't be any more adorable. I am so blessed to be her mom. Avery's favorite thing to do is kick everyone comments on it. She has to keep those legs moving. When she decides to stand up then she is off to the races and mom will try to keep up. I look forward to each new day I get to spend with her.

I am so thankful for my family. Adam is incredible I don't know what I would do without him. I am so blessed to have my best friend as my husband. We have been through a lot this year and it has brought us closer.

Love you all,

Jenny

P.S. If you want to see more pics I have more on Facebook.