A few randomly selected photos

Good Evening one and all!

I realized that in a previous post that Erin said I would post some of my photographic work, and I happily oblige at this point, after taking a few minutes to catch everyone up.

Let's start with the youngest kids.  Sami is now pushing a year old, and is over 100 pounds.  She is a sweetheart when she want to be, but is a holy terror of a toddler when she wants to be.  Her training continues, and will continue for another year or so before she is ready to accompany Ian to school.

Ashton is 8, and still is picked on by Sami on a regular basis.  Even though he is the alpha dog in the house (Sami has made that clear), the two of them do not necessarily agree on most things - especially politics and baseball.  Ashton is a Red Sox fan, and Sami is a Yankees fan.  At least they agree that the only hockey team is the Boston Bruins (I have them well trained).

Ian continues to amaze all of us on a regular basis.  His musings are more like that of a 25 year old, and really will give you pause to think.

Jordan continues his clarinet mastery (Gary must have rubbed off on him), and his playing has improved greatly with his new instrument.

Alex was recently so kind to inform us that he is the #2 ranked lacrosse goalie in his division.  His skills are amazing, and his coach has invited the Westminster College lacrosse coach to come take a look at him.

Erin is doing amazing work at her new job.  She loves what she does, and she is so good at it.  Sure, there are rough days, but most of the time she comes home with a smile on her face.

And now, for me.  The boring part.  I continue to work for the City, with only 11 years, 2 weeks and 45 minutes until I am eligible to retire.  Unlikely that I will (or that I will make 30 years with the City), so we will see how that goes.  I recently completed my FEMA Professional Continuity Practitioner, and I am working on my master level.  I have also been placed in charge of the airport's Continuity of Operations program.  A lot of big words for saying that we will keep going when it gets ugly

I haven't picked up my camera much lately because of my schedule.  However, I have a few that I would like to share here.

A Southwest Boeing 737-700 at a funny angle, with some high definition coloring in Photoshop.

Frontier Airlines climbing out of the valley with the Bountiful temple in the background.

One of my favorites, courtesy of my cousin Kelli, that owns Cowlicks and Kisses Photography.

That is all for now.  Love to all.

Ohhh....Canada

Zak got his mission call to Montreal, Canada and goes into the Provo MTC on June 25th.  He will be speaking French.  We are sooooo excited!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I thought this was funny and wanted to share!  Jen, Josh and I made this for the Valentine’s Day Box contest at school (he is in 4^th grade).  When we walked into the school people started yelling and following us because they could not believe he had a toilet.  Here are some pics.

Mission Update

Zak completed his mission papers and is meeting with the Bishop and Stake President this week!  This means he should receive his mission call in 2 weeks (we anticipate it on Feb 19^th).

We will have a big party at our house for local family and friends and will set up a video feed for those not close to us.

We will have a contest as to who guesses the closest.  Start thinking about that and we will let you know when to send that to us.

Here is the picture he sent with his papers

Hello from the St George Bengtzen family

St George Bengtzens have a lot to talk about over the last year....

pictures are worth a thousand words so here goes a shortened version of what we have been up to...

The wedding (marrying my best friend)

For part of our honeymoon we became the BENGTZEN BOBSLED TEAM!

The Adoption of Mason Bengtzen and Aiden Bengtzen

The Judge was cool and let the boys play in his quarters after we were done with the adoption

Some came down to celebrate 

Cassie and i still love our Harley rides

And we both are still actively involved with Bikers Against Child Abuse.

We just got back from the International  conference and thank you mom for coming and taking care of our children. i know that they loved it and i am sure they were disappointed when we came home :-)

Here is some pics of the boys outside of Tuacahn Theater we hit all the shows in 2013 and the boys all loved them.

The Heber Creeper headed to the north poll over thanksgiving 

My hot wife on the railroads

Visiting Grandpa Chidester

Aiden started playing guitar and this was his first concert

Kades first motorcycle

We are still running guided motorcycle tours

We helped put up the biggest light show in southern Utah as a fundraiser for B.A.C.A.

We still have good old Chocolate and these pictures are of the boys with "Bubba" our other dog

Cassie is busy with work (office manager at therapy office) and keeping all of us in line, 

I am busy with work as well at the Hilton Garden Inn St George.

Aiden is loving Guitar, loves video games and being wild.

Mason loves soccer, video games and being wild.

Kade loves being a wild 3 year old...

all the boys are so cute and so different in their own way.

it is amazing watching them grow up each day and seeing the people that they are turning in to.

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.