So many blessings!!

Hello Everyone! I have not been as dilligent at keeping up on my blog and my only excuse is that our camera broke. However, I did not want Thanksgiving to have come and left entirely without posting the things we are most grateful for. Christian helped me come up with the first five things on the list.

Tyson...What can we say? He is the biggest blessing in our lives right now. Thank you for all of your prayers and support as we have embarked on this new journey of parenting which we have loved!

Diapers...Although it sometimes seems as if the footies of his pajamas collect more poop than his diapers, we don't know what we'd do without them!

Onesies...They are pooped on, spit up on, and drooled all over and they still wash clean! Hooray for baby clothes!!

Bottles...This one I am sure Tyson is most grateful for! We are grateful too because it means we can leave him with a babysitter and go out every now and again.

Sleep...I never knew one could function on so little sleep! I also never knew what a difference a 20 minute nap can make!! As for being grateful, Tyson has been sleeping through the night for nearly a month now. We feel so lucky and blessed!


Our house...We are so blessed to live where we do. We feel safe, have friendly neighbors, and have so loved our house! Thank you to Dad Tengelsen for moving us out here and for Mom Francis in helping us to fix up our house. It feels so much more like a home now!

Washer and Dryer...Never knew we'd ever have so much laundry! It is so nice to be able to do it in our own house!

Dishwasher...This was the one thing our house in Texas was required to have. This is the first time Christian and I have ever had one and it is amazing!!

School loans and school...Christian and I both graduated from Brigham Young University with our bachelors this year. We feel so blessed to have been able to attend such a fine University and that Christian is now able to be in Dental School where he gets to do cool stuff like carve teeth and identify nerves.


The Sun...Texas may be hot in the summer, but it is 70 degrees in the winter and fabulous! We love living in such a beautiful world!


Snow...Here is a picture of Thanksgiving last year with our nieces! We had just finished sledding and it was perfect! We are so grateful for snow and are looking forward this year to a white Christmas in Montana.

Family...We feel so blessed to have families that we both love so much. We really couldn't make it without your love and support. Thank you so much!!


Friends...You have been our family away from home. Tyson has so many "Aunts" and "Uncles" that his real Aunts and Uncles don't know about. You have been such blessings in our lives so thank you! Our friends we left in Montana and Utah, we miss you so much! Thank you for making such an impact on our lives for good!


Christian...I don't know what I would do without Christian. He is such a serving and patient person. I love him more everyday and am amazed more and more that he chose to marry me. He is amazing and I love him so much!


The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...We feel so blessed to know that God lives and that He speaks to His children on the earth today. We are grateful for prophets, the scriptures, and most of all for Jesus Christ. He is our Savior and friend. We are so grateful for prayer and revelation and are so excited to celebrate the birth of God's son this Christmas season! Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas! We love you all!!

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween everyone!! We hope everyone had as much fun as we did! We went trunk-or-treating at our church where there was also a costume competition and tons of candy...needless to say Christian was very pleased :) He was an overweight doctor and I was a chef. Tyson is a chicken (Tyson chicken..the premium brand!) Christian and I saw the chicken costume on sale for $5.00 at Babies R Us and had to buy it. We thought for that price and that opportunity for future blackmail...how could we resist? Plus, Tyson did make a really cute chicken! Here are some of our friends here in San Antonio. (Courtney Luff with her twins, Lindsey Whiting with her puppy, Ann-Marie Wood with her clown, and me.) We went Trick-or-treating at the medical school which was really fun! (Two of the four have medical students for husbands so it was legal!!)

Tyson's costume was so warm he fell asleep as soon as he was put inside every time! It was also rather large so he could sit up on his own for the first time :)

Here are all of the cute little ones!! There was Bam-Bam and Pebbles (they're twins), an ad0rable little clown and the cutest puppy ever (her parents dressed up as dog-catchers)! We think next year they will be even more excited about the candy (especially Tyson!)

Poop!

So the other day I decided to actually get dressed in normal clothes for once (as opposed to the usual sweats and T-shirt). I then realized that you should never wear new or close to new clothes when you have a baby with you. Here are the results from the first explosion. I was just happy it missed my pants!

Apparently I had celebrated too soon. If at first he didn't succeed...Tyson will try again! Here is the second explosion (about an hour and a half later).

Don't worry, my clothes are not the only ones being pooped on! Maybe I am putting on his diapers wrong...who knows?

Smiles :)

So apparently, even with a haircut and while wearing his 18 wheeler trucking club T-shirt, Tyson still looks like a girl...these people!! So I took some pictures for everyone to look at and decide for themselves if he looks girly or not...I think he is just a beautiful boy!!Here is a picture without the trucking club T-shirt in case that influenced your decision!
Here are the kinds of smiles Christian can get out of him...he is so cute!! Christian and Tyson hanging out after church on a Sunday afternoon!

Here are a few moments with Tyson!

Haircuts

So lately everyone has been asking if Tyson was a boy or a girl. Christian was due for a haircut and so I decided that Tyson was in for one, too. Here is the before picture...
and the after picture...Tyson didn't have as much fun as we had hoped :) Wow!! Look at all of that hair!!

California

Tyson got to meet his great-grandparents this last week! It was so much fun to see them! We are so blessed to have such amazing grandparents! Great-grandma and Grandpa Tengelsen taught Tyson all sorts of life lessons and Tyson was officially nick-named Tex by Great-grandpa! Tyson is getting bigger and cuter every day! He is starting to make new sounds and actually smile!!

One of the best parts about going to California was getting to hang out with my sisters and their children. Eli is one year old and Thomas is 5 weeks older than TJ (another nick-name for Tyson). It really was fun waking up in the middle of the night with three crying babies. What a difference it makes when your kid isn't the only one crying!!
It seems like at least one of them was fussy at any given time!! Eli was mad in this picture because he wanted to hang out with Tyson. I knew they were going to be friends from the second day they met. That was the day Eli went and gave Thomas a kiss on the head and then head-butted Tyson. Tyson didn't even cry...they are man friends :)

So I put Christian in charge of putting Tyson to bed the other night so I could get some things done in the kitchen. When I came upstairs, however, I did find Tyson in bed...our bed! They were both snoring and I thought it was so cute I had to get a picture! Tyson is very fond of his daddy. I'll spend hours trying to get our kid to smile and Christian will come home and within minutes Tyson is grinning at his dad. He must be a daddy's-boy. It might help that Christian actually teaches him cool stuff (as opposed to "this is red" or "let's count to five" Christian teaches him stuff like what bone looks like on the molecular level and where every nerve in the body is located exactly). They are good study buddies.

Jake-O!!

So my way cool younger brother got his mission call!! We are so proud of him! Jake will be serving in the Phillipines (where my brother-in-law also served) and will leave for the MTC on January 14th, 2009. I am so glad he will be home for Christmas and to see Ben when he gets back from serving in Canada (he will be home December 31st, 2008) ! Jake has always been such an example to me of service and living your testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He will be a great representative out there!!

Visitors!!

Hello All!

I'm sure you are all happily surprised that we have finally started our blog. Don't get too excited, however for this blog is no match for the creativity of Heidi's or the perfect pictures of Dan and Katie's. We do not have recipe's like Laura's or sweet ski videos like Mark Raymond's...but...on the other hand, it should make all of you real bloggers very proud of your sites so I am sure our new blogspot will be visited frequently :)

This past month has been amazing! Following are some highlights:

1. Christian passed out of biochemistry!! It is so nice to be married to such an intelligent husband! Due to his hard work and bright mind, Christian was able to test out of a five and a half credit class, which not only lightens his incredibly heavy load this first semester of dental school, but also lets us leave for Christmas vacation an entire week early! Wohoo!! We are looking forward to spending time with the family come Christmas!!

2. Grandpa John and Aunt Tenille came out to visit before the little guy was to be born! It was so much fun to see them! We walked all around the Alamo and on the River Walk which actually started Shannon's labor, for which she was very grateful!! Tenille had fun making faces in all of the pictures and looking for Texas A and M paraphernalia for Zach. The best was this T-shirt which had three fish, the smallest of which being Texas A and M which was being eaten alive! I told her she should get it but she was afraid Zach would just burn it...oh well!

3. We had a baby boy!! Tyson James Francis was born on August 13th which we hear is a lucky day since his uncle Matt was also born on a 13th....and we really like him. We are hoping Tyson will pick up on some of his luckiness due to his birthday falling on a Friday every now and again!!

4. Granny Jo (Grandma Tengelsen) came out to help with the post-delivery days. I am so grateful she was here! I don't think I would have made it through that first night home from the hospital had she not been there with her support, wisdom, love, and service. I am so grateful to you Mom!! Thank you!! While she was here she stocked our freezer and fridge with delicious food and also got us a breast pump so Tyson could have his share of dinners in the freezer as well :) We are so grateful for all that she did while she was here!! (We have pictures on Christian's computer so there are none here for you to see...but she is very beautiful and we are grateful she came!!)

5. Aunt Laurs came to visit San Antonio...but really she mostly hung out with us (which we really liked!) If Tyson is strangely attached to his great aunt Laurie at all of the future family reunions, I think we will know why! I have never seen anyone want to hold the baby so much. She stayed up during the long hours of the night playing "wheels on the bus" and telling Tyson all of her secrets (which hopefully won't come back to bite!) We really appreciated her service and company. The trip was really much too short.

6. Grandma Sandra (Grandma Francis) came out for ten days!! We were so excited to have her come! She worked day and night sawing small pieces of wood to finish our wood floor, painting the base boards, caulking our tubs, putting in new shower heads and a peep hole in the front door, ironing curtains, decorating our house, and altogether working much much too hard. We were tempted to stop the airplane so that she could stay with us longer, but Wilbur probably would have thrown a fit, so we let her go home. While she was here she had her birthday. We are so grateful she was born!!

7. Tyson was blessed!! On September 6th, Uncle Jake, Aunt Tenille and Granny Jo came and visited us in preparation for Tyson's baby blessing in church the next day. We spent that Saturday up at the River Walk in downtown San Antonio. It was so great to see everyone! Tyson looked very handsome in his outfit picked out just for him by Granny Jo and Eliza. Christian was a bit nervous about the blessing but it went perfectly. We are so grateful for the priesthood power and know that it is real. We feel so blessed to have the truth and know of God's love for us in this life.