Got me thinking....

So yesterday I was teaching my lesson to my CTR 6 class and the lesson was on talents.

I always thought I had a lot of talents. Always thought of myself as a pretty talented person. Why then was it so hard for me to come up with a talent that I could demonstrate for my class?!?


I first looked at the lesson on Saturday morning to see if there was anything I needed to go purchase or any extensive craft I needed to make. I created a talent card for each child with three talents that I had seen in them(swimming, riding a bike, sharing, singing, being reverent, saying prayers, etc.) They all seemed pretty easy, come on they are 6, how much can they really do alone anyway!? I then got to the part in my planning where it said to bring a talent of mine to teach, share or demonstrate. We looked around the house and instantly found something to take for Jimmy. He had made a candy dispenser in his wood shop class and we thought the kids would think that was pretty cool.

As I began thinking of something to take for me my mind went blank. I tried my hardest to think of talents that people have told me I have, NOTHING! My mind was literally blank. I could not think of one thing that I could take to show or share with my class. After hours and hours of thinking about it a decided I was going to cheat and make cupcakes and tell them that I was a good baker(even though I made it with a box recipe.)

I was starting to feel a little more relaxed, I would have hated to say "Well here is what Brother Tenney can do....Sister Tenney however can't do anything, moving on...."


Jimmy ended up getting sick on Sunday morning so I was on my own. The class was going good, they were excited to see what was in my "secret box" and they thought the candy dispenser was pretty cool. As they were going around the room sharing their talents and telling me how they could "use them wisely" as the servants in the parable of the talents did, I was starting to feel a little worse. How was it that a 6 year old could come up with more talents that they had and that they were learning on the spur of a moment but a 22 year old could not think of ONE thing in HOURS?!



When I got home from church I was still thinking about this, it really bothered me. I have done alot in my life but how much of it was me and how much of it was people I know. I don't mean this to be a pity me story just a moment of reflection. We are taught to use our talents wisely or it will be as though we never had them. Being a primary teacher for the first time, it is AMAZING to me how much I am learning and being reminded of by the sweet spirits that I get to spend two hours with once a week!

I want everyone to take some time and write down their talents, maybe you are like me and cannot think of them right away but as you think of them over the days or months, write them down! I know I will!

Looking Back...

So I just found my camera after moving from the condo to the house.

I decided to look through it and see what pictures were still on it.

Just to show you how long it has been since I have seen this camera, I decided to post a "getting ready for Halloween" post

This is what we were up to almost a year ago, in October:

My family waiting for dad to finish carving his pumpkin

The whole family being silly with their jack-o-lantern creations

Us in our costumes. I was a Nurse, Lola was a witch and Jimmy - a Jedi!

She did not like her costume very much, she actually would not move with it on lol

Oh how time flies, so much has happened in the last year and now it is time to get ready to do it all again! Happy Fall everyone!!!!

Spring is in the air!!!

Ain't it pretty?!

So we bought this fish tank with our tax refund in March. Jimmy really really REALLY wanted to get a saltwater tank with tons of "cool" fish. Like any good mother, I mean wife, would do I told him he could start small and once he proved that he could take care of the simple fish and not kill them off, we would talk about getting a bigger one. Well we met in the middle by getting a fresh water tank with Cichlids....if you are like me, you have no idea what those are!! Cichlids are carnivorous fish, they can be very aggressive and are very finiky about their Ph level and water temperature. We began by asking the petstore "fish specialist" which ones could live together(because they kill each other!) and which ones were the easiest to keep alive. She pointed us in the direction on Black Convicts and Oscars. She said to watch the bigger ones because they may start picking on the smaller ones and eventually kill them. Oh great!




We took our fish home and put them in the tank. 2 Albino Ocscars and 4 Black Convicts.

We noticed immediately the difference in sizes between the two breeds, and even within the 4 convicts. We also noticed the coloring on one of the convicts was a little different. It was more gray and less bright than the other three. We decided to just keep an eye on them and see what happened, this was a test right?

A few weeks went by and we noticed that two of the black convicts were staying to the top of the tank, each time they would move, they would get chased back to where they were. I knew right away they were being bullied and felt horrible. I also noticed that the Oscars were keeping to themselves and one of them was starting to get a messed up fin. We decided to move the tank out to the living room to show it off. Two days after moving it, the Oscars died. We went back to the pet store and asked the lady what we could have done. She said a lot of time the cause of death in Cichlids is nothing you can do, it is just stress. Moving them, being bullied, ICK, Ph inbalance, you know, fish stuff lol.

We decided to check our tank and treat it for ICK thinking that must be our problem. Still the two convicts stayed to the top as the other two(one of the bold black ones and the lighter more dull one) owned the place. With in weeks the two weaklings were gone too. Now I was starting to notice that "dull fish", that my sister in law so nicely named RaRa, was starting to form an orange cirle on the side of her body. "Great, once these are dead, I'm done!" is what I thought. If Jimmy couldn't keep these alive how was he gonna do saltwater fish?!

We then moved from our condo to the apartment and the apartment to the house. Both of us secretly hoping these two would just die already so we could start over. A few weeks after getting the tank set up at the house, I noticed that RaRa was being a little weird. She wouldn't really eat and she was hiding in the rock a lot more than usual. We also, by this time, purchased two crabs to help with the algae in the tank because they brutaly murded our placostamous. Not only was RaRa hiding but Fred(the name given also by my sister in law) would chase off the crab everytime he would crawl anywhere near the plant. We figured she was just sick and Fred knew it so he was just trying to be a gentlfish and let her die in peace.

About a week later, we had gone out for a little swim at about 8 at night. Walking by the tank I thought "wow, we need to clean that, it's looking pretty bad!" As we were coming back in Jimmy stopped to turn off the tank light as I continued down the hall. All of the sudden I hear "OH MY GOSH, BABE COME HERE!" I thought something horribel had happened or that our dog Lola had gotten into something so I rushed back down the hall. He was standing in front of the fish tank, mouth dropped open and finger pointing. I looked in the tank to try to understand his freak out thinking again, "yeah maybe you should clean it every once in while, then it wouldn't look like that!!!" Then I saw it! At least 300 tiny tiny TINY specks were swimming around our tank. "BABIES, she was protecting her eggs!"

All the events of the last week had finally made sense. She was hiding and not eating because she had just laid eggs inside the rock, Fred was attacking the crab as to keep him from eating the eggs and the other crab was stuck in the rock hiding because he was forced to stay in there.

Now what to do with 300 fish!? I started reading up on it and everything/everyone said to remove one of the adults, some said the male, some said the female. We took the one that was not guarding the babies. We put it in a smaller tank along with the isolated crab. We have been told it is hard to keep baby cichlids alive because sooner or later the parent(s) will eat them. So far it is has been 3 weeks and they are growing strong. As far as I can tell none of them have died or been eaten. Once they are big enough to eat pellets and not just flakes we will either try to sell them or take them back to the pet store. When fully grown, they can be up to 6" in length, my 35 gallon tank is NOWHERE near big enough for 300+ of them!

If you know of anybody who may be interested in purchasing some of them, or if you want them, please leave a comment and let me know :)

5 Things

While reading the blog of a friend that I have not seen in a while, I realized how utterly horrible I am at this whole blogging thing! I decided to steal one of her posts and use it for my own(of course I will use my own answers), she tagged someone which I will not do.

5 Things I was doing 5 years ago:

1. going on my first real date

2. working a part time job

3. starting my senior year in high school

4. shopping all the time!

5. counting down the days to graduation!

5 Things on my To Do List:

1. save money

2. find a cute way to decorate my "spare room"

3. exercise

4. put up the last of the shelves in our "den"

5. learn to cook/eat healthier

5 Things I would do with One Million Dollars:

1. buy a second vehicle

2. redo our second bathroom

3. pay off ALL debts

4. give some to my parents

5. have a quilt free shopping spree

5 Places I Have Lived:

1. In Jimmy and I's new home

2. my in-law's tiny apartment

3. in our first condo

4. at my mom and dad's

5. in my parent's first apartment ;)

Home Sweet Home....almost

We received the keys to our new home on May 21st 2010 and started working immediately!

There was much to do with the popcorn ceilings, bad paint jobs, smelly carpet, bad windows, old doors, inadequate closet space, and dungeon like bathroom!

Once we got out of our condo we were living in the apartment on the side of my in-law's house along with 4 couches, 2 beds, 2 long dressers and two kitchen tables....talk about cramped space! We worked diligently with SPACE as the goal!

Let me give you a tour of what we walked in to at the beginning of this exciting journey....

This was the front room, great first impression eh?

And this was the dining room, termite eaten wood put "talently" along the walls


The kitchen was next, not in horrible shape, but could use a face lift to bring it from the 50's to today :)

Then you would walk down the never ending WHITE hallway, making you feel like you were headed to some sort of insane insullum or something! It was in desperate need of some color!

Then if the hallway wasn't enough white for you, the first bedroom was WHITE as well. Set up perfect to do a two toned room, just not used to it's extent.

Right as we begin to think the previous owners didn't know how to paint or didn't ever complete a paint job, we come to the second bedroom....we like to call it the tiki room! Isn't it beautiful....I wanted to leave it this way forever!!!! hahahahaha YEAH RIGHT!

An average person would probably start to get scared and not want to move on through this house. I guess you can say Jimmy and I are not average ;). Across the hall you will find the master bedroom. It was in the best shape, just needed to become mine!

Now you are a little more familiar with what we walked into. A lot of work but we could see it's potential.

We have talked to a few different realtors that we know and each one said they had shown that house multiple times and could never get anyone to walk past the ORANGE room! Our realtor was one that said that and she was SO excited when we told her we liked the house and wanted to put an offer on it. She said she loved when she helped someone get into a fixer upper, its make the home become YOURS and not what someone else pictured for you. We have loved working on our house and making it our home. The work is almost done, which means more pictures to come :)

Oh how time flies!!!

Wow, it has been a long time since I posted anything on here! Life has been crazy but SO fun!!!! Since it has been so long, I feel it is necessary to give a little glimpse into what has been going on the last 8 months....

I got engaged....at Disneyland...would have been the next post except planning had to begin IMMEDIATELY to prepare for...

My wedding 8 weeks later :)

Then of course, who has time to update the blog when you are....On a honeymoon back at the Happiest Place on Earth?!

In front of the ride where it all began :)


As soon as the honeymoon was over, it was back to reality...time to set up a new home and get ready for Christmas! (This was before the couch came and we were improvising with my sister's Foof Chair...)

Of course we left some time to having fun and dressing up to carry on an inside joke with the sister in law ;) Love ya Katie!

Then of course, who likes to stay in the same place for more than 4 months?! haha (sense the sarcasm?) We decided to look at houses, just for fun... We both got an extremely good feeling about the very first one we looked at so we jumped on it! We closed on the house on May 21st, 2010. Signing away our lives in the process haha.


Had to take a break from all that jazz to visit my best friend in the hospital where she welcomed her second baby boy, Max, into the world./


Then we welcomed our new addition Duke Hunter Tenney into the family. With a new house and a backyard next to the alley, we needed someone to protect it...plus we both wanted a chocolate lab :) *good excuse to get one eh?*


Work on the house started immediately, in order to qualify for any sort of tax credit, we had to be living in the house with in 30 days of close...there was a lot of work to be done to make it livable so we picked up our scrapers and paint brushes and got to work!


With all of the painting in swing in the "creative" bedrooms the house had, we lost track of what the pool started to look like and got to play pool doctor.....
We still aren't pros but it looks better than this now ;)

There is a just glimpse of what the Tenney's have been up to since October of 2009...more to come with updated pictures of the house!!!

Capistrano Beach

After 5 years my family decided to take another vacation to Disneyland! It was much needed and planned for October 9th through the 15th. We were all set and ready to go! After many bumps and worries the day finally came and we hit the road!

We stayed in Kindra and Vaughn's timeshare in San Juan Capistrano, CA. It was right along the Pacific Highway and across the street from the Capistrano Beach! Outside our hotel balcony you could see the water...it was beautiful!

On Sunday we decided to take a day off from Disneyland and spend some time at the beach. We loaded up the picnic and headed across the bridge to the beach.


Me and Jimmy on the beach. One of my favorite pictures from the trip!!!



Since we were going o Disneyland I decided to be creative and painted all of the girls' toes red with Mickey ears on them. You cant really see the detail of them but I love feet pictures in the sand and this was just too cute to pass up!


After we ate lunch we decided to build a sand castle with the sand toys my mom rented from the hotel. Here our the engineers hard at work!

Kindra and Renzo headed to the water.