Jansen

The year 1993 brought about many emotions in our family. In January Tom's parents, Glen and Marion Lee, left to serve a mission in England. It was a joy to see them off to serve the Lord. It was hard to say goodbye, but we all looked forward to hearing from them often. Grandma was very good to write to us every week. Unfortunatly on July 3 she suffered from a stroke. Grandpa called us telling us the news and told us they would be stableizing her and then getting her back to the USA as soon as possible. Two days later she passed away while still in England. Back at home we waited with bittersweetness for Grandpa to return alone. It was a very difficult time. Within 6 months I would find my very good friend, Charmae Thomas, and my sister-in-law, Linda Anderson Stilson, would be joining her in death. In the midst of all of the sadness we found out that we were going to have child number three. What a welcome joyous occasion in an otherwise very dim time of life.
Jansen was born May 24th of 1994. He was boy number 3 for us and we couldn't be happier! I remember the epideral that I had with Tyler and looked forward to one with Jansen also. However, this epideral was a little scary. It started feeling like I couldn't breath well. I just remember being a bit nervous as the doctors, nurses and antesthesilogist were working quite quickly to fix things. Tom was a little more involved in this delivery than the past two and he wasn't quite ready for everything. I looked at him and his eyes were rolling back and down he went. Luckily there was a chair there to catch him. But, alas, all turned out well and Jansen was brought into the world. We used the name Nash as a middle name in honor of Tom's mom, Marion, who had passed away about 10 1/2 months previous. Her maiden name was Nash.
Jansen has always been his own self. No one is going to tell him who he is. When I try to think of the cute things each of my kids said as babies and little kids, the best I can get for him is, "Uunnnnghhhhh!" He liked to let us know when he was bugged about something. He loved his binkies! He usually had one in his mouth and one in each hand in case of emergency!
He is a very self motivated young man. If he has a good reason for something he will put every effort into whatever he is doing. This year he decided he wanted the good grade price for his snowboarding pass. You need a 3.7 or above to receive a discount. He decided that was important and without any nagging on our part got a 4.0!
He is very responsible when left in charge of his younger sisters. He likes to know where they are even if he isn't in charge.
During the 2002 SLC Olympics he found a little girl's mitten among the millions of people and knew he had seen the little girl that was missing it. We couldn't go anywhere else until he found the girl. And find her he did! He gave it to the dad and the dad said it had been missing for about 3 hours and they didn't think they would get it back. They thought it was pretty cute that it meant a lot to this little boy to find the owner of the mitten. That is the kind of boy Jansen is. Today I am so grateful for Jansen!