CKEDITOR adds empty paragraph after paragraph

I have installed CKEDITOR and have been able to switch back and forth through some jquery from a plain text textarea to a wysiwyg textarea, which is CKEDITOR. So far all is well except when a user adds a blockquote or an ordered list or unordered list -- when they do, an empty paragraph is being added after the paragraph, after the paragraph, where the blockquote, ol, ul was inserted.

<p>this is sample text.</p>
<blockquote><p>this is text in the blockquote.</p></blockquote>
<p>this is more sample text.</p>
<p></p>
<p>this is more sample text.</p>
<p>this is more sample text.</p>
<p>this is more sample text.</p>
The empty paragraph is the markup above is what I would like to not be inserted. I have tried to parse it out with some PHP and javascript, but CKEDITOR keeps adding it back. I have all format rules (breakafteropen, breakafterclose, etc.) set to false.

This only happens when a blockquote, ul, or ol is added via CKEDITOR.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!