6 Little Johnsons

Skiing with Poppie and Nonnie!

2012-02-25T12:00:00.005-08:00

When we arrived home after midnight on January 30th from our quick trip to Mexico, Poppie and Nonnie had beat us home. They had driven up from CA and needed to work on rentals again. Fortunately, it wasn't an all consuming rental trip and we did get to have some extracurricular fun, like skiing!

On February 7th, we took everyone up to Snoqualmie in the bus. The littles and I hung out in the lodge. (Which to my dismay lacked comfortable couches, instead they provided wooden stools, not the best for a nursing option, but oh well.) Eben and Kivi went out with Nonnie, Poppie and Dada to the "magic carpet" to try and remember how to ski. They had snowboarded two years ago, so it had been a while.

Jasper and Opal got busy working on projects while Berg walked in circles all around the tables for hours.

We took some breaks to go and watch the big kids learn to ski and walk around in the cold air.

After a while they decided they were ready to try out a bigger hill and Nonnie took them up on the chair lift.

The plan to have Eben ski between Nonnie's legs didn't go as planned. He's a little too big for that at this point. Then they tried having him hold onto Nonnie's poles while they skied down together. That was difficult too. But they did make it down the mountain.

I knew my not-so-little, cautious man just needed some tough love. So I had him go down the mountain without help. I skied in front of him and demonstrated the "pizza" position the whole way down. We went nice and slow and practiced turning. He did great!

Then it was our adventurous girl's turn to go with Mama.

Kivi is really daring and loves to try new things, so she picked it up really fast.

The shock of the day was our little Opie-o. All of a sudden she decides she wants learn how to snowboard! So of course Peter lets her get on all the gear and try it out. I'm pretty sure she just wanted to try it for the "magic carpet" ride.

Either way, she did amazing! She boarded down the little mini hill over and over again. She was soooo cute!

Meanwhile, Eben and Kivi kept skiing better and better alongside Nonnie.

Peter bought them these cool little contraptions to help them keep their skis together and they worked really well, no splits and their skis didn't cross.

The little kids got a bit restless, especially Berg since he missed both of his naps, but they held it together. Movies always help with that, yay iPad. Pella was amazing the whole time - like she always is. Thank you, Jesus for the wonderful "eat, wake, sleep" plan! (and binkies!)

Oh-La Meh-Hee-Co!

2012-02-19T13:17:00.000-08:00

On New Years Eve we got a call from our good friend Wendy asking if we would like some airline tickets. Of course we said,"Yes!" The only thing was they had to be booked right then and used before March. Peter started searching the internet and also found an unbelievable deal for an all expenses paid resort in Puerto Vallerta for only $250 for four people, but it had to be booked before the 2011 year. We only had a couple of hours and many decisions to make. We decided Mexico would be the place and that we'd take Eben and Kivi, who have been learning Spanish with Miss Mary for two years now every Thursday. Obviously we would also have to take Pella since I'm her source of food. So we booked both the airline tickets and the resort and prayed that we would be able to come up with some passports for the kids fast.

God is so amazing! Not only did the passports come in time, our friends the Schocks said they would watch Opal and the Raykovitzs said no problem to watching both Berg and Jasper! We are so very blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives.

So at 5:00 am on 26th of January we got on a flight to San Francisco and then onto Puerto Vallerta!

The kids did great on the flights. On three out of the four, Peter, Pella and I had a row to ourselves and right across from us Kivi and Eben had a row to themselves - not bad for a free standby flight! (Well, not totally free, you have to pay the taxes on international flights, but still.)

Eben and Kivi loved the hotel and were so excited to see the fountain in the middle.

There were also surprised to see the hotel had their own parrots.

We took a quick stop dropping our things off in our room and then went to see the rest of the resort and have dinner on the beach. It was Fiesta day!

This was a super fun beginning to our little trip! We walked all around the beach collecting food from all the different tables.

We sipped virgin pina coladas and ate our dinner while digging our bare feet into the sand and watching a show. The resort workers danced to different latin style music on a stage set up on the beach and then we all did a congo line right into the...

Limbo! After the "fiesta en la playa" we went swimming in one of the pools. The kids were dying to go in and amazingly I joined them!

The next day we rose bright and early to attend an "Alternative Homeowners Club" presentation. We were told many times that this was NOT a timeshare. It was in fact exactly a timeshare. And though we knew we had to spend 90 minutes at the presentation. It was definitely worth it. $250 for all of us to stay for four days in Puerta Vallerta + eat all the food we wanted for free and all we had to do was go to a free breakfast and hear the guy talk about his vacations all of his family members get to do because he is an "owner" of this club. We said, "no" quite easily and were on our way. The only thing we got suckered into was another presentation the next morning. Actually, we were lied to. We were told we could have a free tour and zip lining for me and the kids for only $20 if we just went on over to "see" another hotel the next morning. It ended up being a whole other presentation and wasting our whole morning, but we did end up going zip lining afterwards. In retrospect, we should've just said no thanks and gone zip lining ourselves. We didn't even go on the free tour.

But after the first presentation, the one we knew we had to go to, we went swimming in the pool again. It's really all the kids wanted to do the whole time. I sat with the cute little Pella.

We had the best flautas and tons of guacamole right by the pool. And we had ice cream every day!

Then Eben and Kivi got a free scuba diving lesson! I thought for sure they were going to come up gasping for air and spewing water all over the place. I was wrong. They stayed under water breathing just like normal and didn't come up until the instructor motioned for them to surface! I was really amazed!

Now Dada is excited to have some scuba partners!

After a nap we ventured on our own and took a walk the see the homes of some of the people who actually live in Mexico and get away from the resort atmosphere. Our hope was to actually have Eben and Kivi see some Mexican culture and practice their Spanish. But we couldn't even find a taco stand. The whole area was pretty changed to cater to tourism. Everyone we met spoke English better than we could speak Spanish. English is taught in schools starting in kindergarten there. We did find a little shop and bought a coke and some candy for only a peso. It was the best candy ever and I have no idea what it was. We had walked so far out that it was dark by the time we were heading home so we took a bus back. It was obvious tourists don't usually ride the bus. Eben and Kivi loved standing up but they didn't get to very long because the locals were so courteous in giving them their seats.

The next day, after our second presentation that we were tricked into going to (which lasted until 11:00!), we went zip lining. We weren't allowed to take pictures but Peter got a couple on his phone before we went zipping all around the canyon.

Peter stayed with Pella while Eben, Kivi and I went on the most fun, fast, exciting zip lines ever!

He snapped this picture as he settled down to relax and wait for us to finish our adventure in style with Pella and a good drink. But the comfort didn't last long. Poor Peter said that he only got about five minutes of relaxation and then Pella scream-cried the whole rest of the time we were gone, and we were out there a long time. It was us and a group of 20 college students. So it took a while. But it was totally worth it! (I mean the waiting for the 20 people - not having Peter deal with crying baby, sorry, Babe.) There were 11 zip lines and most of them were long. One of them even went through a tunnel!

After our zip line canopy tour we went back to the resort, had some lunch, and then went out on the town. This time we took the bus to Old Town. We walked all around the little shops, bought some popsicles and more candy (not as good as the night before, we couldn't find it - pobrecita!). While Eben and Kivi were on a mission to find their siblings presents from Mexico, we found a cool old church.

After walking a bit further we found little gifts in this market. Eben got Jasper a wooden lizard and Opal a necklace. Kivi bought Opal a purse and Jasper a lollipop. Dada bought himself and the kids the use of a very disgusting bathroom.

Even though we were right on the beach the whole time, this was as close as we got to it. We never swam in the sea. The kids collected a ton of interesting rocks and driftwood while I fed Pella on the board walk. This is also the only place they successfully spoke Spanish to some children who were also playing at the beach.

When we got back from our walk, the kids of course went swimming - in the pool. That night we set Kivi and Eben up in separate beds in our hotel room with a pizza of their own and a movie and Peter and I went on a date! We took Pella with us to an amazing Italian dinner in one of the resort restaurants. Then we put Pella to sleep in a little nest next to the hot tub and went hot tubbing. It was so great to have older kids with us that we trusted and knew would be fine without us for a little while.

The next morning we packed up our stuff and went to breakfast. This is next to the Italian restaurant we went to the night before and in back of us is a pool and the beach.

After breakfast we took a taxi to the local zoo. It was the most amazing zoo ever! Nothing like this exists in the U.S. When you enter, they give you a bag of food - to feed the animals! On the bag is printed what animals eat what food. One of the first animals we saw - lions! And they were extremely close! Less than a foot away and only two chain link fences between us were three lions, two females and one male. We didn't let the kids get too close. You could've stuck your hand right through the fences and touched them/got your hand bitten off! When the male started roaring Eben was ready to see the next animal.

We saw so many amazing animals so close! And we fed almost all of them. Not the lions. We loved the hippo. We threw corn right into his huge mouth!

We all let an ostrich eat right out of our hands!

We pet the zebra and fed him carrots.

The giraffe was our favorite! As soon as he saw us he came right over and leaned his long neck down and tried to see what we were going to give him from our bag. He let you pet him knowing you were going to feed him. And his blue tongue was so long and cool! You don't realize how big their heads are until you see it up close.

After our trip to the zoo we came back to the resort and of course, swam one more time before we had to head over to the airport. We learned our lesson the hard way on a vacation in Cancun before we had kids that you can never wear too much sun screen. We all did a great job of wearing it, and since it cost us $20, (no, we didn't find any travel size to bring with us so we knew it would cost a lot) we passed it on to another family at the resort and spread the non-burning love with others.

Pella and I watched the swimmers and took pictures.

This was my view most of the time the kids and Dada went swimming. I did get in the pool three different times however, so I wasn't a spoil sport.

I only went down the slide once though. It was really fast and made you go underwater.

Eben, Kivi and Dada went under water many, many times. And their multiple bracelets didn't even fall off. In fact they still have them on today. I think it was a good memory! A very fun, spontaneous vacation to Mexico with our two oldest and our new baby girl was a great decision!

Ice Storm Unplugged

2012-02-12T11:33:00.000-08:00

While we were at the Schocks house on the 19th the power went out. So before we ate them out of house and home we went back to our powerless house. That night freezing rain poured over our town. Amidst the silence of a powerless world snapping branches, thudding limbs and breakers bursting sounded so loud. Our magnolia tree in front of the lawn took quite a beating.

I should've gone outside and taken pictures of the beautiful ice and the amazing damage. Trees blocked roads everywhere. But I didn't feel like getting that cold, or having a huge branch fall on me, so I took some up close shots from inside.

Our day included pretty normal play time, hot tea and Top Ramen from the wood stove and jammies all day. When it got dark, Dada got out his laptop and we watched movies upstairs. Our total power outage lasted about 3 days. We're such techy pioneers.

Snow in the Amazon?

2012-02-12T10:16:00.000-08:00

On January 13th we built our plane, got our passports and after collecting the clues around the house headed to the Amazon rain forest! Opie wasn't feeling so well that day, so she didn't get on the plane, but the kids built special spots for Pella and Berg, so they went along instead.

Over the weekend, it snowed a little and the kids were so excited to gather it up and make snow cone slushies. Is raspberry, coconut and strawberry flavoring a part of the fruit group? Cause that's about all we had for lunch that day. They didn't even care that there were pine needles in some of it.

Over the next couple of days, it snowed off and on. We tried to get into the spirit of the Amazon. Dada even sang us an Amazon song,

while the girls snuggled on the couch next to him. We learned about the animals of the rainforest, the forest layers and Chico Mendes. But it was cold and there was snow outside, and our thoughts kept wondering back to our fond memories of the Arctic.

Tuesday night it snowed a ton! So when we woke up on Wednesday morning, we knew we had to give in to the snow and make the most of it. We got on our snow gear (which took about 3 hours!), got on our sleds and headed to the Schocks house. It's our snow tradition.

We trudged through the snow the whole way with only a little whimpering about cold hands. Eben was suppose to pull Jasper, but he only ended up making it about half way down our driveway and then gave up and handed the tow rope to me. Maybe next year.

At the Schocks, the kids played, while the Mamas and Dadas play games. The kids practiced built a human tower.

Then we had a warm lunch of homemade mac and cheese. The kids are all watching the Dads outside. Since we had so much snow, and a plastic bin, they decided to do something Peter's always wanted to try - building an igloo.

After lunch the big kids went out to help.

Then we took a break from igloo construction to go sledding! Actually, I didn't go, I stayed with the nappers.

Then they all got right back to it.

Finally it was completed! And it was big! They all fit inside. But I couldn't get a good picture because of all their foggy breath.

Good thing they practiced that tower trick earlier!

Cute Dadas and their igloo. (Yes, I made them pose like this.)

And being the macho men they are of course they had to power it too.

And good thing because Eben, Kivi, Grace and Jasper spent so much time in there, they even ate their dinner (Which was Shari's homemade chili, that's a snow tradition too.) in the thing.

We usually walk home in the evening, but this year, we didn't. I didn't really feel like walking, and Peter had signed up to work an overtime shift at midnight. So we had a sleepover. But even though they wanted to we didn't let the kids sleep in the igloo.

All Around the World

2012-01-25T00:30:00.000-08:00

The New Year is always a good time to evaluate what you do, how you do it and how you can do it better. This year we decided to change things up a bit for our homeschooling. Teaching all the kids at the same time wasn't working. They all needed help with different assignments and yelling out "Mama" was becoming too common a habit. So Peter and I came up with a new plan. Eben and Kivi do their jobs all the way until lunch time. If they finish their jobs, they can do their typing lessons and then play on their new laptop at 15 minute intervals switching off with each other. While they are busy cleaning, Mama works with Jasper and Opal on their letter writing, reading and counting and we have story time which the older kids are allowed to join. The kids also must come to the Mama now, put their hand on my knee and wait for me to ask what they need. That in itself has helped a ton!

To make our learning more united and fun we decided to travel around the world! We even made our own passports and built a plane out of pillows and chairs. Our plan is to stay in that country or region until we've learned all we can about the culture, environment, animals, people, language and any other interesting things we can find.

To start our voyage I hid clues around the house that the kids had to find to guess where we were going.

Then they all had to look at each other's clues and figure out our destination.

On January 2nd we "flew" to the Arctic! We had so much fun and learned a ton. As soon as we arrived we got our passports stamped and then played in the snow. (The powder in the insides of diapers.)

We took pictures of things we saw (on the internet) and printed them up in a book. For our dinners we ate caribou (actually cow) steaks, caribou stew, fish, smoked oysters (which Berg loved!), and homemade clam chowder. Sadly we didn't get a chance to try any seal liver.

Eben, Kivi and Jasper made scrimshaw out of Ivory (soap, not real tusks).

Eben and Jasper made igloos and Kivi made a snow owl.

We built and licked an igloo, a gift from Buggy.

And we learned all about the Inuit people and built these cool things called Inuksuk which the Inuit used as landmarks.

We returned home on January 12th. We had so much fun in the North Pole. I'm sure we'll all have fond memories of our Arctic Tale. To remember some things we did, I finally finished our dining room/homeschool room wall. The frames had been hanging up for sometime, but they still had the art that came from Goodwill in them. Now it's complete and ready to be changed out for the next month and filled with things from our next trip. In the frames: Eben's batik art, Kivi's family portrait, E, K and J's snowflakes, Kivi's snowman painting, E, K and J's scrimshaw and Pella's footprints.

Game Week!

2012-01-14T13:01:00.000-08:00

After Christmas we lived in our crazy messiness the whole week. We slowly found homes for our new stuff, ate our gingerbread Bethlehem and had our first ever Game Week.

Dada put the kid's new net and swing up in the boys' room.

We played a ton of games while learning how to be a good loser and congratulate the winner and how to win without boasting. We played all of these (some just Mama and Dada played) plus Hide and Seek, and a game my sister and I made up when we were little called Statue Maker. Statue Maker was all of their favorite.

They also made up some interesting games like the Stick Your Booty in a Tinker Toy Can and Drum On It In Your Underwear game.

Every morning we reviewed our new jobs schedule which we started before baby Pella came, but then slacked when she actually arrived.

Our new plan is that in the morning after devotions, breakfast, getting dressed and story time, the big kids (Eben and Kivi) have JOBS! We've done jobs before, but nothing like this. Peter and I realized they could handle a lot more responsibility around the house and come up with a rotating schedule. One of them does all the laundry and dishes for a week while the other one:

cleans the kitchen - Mon.

shakes out the rugs and cleans the bathroom sinks - Tues.

vacuums - Wed.

cleans the toilets and bathroom floors - Thurs.

washes the tables and mops under them - Fri.

Then the next week they switch. They have all the way till lunch to get it done and they've been wonderful!! Berg loves to go around and help with the laundry and putting away silverware.

It took some training, but they now know what is expected and how to do a good job without complaining. You can always hear Eben humming or singing a song while he works.

This week we also went to Ikea and bought a big boy mattress for Berg! Now he sleeps in the boy's room in his own bed. He does really well. We didn't know if he'd crawl out of bed or not, but we told him to stay in his bed - and he does!

For New Year's Eve we went to Chris and Tonya's new cool house and played games and ate amazing homemade pizzas. We all toasted the New Year with a peppermint candy because the Martinelli's was already gone.

New Year's Day the kids "surprised" us with this huge poster they had been working on the whole day before. It's Peter and I on our wedding day and says Happy New Year!

The amazing thing is that Kivi drew this little picture first, put a grid on it and then followed the grid to enlarge it onto the huge paper. They figured this out by watching Curious George, yay PBS! Right after this, the first activity of the New Year - go carting!

It's Christmas, Ya!

2012-01-10T22:34:00.000-08:00

Christmas 2011 was a fun, busy, lots of stuff happening all at the same time kind of birthday celebration for our Lord. As soon as Grandma and Grandpa came over, we connected online with Nonnie and Poppie. Dada's cinnamon rolls cooled off so we could stick the candles and the chocolate nativity on top we all headed upstair to sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus.

A departure from the traditional Dada reading Luke 2 was that the kids wanted to read this year. Which was actually good because Dada was sick, poor baby, and his throat hurt.

Our California family was able to look in on our chaos through the miracle of Skype. Mimi is meeting Pella.

After eating Dada's delicious, gooey cinnamon treats we all opened our stockings, which the kids know full well that Dada and Mama stuff with goodies. I accidentally filled them way before Christmas and the kids informed me that Dada usually waits until Christmas Eve night to fill them. Oops - rookie stocking stuffer mistake, it was my first year stuffing them. We've also told them flat out that Santa died (Well, I mean the real one, St. Nicholas), so they know we have to fill them. I figured who cares if it's filled on Christmas Eve or any other day, they aren't allowed to open them until Christmas either way, but I took them out and waited anyway.

Then we hung them back up, cause they are so cute, and it took me many years to find so many of the same knitted stocking. (I even have an extra, in case of a major stocking non-matching dilemma.) Then we opened our presents. That was the very chaotic part. I think next year we'll take turns and wait and watch what everyone is opening. It all went so fast, it was crazy. Opal is explaining the present she bought for Berg. It was an orange truck, which he loves. (Uck, every vehicle is an Uck.) He sleeps with it every night.

Eben and Kivi designed a complicated web of string for Dada to follow to his big present, a Kitchen Aid. He's been wanting one for a long time.

Uncle Chris and Uncle Tonya (as the kids call her now thanks to Jasper) and cousins came over and we got a shot of the big Johnson clan in front of the tree. We had Dada's cheese fondue, and Grandma brought meatballs, and lots of snacky foods for lunch. And we opened more presents.

Mi familia en las pijamas rojas y negras.
Have I ever mentioned that we have a Spanish lesson every Thursday?

Dada and his sweet Pella on her first Christmas.

The kids big gift this year which poor, sick Dada still did a scavenger hunt for, was a new LAPTOP!! They were so excited! All year long the kids would all talk about saving their money so they could buy a laptop and give it to Eben - the computer lover. They all like to try and play games or at least try to make the mouse go where they want it to go and we knew it would come in handy for homeschooling too. So Eben has to share, but I don't think he minds.

Mama and Dada resting on the Dada chair with Pella Pie. (Eben already figuring out the laptop in the dining room behind us.)

The kids got a rockin' 1970's doll house from the Uncles and cousins. Uncle Chris had just as much fun setting up the furniture as the girls did.

The traditional "Baby's First Christmas" picture in the huge stocking I sewed for Eben so long ago.

The 6 little johnsons in front of the tree. This picture actually took 4 different photo sessions. We had to keep waiting for Berg and Pella to be happy. We actually took these last 3 pics the next day, with all the presents piled under the tree like my mamacita used to do.

A close-up of Pella's pocket pajamas. I made her's out of the insides of pockets, and the part with the buttons down the front is made up of three different fronts of men's pants, you know, the part that opens in front of the crotch. They took me forever to make, like 4 hours, so I'm documenting them.

Merry Crazy Christmas! All birthdays are a wild, fun time over here. Christmas is the greatest birthday ever! Happy birthday, Jesus!

Christmas Eve 2011

2012-01-08T22:29:00.000-08:00

After Leavenworth I finally got around to making all the kid's traditional matching Christmas jammies. This year I made 5 jammie pants out of 3 XL men's pants and crafted Pella an outift out of four of the pockets and flowers for headbands out of the scraps. Dada took all the kids, except Pella, to his cousin's house for a get together so I could get them done - in one day!

So we were ready for Christmas Eve - the last day of the multiple advents! The kids all take turns each day rotating between turning on the Christmas tree lights, opening a wrapped Christmas book, sticking a character on our cloth advent nativity and waiting. It was Jasper's day to put baby Jesus on the nativity. Notice the headband? Yep, that was a three day trend. The first day they all wore them, the boys wore blue, to let everyone know they were boys, and the girls wore pink. Jasper just kept it going.

We delivered our Lakewood friends our super mini honey gift in the bus.

While we stopped at Albertson's for Dada to pick up some food for us, I took their picture, and the girls looked so cute in their matchiness holding Pella, I had to get one of them too. Pella wore her "first Christmas" outfit from Grandma.

The great thing about the bus is that every kid can get out on their own without having to do and undo all those car seat buckles.

After our deliveries we went to Lake City's 4:00 Christmas Eve Candlelight service. It was so beautiful!

I cried. I love the symbol of Christ's love being shared through us as His light in this dark world, spreading that light to everyone around us.

When we got home - the revealing of the jammies! Of course I had to make Opal's with ruffles!

They put them on before we watched a Christmas movie and headed for bed.

Well, the kids did, Dada stayed up for me to make his most delicious cinnamon rolls for our birthday cake for Jesus and I kept him company. He's so cute to watch in his Christmas jammies. (Artwork in the background, by Kivi. She made about 11 pictures of the nativity [bottom, next to Dada's bottom] and put them all over the house. She also made pictures of our family to give as gifts to everyone.)

Leavenworth 2011!

2012-01-05T23:00:00.000-08:00

Peter's wonderful parents' somewhat new Christmas gift to us is "memories" - we love them. Our memory for the past couple years has been a family trip after Christmas. This year it was before Christmas, Dec. 18 (right after the kid's Christmas pageant) - 20. It was great fun, but my head was still a little occupied with all the Christmas "stuff" I still had to get done before the 25th. We went to Leavenworth and stayed at the same place we did the year before at the Apple Blossom Inn, Pear Haven and Farmhouse - three cute homes owned by the same people who run Smallwood's Harvest, a little general store a couple of minutes before you get to Leavenworth proper. We spent most of our time between dance competitions on the Wii and puzzles. Marlee worked everyone. The nieces had cheated and knowing we would get them Just Dance 3 rented it so they could all beat Peter! Ha!

We finished a puzzle a day and almost everyone contributed. They are really addictive. The first day Peter teased me about how I was spending so much time at the puzzle table (while he was trying to beat Marlee at Wii) and then the next night he stayed up until 3 in the a.m. to finish one. The only incident was Jasper's eye colliding with his bed. If we were good parents we probably would've gotten him stitched up, but we're just o.k. parents, so he'll have a lovely, manly scar.

Pella and Grandpa bonding time.

So much T.V.! I love every once in a while to go somewhere that has T.V. so that I can watch it and watch it and finally realize I've spent most of my time watching commercials or trying to find something good on and then be really thankful we don't have T.V. because really, I'm not missing much. Every morning the kids got to watch Curious George, and then Cat in the Hat, and then (yucky) Dinosaur Train. And then I don't even know what was after that because we sent them to the other room to watch the next kid show so we didn't have to any more.

Dada found a great little sled hill right outside our place, in the orchard. Mostly Kivi and Eben sledded but some of us tried it out a couple of times. Eben gave Dada a little ride, and Dada gave me a great face.

Eben and Kivi hauling their sleds back up the hill through the picturesque orchard.

Beautiful pears that were still hanging on. They had to have been frozen solid. We should've picked them to see if they were still edible.

My beautiful Sweet Pea in the snow right after sledding down the hill.

The Kid's Pageant!

2012-01-05T22:10:00.000-08:00

December 17 & 18th the kids put on their Christmas pageant. They were so great. And our family was so wonderful coming to support them on Sat. night. Miss Nikki is so encouraging to every kid and tries to give them all the parts they want. Kivi sang a mini trio with Mellie and Grace. She was so confident.

Eben sang a little solo. He was awesome. The boy can carry a tune!

And all three big kids were in "the dance number", a jazzy little song called Perfect for the Part. Jasper rocked it!

Opal was a sheep again along with all of the 2-4 year olds and sang Away in a Manger. It's been a Lake City tradition for years and years I guess. And it's no wonder why, it's the cutest thing ever. She'd been wanting to wear this huge white princess dress forever so I told her she could at the pageant. She was so happy!

When Miss Nikki asked Eben if he wanted to be a shepherd, he said he'd rather be an angel. So he got his wish. He's one happy angel here.

Cute cousins!

Our super, great supportive family! Thanks for coming to see all of our events!

Pella Firsts!

2011-12-28T21:50:00.000-08:00

Pella has had many firsts in her little life already, like Thanksgiving before she even turned a day old and sleeping through the night (yep 7 uninterrupted hours totally counts) when she was just a few days old. But her first official bath (not counting the one she was born in) wasn't until she was 3 and a half weeks old. She just didn't get that dirty doing nothing. She hadn't even had a diaper blow out yet. She loved the water! Maybe she had fond memories of it from the last time she was in there.

After the bath, she had her first Opal back massage and loved it. She doesn't really look like it here, but she never cried and eventually fell asleep.

Getting sleepier.

Who can resist a good Opie rub? They make everyone smile. (First smile - that I've seen.)

That evening on Dec. 17th, she had her first Jasper and Pella only photo shoot. She's all ready to see her big brothers and sisters perform their Christmas pageant later that night.

Gingerbread Day!

2011-12-28T20:47:00.000-08:00

Our gingerbread Bethlehem was all ready to decorate for the big Gingerbread Day on December 13th - the day after we finished putting them together. It always take 3 days to do this ordeal - one for making the gingerbread and making the patterns, one for cutting out the patterns, baking them and securing them together with frosting, and one for decorating them. The last couple of years we've been able to do this part at our friend's house. Shari hosted this years again - yeah! It's a big, messy thing. I load up the van with all the kids, houses, frosting and candy (that I've been stock piling from all the past holidays) in only 14 trips back and forth from the house to the van. It's a lot of effort but I really like it for some reason. That's why when evaluating all we do for Christmas, and ridding some of the fluff to keep the more meaningful traditions I decided to make our gingerbread houses into gingerbread Bethlehem. I really thought the kids would argue over who got to build the stable and manger, but surprisingly no one did. Kivi asked if she could build the stable and everyone okayed it. Opal was just fine building one of the houses in town.

Jasper wanted to build the inn and Eben decided to design the "gates of Bethlehem" and the hills for the shepherds. I made one extra house for our city in case Berg wanted to join us, but quickly realized that wasn't a good idea. He went straight down for a nap and didn't even know candy was happening.

After the decorating we listened and sang along with the What God Wants for Christmas set - an awesome little interactive storytelling kit that we do many times in December.

Then my sweet friend Shari fed all my kids lunch because between all the trips to the van I completely forgot to bring my children food that wasn't candy. Here are of all the kids and their creations.

Our little town of Bethlehem sat on our "white shelves" and the aroma of gingerbread made me smile every time I went up or down the stairs. Well, my smile might also have been brought on by our newly carpeted stairs too! Our Mama and Dada Christmas present to ourselves!

Baby gingerbread Jesus lying in a manger. A super sweet way to enjoy God's gift to the world!

December Days 1-12

2011-12-24T08:41:00.000-08:00

December is so full of activity. This year it seems especially full. Maybe because we just had a new baby. Maybe because we are a family of eight living in a 2 bedroom home. Maybe because the days go by so fast and there is so much exciting stuff to do before the big celebration day! So before I forget all of this fun I better write down all we've done this year to celebrate the name of Jesus!

December 1 - We went to Journey to Bethlehem. We've done this for the past four years now. It's an awesome living nativity. And I didn't get any pictures of it. So here's our cool nativity that sits on our mantle. It was Grandma's that she had when she was little and every year she would get a new piece for it. So it's a mix and match collection of animals and shepherds. I love it!

December 2 - Dada put up the outside Christmas lights. Eben helped him and entertained Berg through the window at the same time. Then Dada left for fun guys get-a-way overnight. And my sister came and spent the night with us.

December 3 - Shmee and I went to our church's beautiful Ladies Christmas Luncheon and later that day we made Christmas sugar cookies.

December 4 - We were at church all day for church, the kid's pageant practice and our adult musical dress rehearsal.

December 5 - Opal's day to go shopping with Dada.

December 6 - Mama went to MOPS (I'm actually done with MOPS because of homeschooling and I've pretty much heard every mom related topic out there my nine years of doing MOPS, but I wanted to see my MOPS friends and go with Pella since Peter was still on maternity leave.) Kivi had her shopping day with Dada.

December 7 - We had our final Dress Rehearsal for the Adult Christmas Musical.

December 8 - Jasper went Christmas shopping with Dada and Dada made rootbeer with the kids.

Peter has fond memories of making rootbeer as a kid and wanted to share that with our family too. The kids had a fun time helping him. We have yet to taste it, I guess it takes a while to be ready.

December 9 - My friend Lindy came to visit for a couple hours and see our new baby Pella.Eben had his day to go shopping with Dada. (He's actually designing his gingerbread gate to Bethlehem here which we did on the 12th.)

December 10 & 11 - Peter and Eben and I performed in our church's Adult Christmas Musical.

It was called The Christ in Xmas (click here to see it).

The talented Mr. Evarts put this whole thing together and why he wanted us to be in it, I have no clue, but it was a blast to be in. It was a not your usual Christmas play. And yes, this is my Peter! He played the part of Don Holly, my dad! And he was fantastic! Although I now know that I never want him to grow a mustache.

Eben even had a little part as my son. I love this picture because my hair looks red like his!

Later that Sunday we also made our candy cane wreaths. The kids did it all by themselves this year! Eben worked the glue gun for the boys.

And Kivi glued the girl's while Opal almost got burned multiple times putting on the candy, but never did.

Bergie also walked this day, better than any of his other attempts, of which there have not been many. And Dada made a huge batch of gingerbread for the next day. It was a busy Sunday!

December 12 - We designed our gingerbread Bethlehem - a new twist we tried this year on the traditional gingerbread house building.

The kids did an awesome job designing, rolling, and cutting out their patterns. We ended up with a manger, 2 houses, the inn, some hills for the shepherds and the gates of Bethlehem.

Afterward the kids had a fun impromptu performance for us of the Nutcracker:

Christmas Gift Failure.

2011-12-22T11:30:00.000-08:00

After giving away way too much honey last year as Christmas presents, and having to buy honey from the store, (something we thought we were done with now that we have bees) I decided to make everyone a trio preserves! That way we could still give away our honey, but have some left for us too. And since a baby food size jar of honey is not much, a sampling of other homemade little spreads would be cute. It sounded like a great idea and a lot of fun to do.

This summer we picked berries, pears, and in the fall spent a whole day cooking up pumpkin. We made blackberry jam, pear butter and pumpkin butter far ahead of time to be ready for our Christmas presents. They tasted great and looked so cute in the baby food jars. Since I couldn't figure out how to make them seal I used canning wax to seal them. They sat perfectly fine for a month while I waited until the lids were spray painted in beautiful green, red and yellow. I put on the lids and hand painted lovely little labels for the cute little jars.

They turned out so cute and I thought were going to make a great little gift. However, come the day before we were going to give them away, I opened one to see how it faired. Not well. On the top of the wax seal - mold!! I opened more and they were all the same. I guess I have a lot to learn about preserving. All of that work and time in the trash. Good thing you don't have to can honey! Everyone is just going to have to be okay with one tiny little yellow jar.

Or a cute picture of us. It doesn't taste as good - but it doesn't go bad either.

Pickin' a Tree!

2011-12-07T15:43:00.000-08:00

We usually go Christmas tree hunting with a big group of our friends the weekend after Thanksgiving. This year, however, because we really didn't know how I would feel after the birth, we didn't plan a big group outing. It was different, but still special and fun. Poppie and Nonnie were able to come and Miss Kim, Reagan and Pippa joined us too.

After searching for a bit we all picked out the 2011 tree:

The kids all took turns helping Dada chop it down. And we took a very lonely "Man and the Tree" picture.

So the rest of the "men" joined him and held up branches so Dada wouldn't have to feel alone.

It was definitely the fastest amount of time we've ever spent at Hunter's picking out a tree. Also, since we went on a Monday, they don't have all the fun extras like hot cocoa or Santa or the tractor ride out to the forest of trees. Afterward, sneaky Miss Kim treated us to pizza at Farrelli's and we found out that with a much smaller group of people it's way faster to get pizza!

Our tiny, little tree hunting posse:

Baby Pella is Here!

2011-11-25T10:53:00.000-08:00

God has blessed us with a beautiful baby GIRL!

(I knew it the whole time, crazy hormones!)

Pella Kersten Johnson

She was born on Wednesday, November 23rd at 10:55pm (actually 10:57 we found out by watching the video - but the paperwork is already filled out so, oh well, minor details.)

She weighs 6 lbs. 6 oz. and is 19 inches long with a 13 inch head.

Her name means "rock" (of course). It's the Greek variant of Peter or Petra. Kersten is Peter's maternal grandmother's maiden name. And an added bonus - she was born on Grandma and Grandpa's 45 wedding anniversary!

On a drive home from Costco I had 2 contractions. Then we waited for hours for something to happen. We watched a movie, I sat on the ball. Nothing. I was beginning to think I was wrong and maybe they were just really strong braxton hicks. My shoulders hurt so I got in the tub. I had another really strong contraction. I told Peter I think it's going to happen soon. He called our midwife and he and Nonnie got the cameras ready. Ten minutes and one huge contraction later...

So, welcome to the world Baby Pella! We all love you so much already! And you gave us all something to be so extremely thankful to God for!

We didn't have a hat for her so Dada made her one out his sock. (It was a clean sock, a nice fuzzy wool one - I love it!) She's wearing it for the kissing picture.

A couple of hours later we introduced Pella to her brothers and sisters. They all took turns holding her and kissing her and trying to call her Pella instead of Baby Wormie. Then we all laid hands on her and Dada prayed a blessing for her life, that we would raise her the way God wants us to and that she would glorify God with her life.
Sweet little pie looking at the camera. An eyes open shot already!

We had asked Chris and Tonya to host Thanksgiving dinner because our due date was the day before and we didn't know what would happen. And good thing we did! They had a beautiful Thanksgiving spread and almost the whole Johnson, Johnson, Tague clan was there! Dinner was delicious! Everyone was able to meet Baby Pella before she even turned a day old!

Our newest little baby girl, we love you so much!

Baby Wormie's Belly Picture

2011-11-21T05:01:00.000-08:00

Froggy Belly - 2003

(Eben)

Baby Egg Belly - 2005

(Kivi)

Thumbkin Belly - 2006

(Jasper)

Baby Bean Belly - 2008

(Opal)

Baby Oly Belly - 2010

(Berg)

On Nov. 9th my sister, Shmee, came down and took the 9 month belly picture that I have to have for every kid. So now we're all set! I actually can't believe how well the kids did at this. They are all smiling and looking up and four of them have their hands on the belly! If you've ever tried to get a picture of five kids at the same time you'll know - that's amazing. And it only took a couple of minutes!! Thank you Shmee!

Baby Wormie Belly - 2011

(????)

I'm so proud of these little guys! They are such awesome kids. Whenever I need a break or to lie down or just not have anyone jump on me at the moment - they are so quick to have me lie down, give me back rubs, make me sweet cards and love me. I know they learned that from their Dada and not me. I'm horrible at compassion and empathy.

They already love this baby and she's not even here. (Have I mentioned I really think this baby is going to be a girl. We have no clue, but that's my opinion. Sorry Wormie if you're a boy.) They are always talking to, rubbing, and kissing my belly. This baby is going to be very loved!

An Incredible Harvest Carnival!

2011-11-11T14:33:00.000-08:00

Eben got the idea last October to have us all go as Incredibles in the year 2011. (Actually, he wanted to do it for last year's costumes, but we knew I'd need more than a week to get all the costumes together. So we told him we'd do it the next year.) True to our word we, Dada included, donned the tight, tight red shirt with the sewed on paper logo and some lovely red tights with black underwear! Eben's hair was definitely the trickiest part of the costumes as we didn't know how his hair was going to stick straight up 6 inches. But we found some punk rock gel called Gorilla Snot - and it worked. He had to be in an upside-down position until it dried.

Everyone turned out looking pretty Incredible! We've never had our picture taken by more strangers! Everyone stopped us to get us to pose and some people were even trying to secretly snap a shot on their phone. Peter in tights will be on the internet for all to see I'm sure. (Well, now it definitely is.) He's really happy about that.

Our Incredible Cast:

Dada - Mr. Incredible

Mama - ElastiGirl

Kivi - Violet

Jasper - Dash

Berg - Jack Jack

Eben - Syndrome

Opal - Edna Mode

We headed to the gym at Lake City's Harvest Carnival first this year and made it to ten booths before the kids were done playing games and ready to eat.

Grandpa and Grandma met up with us and watched the kids play games and have fun getting their pics taken by strangers.

Then we ate the free little dinner of corn dogs and soda. It was also Incredible that Berg left his mask on the entire time we were there! He even ate his dinner with it on.

The kids played the cupcake walk game and Opal was so excited to win her own cupcake. She was so darn cute in those glasses!

Me and my Mr. Incredible - I love him so much. He would do just about anything to make his family happy. Tights and underwear in public = the greatest Dada and Hubby ever!

Back at home the kids "got busy" trading and dividing up their candy between each other. A favorite part of the 31st!

After the trading, Berg decided to show off his hidden skills and walk! He took about 4-5 steps between Peter and I over and over. It was a treat! His little trick - he hasn't done it since.

Pumpkins!

2011-11-07T09:21:00.000-08:00

We didn't get our pumpkins until the 23rd and since we didn't make it to the free fire fighter pumpkin give away we decided to go to the great pumpkin lot - Walmart!! Hey, you can't beat a $2.98 pumpkin.

A friend from church gave us a great idea for my kids to paint my belly to look like a pumpkin so we could take a picture of...

All our little pumpkins!

Finally on the 30th we got around to actually carving the pumpkins. This ended up to be a great plan. They stayed fresh and didn't rot like last year. And we were able to cook them up for pumpkin butter, pumpkin soup, pie, and pumpkin crisp! They are fun to look at, but they are even better to eat!

This year, Eben and Kivi carved theirs all by themselves! Bergie helped me carve his pumpkin by poking the pieces out and then eating them.

He and Opal had so much fun just putting the cut out pieces in the pumpkin and taking them back out over and over again.

We also celebrated my birthday this night, Dada and the kids had bought me an ice cream cake from Coldstone's the day before, my actual birthday. But I didn't get home from the Women of Faith Conference, my real gift, until the kids were in bed so we ate it then.

After ice cream, the kids got in jammies and we took spooky pumpkin pictures and gave out pumpkin design awards.

Jasper - the happiest

Opal - the cutest

Kivi - the scariest

Berg - the coolest

Eben - the most frightening

Eben Turns Eight!

2011-11-04T15:51:00.000-07:00

For Eben's 8th birthday this year we gave him the choice of either having a party or going to Great Wolf Lodge with our family. He chose going to the hotel. So after Dada sneakily, without Mama's permission, and illegally gave him 5 new games for a game boy that his friend Adam gave him we headed out.

After dropping off Opal and Berg at different friend's houses, we drove down and made it to the anticipated destination. The kids were so excited that our room had a kid's cabin they were going to sleep in!

There wasn't actually much time spent in the room however. First we went to the water park. All of us. We got some crazy looks from people, probably because Peter with his broken foot in a boot and me with my humungous 8 month prego belly were unlikely sights to see going down the water slides. We had a blast! Jasper was a little scared of the huge dumping water bucket and mainly wanted to stay in the wave pool, and Kivi couldn't go on all the water slides. But Eben was able to do everything and loved it.

After the water park we started the extremely long, but very fun process of … Magi Quest! Thanks to our friends, we were able to borrow 3 magic wands and got 3 quests for the price of one because the cute wizardy guys in the shop messed up, but didn't care enough to fix it. I mainly went around with Wonderful Wizard, Magic Maddie, and Monkey Dan (their wizard names) since walking wasn't one of Dada's strong physical abilities at the time.

We took a break from the Quest for a Easy Mac and Cheese dinner in our room followed by more Magi Quest and then cupcakes for dessert for the birthday boy! (Awesome cupcake story: We went to Walmart to pick up food for our little trip, knowing the food at GWL would be expensive, and I found a dozen cupcakes for $.88!! I told the bakery girls and they were so shocked they ran around like crazy trying to get all of the messed up priced pastries before they all got in trouble. I asked if I could still have one priced at $.88 and one of the ladies (probably the one that mismarked them) grabbed them out of my hand and said no way, but the lady in charge gave them back and said thanks for pointing it out!!

All of us, on the bed eating cupcakes and celebrating our crazy boy!

The next day we went back to the water park. This time Dada sat in the steamy hotness and read his book while we all swam around.

Eben really loved the water slides, except the time I fell out of the inner tube on the Tornado. It scared him to death that I was launched out and floundering around in the water. He was screaming, "Mama don't die! Mama don't die!" I didn't even get hurt, neither did Baby Wormie, but it was scary. I climbed back on the tube before we exited the slide. And then Eben told the lifegaurd, "Mama fell off the tube!" Now there probably will be signs not allowing pregnant women to ride the water slides.

We spent the rest of the day finishing up Magi Quest, even though we had already checked out of our room. Peter mainly hung out in the lobby while we went all over the hotel trying to wave our magic wands at everything we needed for our clues. This was a very high activity hotel to stay at for 2 disabled parents. After the kids tried to fight the dragon,(Kivi succeeded in killing it) Peter and I switched and he took Eben and Kivi to the water park again while Jasper and I hung out in the lobby knitting and playing on the ipad. Meanwhile, we were subjected to the most horrible puppet show type thing ever. The basic moral of the show is that it's totally fine to get lost in the woods, the wolves are there to guide you and the eternal mother earth will always be there for you. And it's filled with just as bad songs that get stuck in your head. We were able to have quite a few good laughs about it though and thankfully the kids noticed the flawed advice right away.

Eben, Happy 8th Birthday - clap, clap, stomp, stomp, HHHhhhaaaaooooooo! (It's a GWL thing.) We've had such a great time watching you grow and learn and love others. You have a lot of responsibilities in our home and you do them without complaining, with a happy heart and with confidence. We can't wait to see what a wonderful man of God you will soon be and see how He uses your wonderful creative qualities to serve others and be glorified. We are so blessed that He gave us a son like you! We love you, Eben!

Apples. Kisses. Devotions.

2011-11-04T15:06:00.000-07:00

We harvested our apples from our little one year old tree. We were not expecting to get any because we had just planted it the fall before.

Our cute little Honeycrisp tree gave us three basketfuls of apples! And the best part is the kids love them! They are now Dada's favorite too.

The cute littles loving and reading to each other.

I just wanted to remember the sweet times we spend together in the mornings doing our devotions. Since I didn't write about it before, I've already forgotten when we started doing them. We started out with little devotional books geared toward kids years ago. When Dada joined our morning devotion time he started reading a chapter or two of the New Testament every day. Now we are on I Corinthians! We used to call these times Cereal Devotions because the kids would munch on dry cereal sitting in little nests they made out of blankets all over the floor while we read the Bible. In the last couple of months, the kids stopped bringing cereal and just snuggled on the couch. Eben and Kivi and Dada take turns reading and then in descending age order a different person prays for our prayer requests from the prayer journal each day. It's a great time of quiet (usually… it's louder now that Bergie comes to devotions), rest, and listening to God's Word with the Lord and our children before we start our day.

Fall Farm Days

2011-10-25T09:23:00.000-07:00

October 13th was a perfect day to go to the corn maze - a fall activity I can't wait to do every year. My favorite is Spooner Farms because they have a different theme every year, a goal of finding all the mailboxes hidden in the maze and a prize at the end!

The older kids and I journeyed the maze this year while Dada and Berg stayed near the free apple cider.

The theme was Secrets of the Pharaohs. The kids favorite part of the maze this year was a huge pyramid which had another maze inside that you had to go through to get to the rest of the corn maze.

We took a break half way through for some apple cider and a potty break and found out that Berg and Dada had been working on standing up. Berg showed off his new standing skills for us!

Horray for Berg and the very patient Dada who let us go through the maze all day while he stayed with Berg and and Opal as she opted to stay behind with them for the second half of the maze adventure.

Dada also bought us these yummy malted pumpkin spice candies which we enjoyed every time we found a mailbox.

We also found a Woolley Bear caterpillar that the kids carried around for the rest of the maze and showed to everyone we ran into.

The next day we took the Schocks, the McPhollands and grandma and grandpa with us on the bus to a new farm we'd never been to before. Lattin's Cider Mill is suppose to be famous for their apple fritters. And thankfully we were able to try some even though they were all sold out because of a kind lady who sold some of hers to us.

The apple cider doughnuts were delicious too. Although we got no pictures of the famous pastries, they were eaten way to fast. We did get to see the farm, lots of poultry, some sheep and goats, pigs and cows. Kivi even got to hold a duckling.

All the kids by the cows after going through a little fence maze.

We ended the day with a little trip to Johnson's Smoke House for salami, sausages and meat sticks and then went out for pizza!

Getting Ready for Fall!

2011-10-22T15:27:00.000-07:00

Actually, it has been fallish for a while, we never really had a full summer. But that doesn't mean we get to skip out on our end of summer responsibilities. Right after Jasper's birthday party we decided to take the honey supers off the hive. It was about one of the last dry, warmer days left of the season and once it starts getting rainy and cold, the bees will start eating the honey. It felt really warm in that bee suit. I think Baby Wormie made me feel even hotter.

Since Peter was out of commission, Kim helped out as my bee partner. She was a pro shaking the bees off of each frame and lovingly handling "the girls". Look at all that capped honey!

We've been harvesting vegetables from our garden through out the summer, mainly a ton of lettuce and yellow squash. We did get some zucchini, one cucumber, carrots, lots of tomatoes and a basket full of peas. We still have some tomatoes, corn, romaine lettuce and acorn squash to pick. But we'll see what the cold weather does to them. They're not quite ready yet.

We had 2 cords of wood delivered and the amazing children stacked it all!! We really had no other choice, Peter couldn't do it and neither could I. They have 2 lame parents right now. I mean literally, we are lame. Well, I can walk, but not far as my hips and pelvic bone had already started the separating process and it feels like I will rip in half while I waddle along. They did such a great job with the firewood, though, they didn't complain and all worked together for the couple of days it took them to do it.

It really was a lot of work!

I just like this pic of the bigs reading to the littles. We usually have story time every morning before they get dressed. Jasper and Opal both get to pick out a book or two. This morning, I decided to let Eben and Kivi do the reading while I cleaned the kitchen and looking over at them made my heart melt. I love my kids!

I had to clean the kitchen so we could do honey extraction!! Usually this process takes a while but our friends that we share the extractor with updated our hand crank spinner with a drill bit. Much faster! I cut the caps off the honey with a hot knife.

The summer was short, so we didn't get as much honey as we thought we would. One whole honey super was empty, but we did get about 14 frames of honey.

Dada puts the frames in the spinner two at a time and the drill does all the work. Berg looks on mesmerized. And the other kids eat the honey and chew on the wax caps from the pan where I cut the frames.

Then we pour the honey through two different strainers and into the big honey bucket so later on we can fill our little jars.

Mmmmm. Honey.

Jasper's 5th Birthday!

2011-10-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

Jasper is a cool boy. For his fifth birthday he requested a "Monkeys with Fedoras" themed party. I don't know why. He doesn't especially love monkeys, but he got fixed on this idea long ago, so we went with it. He does have a fedora that we got him in CA that he loves, so he wore that and his banana shirt and carried his monkey, Steve, ( that I actually bought as a decoration for the party, but turned into his favorite animal) all over the place.

We started off with a banana eating contest, which I think was actually Eben and Kivi's idea. Bubba wanted to just watch. Kivi's banana fell immediately onto the grass and we almost had a serious melt down, but thanks to self control we survived. Eben kept eating his hair. Opal just stared at her's. Dada could've eaten the whole thing in 2 bites but I think he was going easy on the kids. Cousin Victor (you can see the back of his head) won!

Next we played a toss the monkeys in the barrel contest. Which the kids loved because however many monkeys you got into the barrel that's how many pieces of candy you got.

Cousin Madison tossing a monkey into the barrel while Uncle Chris tosses a Berg into the air.

At Jasper's request we had peanut butter, marshmallow and banana sandwiches and Mac and Cheese. I made four huge casserole dishes of Tiffany Nevil's recipe and they were wiped out! And bananas were served of course.

While Jasper opened his gifts the kids went back and forth from watching the presents to jumping on the trampoline - always a favorite. Dada's rule is let all the kids jump on it, and don't watch. As soon as an adult actually checks to see it the kids are safe, one of them will get hurt.

Cake time! It's suppose to be a monkey with a fedora on it's head. And yes, Dada is using crutches. He broke his foot wake boarding just two days before and thankfully Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Chris and Uncle Tonya and cousins came early to help Mama set up, because he was out of commission.

Does this boy even look like he could be five? He is way too cute.

Along with cake we also had a self serve banana split bar!

Here's a shot of all our friends and family who came to celebrate our man with us.

We love you so much, Jasper! You bring such joy to our lives. You are kind and loving and thoughtful of others. You make us laugh all the time. You are cuddly in your rough way. You get attached to crazy things and get super sad if anything bad happens. You love to share especially with your brother, Eben. Your favorite color is yellow. You want to wear shorts and sandals all the time. You wear size 3 clothes. You are reading like a pro and are almost done with your first Phonics book. You are a Lego maniac and can build anything. You are a child of God and He also thinks you're one amazing kid! Happy 5th birthday, Bubba!

Discovery Bay

2011-10-11T15:05:00.000-07:00

Sept. 18-20th we drove across the bridge to Discovery Bay -it's in the Port Townsend area. We got a smokin' deal from one of Peter's officer friends on a WorldMark condo and had a blast for our 3 day mini vacation. The kids were really impressed because it was 5 stories tall! The first floor had our bedroom and huge bath with soaking-jet tub, the next level was the entry and laundry, the 3rd was a the living room, kitchen and dining area, the 4th was the main bathroom and the 5th was the kids bedrooms. It wasn't actually that gynormous, it just went up instead of out to get maximum viewage of the water. (I know I making up words.) But the kids were so amazed.

Berg, who had just recently learned to climb stairs was in baby stair crawling heaven. He spent the entire time going up and down all the flights of stairs.

The kids pleaded with us to let them have backwards day, something we've only ever done in Leavenworth, but we weren't going there this summer. So we went to the store and Dada bought awesome dessert for breakfast - French silk pie and ice cream with magic shell! Then we had stir fry and rice. For lunch we served up crackers and Dada cheese (that's any kind of cheese the kids normally don't get, because cheese is Dada's favorite snack and it's usually expensive to get a good one)! Dinner was omelets from our own chickens since eggs were about the only food we brought from home.

We spent our time relaxing, watching T.V., listening to audio books, sleeping and doing crafts The girls did mosaics and the boys made a wooden truck and catapult, and they painted rocks they found on the beach.

We took a walk along the bay and found some huge starfish and plate sized crabs.

We couldn't get to the huge ones, they were underwater, but we were able to catch some little guys.

Mama and Dada had a sling shot competition, to see who could hit a seagull off the dock. Don't worry, neither of us won.

And of course most of our time was spent where else - in the pool!! Always a vacation favorite. Kivi and Eben needed no supervision as their swimming was amazing by the end of this summer. We did still watch them though. And Jasper held on to a ball to keep afloat and kicked himself all over the place.

I finished knitting a scarf I started long, long ago - yay! And Berg fell in love with my skein of yarn. He really has a thing for the knitted feel.

The best thing was doing nothing anywhere else. We usually plan little trips to other places around. But we decided to just relax and see what happened. It was great. I had no high expectations so everything was enjoyable. I should try to do that all the time.

Free Fair Day!

2011-09-29T15:33:00.000-07:00

On Sept. 9th we headed on down to the Puyallup Fair to save ourselves a load of money because it's the only day the fair is free! Of course by free I mean you don't have to pay to get in, you still get to pay a ton for food and rides. Actually we didn't come away that bad with our 1 ride, 1 treat per kid plan. (First, we went to McDonald's to get the kids free mango smoothies, because it was a Free Sample Friday!) We spent most of our time in the petting zoo, looking at animals and doing the Pioneer Farm, old timey, free activities, section. The kids got to shave Dada, chop wood, saw, churn butter, grind wheat and do the laundry. These would all seem like great things to do at home too, except the shave Dada part.

Oh and we don't have an old fashioned, hand ringer washing tub. So I guess, we'll just have to continue with our boring old shove the clothes in the washer plan.

All of us at the Pioneer Farm section, in the hot, hot sun. I guess I set the camera up in a very bright spot. I wanted the ferris wheel in the back. Not the greatest family shot. Oh well.

We were able to watch a cow be milked and eat ice cream at the same time. Something that's never timed out before. So that was a plus! But I think the kids were more focused on the ice cream than the cow milking. They all took turns sharing one cone.

For a treat the girls chose to share an elephant ear. They shared it with Bergie and Dada too and they still couldn't finish it.

And the boys each chose a carmel apple. Actually Jasper chose only the carmel and then gave me the whole apple when he was done.

Opal, after much indecisiveness, chose the helicopter ride!

Jasper and Kivi chose mutton bustin'. Actually, they didn't really have much choice, it was like a right of passage of some sort for Bubba. We kept telling him he could do it now that he was four. So they knew way before fair day, they would both be mutton bustin'.

He was so excited until it was actually his turn. Then he got really scared. But there was so much whooping and hollering, the guys running the show didn't even notice. Plus Peter was cheering him on so enthusiastically, they just set him on and he was out the gate. He held on tight and then he was off 2 seconds later.

Kivi was ready to beat her time from last year. She held on super tight, but then slid off after a second and a half. It was ok though because she got a super cool bruise on her leg in the shape of a hoof print. The sheep had stepped right on her and it made a perfect imprint.

They did so good and were so brave! They even had to wait forever in those hot vests and helmets because it was the first day of the fair and everything wasn't quite ready and Nightline was there filming it so they had to get all their camera equipment in just the right places. But they mutton busted and had the dirt and bruises to prove it. Now I'm curious to see if Nightline is doing an expose on the horrid parents who make their young children ride a sheep at horrifying speeds only to have them fall off a second later and be trampled and covered in dirt. What kind of parents would do such a thing to their kid?

Eben, who is too old now to mutton bust, chose a huge roller coaster. And he went all by himself!

I tried to get a shot of him in action on the ride, and this one was pretty perfect with the "hold on tight - watch for sudden drops" sign. It summed up all three of the big kids ride experiences pretty well.

Then around 1:30 we left. No quilts or hobby hall for me this year. I didn't even get cotton candy. But it was enough. It was getting very crowded and was probably the hottest day in WA to go to the fair. So we were all fine with going home and taking a nap (after a stop at McDonald's for some chicken nuggets because we completely forgot to feed the kids lunch).

The Rest of Summer

2011-09-27T03:21:00.000-07:00

Mimi and my parents stayed up here in WA until September 6th. My parents stayed mostly at their rental on the lake, so we'd kayak over to see them regularly and they'd visit for lunch and dinner when they took a short break from their very time consuming remodeling projects. Mimi stayed in the girls room. The kids loved all sleeping in the boys room so much that they slept in there on the floor even after they all had left - until the boy's room flooded - but that's another story.

While Mimi was here she worked with Berg on his walking everyday. They'd walk circles around the fireplace and he loved it. He's still not walking yet, but he's only 16 mos. so that would be a pretty early walker for a kid in our family.

Mimi's highlight was going on a ride-along with Peter for a day. Sadly the day before this, she was suppose to go and waited all day for Peter to pick her up but there was a bank robbery and Peter couldn't get away. He made up for it the next day, although it was the most boring police day ever he said. He still locked her up in a holding cell and took her to see exciting Tillicum.

We went blackberry picking many times and we didn't even have to go very far. I'm not sure if it's a good thing to have so many blackberries on our property. They're great for not having to go far to pick, but they sure do take over fast! Mimi helped Kivi and I make blackberry jam. It actually turned out more like blackberry syrup. I'll have to try this again, but I'm afraid. Canning is no easy process.

Peter again is so wonderful to me as he helped me with a project that he didn't even want to do in the first place. Last fall we took out all of the concrete steps going down to the beach, so I wanted to use them to make a rough type patio going out to the chickens. Sadly I couldn't really help, because they were so heavy. But I did move a lot of dirt. The kids helped out a ton too moving a huge load of bricks. And that black thing is the cool rain barrel we got at the Steilacoom farmer's market to water the chickens and plants on the beach side. The first day it rained it filled up to the top and fell over. So now it's braced to the beam.

After Jasper tried skiing the one time in Shasta and falling (thanks to his unskilled mama) he was in no hurry to try again. Somehow Nonnie and Peter talked him into it. He was so scared, but I think the bribe of candy after he tried kept him on the board. He kept saying, "Oh, oh, I'm so scared. This is so scary. Ok, I think I can do it. Oh, I'm so scared." He was so cute. He even stayed on for a bit in a squatted position.

Kivi mastered the double skis! She's really got a thing for this now.

Eben did awesome on doubles! This is him swimming the skis in after a 2 lap run. I just love how he's so tired out he's not even bothering to get the hair out of his face.

Poppie and Nonnie took all the kids for a couple laps each around the lake right before they hopped into their very packed car with Mimi for their drive home to CA. It was so great to have them all here for the summer!

Jasper got it! He was very proud of himself on the trainer board. He did a full lap around the lake at about 5 mph! Even when the jet ski stopped he just sort of sunk slowly into the water still standing on the board.

The 6th was also the day we had our first eight egg day! Yay! That means all of our chickens are laying now! It also means that none of them are roosters or died, which is pretty good for us. I guess buying chickens at Dell's vs. a little farm from Craigslist is the way to go.

And here's the almost finished concrete/cobblestoney look I was going for with steps up to the chicken yard. Plus my cute potting bench which we never used on top of the deck is proving to be very useful under the deck next to the coop.

Sand In The City '11

2011-09-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

How do I know my sweet hubby loves me? He told me when Sand in the City was happening and that we could all go! This is love because Peter hates things with crowds, and this was definitely a crowd type event. But he told me anyway and even better he came with us! I love to see the different creativity and ideas people come up with for the sculptures. My favorite was the elephants:

Dada got really good at large bubble tricks.

The girls were so cute in their matching ruffle skirts which I made out of a used sheet and some free tule. They got so many comments on them and of course, I can't lie, that made me feel really good.

Our traditional picture is usually in front of the Children's Museum one, but they were still working on it, it's the one in the way back. So I guess this still counts.

We had lunch with some friends from our small group, let the kids chose a craft (there are millions they could do there) and then left to buy some flowers at the farmer's market for our newest friend, baby Pippa, whom we were on our way to see at the hospital.

Mimi Time!

2011-09-16T03:13:00.000-07:00

After the houseboat trip, everyone, including Nonnie, Poppie, my two sisters Shmee (previously known as Dodie) and Buggy came up north to WA! The drive was not so pleasant for me as I was throwing up during the lovely, bumpy ride home. But Nonnie and Buggy took good care of me and the kids. Sadly Buggy only stayed for two days and then had to get back for college (plus she was probably extremely Kirk-sick as she hadn't seen her love for nearly a week!). But the next day, August 23, Mimi flew into town to spend some time with us while Nonnie and Poppie worked on their rental which is on our lake. Of course she brought "Basket of Presents" with her!

We took Mimi to Northwest Trek and saved bucco bucks thanks to all the kids' awesome summer reading and the library's reward system.

We saw many cool animals, like the bald eagle, really close up.

While we waited for our turn on the tram ride, where we saw every animal there is to see, we did a plant scavenger hunt and ate licorice.

Me, Mimi and Baby Wormie (the most kickingest little thing ever!) Mimi kept telling me to take a break and sit down the whole time she was here and was a great help with the kids and the dishes and laundry!

Lake Shasta Part II

2011-09-15T14:49:00.000-07:00

Kivi was so daring and brave. She was the first one to try everything. She almost gave up waterskiing because we had her trying water starts, but Peter got inventive and let them out slowly from the back of the boat. He got really good at it and I'm sure his arms must have been killing him at the end of each day, but he never complained. He was so happy that Eben and Kivi were actually skiing. The Hays family let us borrow their trainer board, which is one piece at the top, so it feels much more sturdy and the rope is attached to the board. The scary part for the kids was once they were done, they just had to let go and fall backwards into the water. They got over it soon enough though and were begging to go back out all the time.

Once Eben mastered it, it was hard to get him to stop. He could hold on forever.

My mom and pop brought along their super cool kayaks, which was my favorite thing to do. The kids and I found this cool cove which we named Mud Salon. We made sculptures out of the mud like I did when I was little at Shasta and plastered it all over our bodies. The next day we kayaked everyone over to it and the kids showed off their art and applied the muddy goop to them too.

I like the contrast between the dark red-brown clay and my white belly.

Eben jumping off the top of the houseboat while Opal and I look on. We had to get in the water everyday. It was super hot. And it would've been fine, except there were many fish and I have many moles. The fish tried to eat my moles every time I got into the water. Every day I'd put a piece of tape on a new mole, so by the end of the trip I had tape all over me.

Jasper and Opal liked riding in the boat and tubing. Opal even took her naps on the floor of the ski boat (while it was going). I love that my cautious little man is using the slow down sign in this picture. They couldn't have been going more than 5 miles an hour.

On the steep hill sides all around our cove Poppie, Nonnie and Buggy had made huge letters of the kids' first names for them to find. The slopes were also a good place to practice their sling shot skills, make a miniature golf course, and get cut when you fell.

Berg did amazingly well on this trip although he was confined to inside the houseboat, he also had the run of the place. One of the rules the kids had to follow was "Close the screen door, so Berg doesn't die." And he didn't, so that was good. His daily activities included driving the houseboat to nowhere, since we never moved it from our perfect cove, sleeping in the closet, swimming, playing with his toys and yelling at meal times.

Jasper spent most of his time on top of the houseboat playing what else…Legos!

Dada was determined to figure out the air chair. He wake boarded some, but mostly he and my Dad fell over and over until something finally clicked and they stayed up! Peter was so happy to have mastered it. Look at how cute he is!

Our family of fish. I don't think I've ever spent so much time in the water. This was taken right after a "Try to Shove the Other Person off the Kayak Challenge", which I won. We had a great time with my parents and sisters and each other at Lake Shasta. Thanks Nonnie and Poppie!

Lake Shasta Part I

2011-09-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

This August my parents invited us to come along on their houseboat trip to Lake Shasta to celebrate Buggy's graduation. On the 13th at midnight we headed down in the bus with my sister, Shmee. The bus was awesome. There was lots of room and the kids slept on their own bench seat. I slept on the hide-a-bed in the back until… we woke up and realized we weren't moving for a long time. The poor bus had broken down in a podunk town in Oregon. Peter was on the phone forever to AAA trying to make them understand that the bus is our personal vehicle, not commercial. But they wouldn't budge on their technicality and refused to tow us. While Peter tried over and over to find a tow under $600 to the nearest town, we picked black berries, flowers and watched a movie. My sister and I decided to take a long walk with the kids to church since it was Sunday, we needed prayer and it was apparent we were going to be stuck for a much longer time. There happened to be a little white church we could see across the freeway. It turned out to be a Christian church! Church hadn't started yet, but 3 older people were there ready to set up and let us use the bathrooms and gave us a tour and cookies. We told them our troubles and pointed out our stuck bus and they prayed for us. Peter had called when we got there and said he had a tow lined up. A sweet lady from the church drove us back to the bus but she cautioned us that nothing would be open in any of the towns around because it was Sunday.

Well, God had already been amazing and he didn't stop. The tow truck driver let us all ride in the bus (highly illegal, but saved us lots of dough!) and when he pulled us into the closed auto shop all the guys were there to help remodel the office, but they stopped and all started working on the bus! The owner even called AAA and made them pay for the tow since it was evident this was definitely our family ride.

We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and jelly bellies in the hot, hot sun while we waited and the guys told us there was an ice cream shop down the road. So we even had some yummy ice cream treats!

It was a miraculous turn of events and the kids thought it was a great adventure. We eventually got to the houseboat, only 6 hours later than we had planned, loaded all of our stuff and jumped in the water. Yes, even me. It was hot.

Our home for the week:

That first couple of days the kids attempted many new water sport feats: tubing, water skiing, jumping off the roof and kayaking.

Poppie was the main boat driver although Nonnie and Peter did their fair share too. He was always behind the wheel because someone was always skiing.

The kids watched movies on the laptop when they needed some down time. And they were super excited about the 5 snacks a day plan Dada came up with. (They only got a snack if they obeyed all the rules - I think Opal's average was 1 snack a day.)

Finally Summer!

2011-08-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

This summer has been very late in coming! We didn't officially see the sun until late July. We have seen Poppie and Nonnie a lot though. They came up to work on their rentals mid July and we convinced them after 4 days of not seeing them at all (they were sleeping at the rental, on the floor) to at least spend their nights over here. When we were finally able to see the sun we spent some days preparing for our upcoming house boat trip by playing in the lake, jet skiing and tubing. Even Berg enjoyed a couple of jet ski rides!

Nonnie got creative with a paint brush taped onto the end of a pole and now we finally have a finished living room! It even inspired us to put up the remaining curtains over the stairs.

And I found a place for all those 4 month baby pictures! The family tree wall - of course! Repainting helps you see more clearly.

Poppie and Nonnie have been sleeping in the girls room, so all the kids sleep in the boys room, the girls have their own little nest beds on the floor and Berg is in his play pen. I moved the mini T.V. and the cool antique drawers that have never had a home into their room. The drawers store all our videos and the T.V. only plays videos - it's perfect. They are allowed to watch them on weekend mornings and we get to sleep in! We all love this new addition!

We've done three VBSs this summer! The first one was July 11-15 - Panda Mania at Oberlin. (Jasper's favorite) The second was July 18-22 - Hometown Nazareth that our whole family participated in at Lake City. (Eben's favorite) And the third was August 1-5 - Son Surf at Little Church on the Prairie. (Kivi's favorite) We set up a VBS shrine on the mantle so we could admire their work. VBS = a million crafts.

Kivi Turns 6!

2011-08-07T19:51:00.000-07:00

Kivi came up with a super cool theme this year for her 6th birthday:

And she knew exactly how she wanted her cake to look too! The campfire looked so cool when we lit the candles that were in it.

We set up a s'more table, with all sorts of options, from mint chocolate or coconut marshmallows to already made in the package ones which we called "Lazy Man S'mores".

Between us and the Schocks we were able to cover our yard with four tents. We put a campfire in the middle of the yard and camp chairs all around it.

After the kids played a "get the bugs out of your tent" game, they made their own trail mix for part of their take home treat. It was all sugar cereals and dried fruit. Yum. My kind of trail mix.

Then it did what always happens when you go camping in the state of WA - it down poured! Big time rain. Good thing we had all those tents for people to go into. And Peter got tarps and covered all the cute tables previously mentioned. It looked like tarp city. Unfortunately dinner was a make your own foil wrap deal, so we all had to brave the wetness, choose our own ingredient to put in the foil and stick them into the fire. They turned out amazing despite the waiting for them to cook while we huddled under tarps.

It stopped raining long enough for us to get a group shot and then it started again.

So Peter and the guys carried the tables under the deck and we continued the party there with birthday cake, ice cream and present time while the kids decorated their own tent broom and dust pan.

We got Kivi the American Girl doll, Kirsten. It was the first American Girl series she read and she fell in love with her. I searched for her forever on ebay, because she's a retired doll and found one finally! Peter says I was obsessed and he's probably right, but Kivi loved her!

The rain let up again, so we hiked back over to the camping area for some after dessert dessert - s'mores! Most of the kids opted for the giant marshmallows.

It might have rained, but we still had a great time "camping" with our Kivi girl and our friends. And she had a great day!

We love you, Kivi Pea! You are such a delight to be around! You are always helping and serving our family. You're joyful and full of life. You are hilarious and come up with the funniest stuff. You are talkative, smart and competitive, kind and thoughtful toward others. You are definitely becoming an awesome woman of God already. We are so blessed to have you as a daughter. Happy 6th Birthday!

Tide Pool Day!

2011-08-06T15:47:00.000-07:00

On July 7th we woke up early and headed out to Salt Creek Recreation Area near Port Angeles to go see the tide pools. We had ocean week the week before and learned about many different types of sea animals. We thought it would be fun to go see some of them. Plan #1 was to go to Point Defiance Aquarium, but since we don't have a pass, it was going to cost over $100 so we nixed that plan. This was way more adventurous anyway. After sleeping on their own seats for an hour of driving, the kids woke up and sat at the little table Dada set up for a donut breakfast in the bus.

After we got there I realized I had no clue how to read tide pool charts. I followed the one from Port Angeles, only a couple miles away, only to find out we had gotten there right around this beach's highest tide of the day. Good thing the high tide for that day was still pretty low. So the kids played on the playground while Dada and Berg took a nap in the bus and waited for the tide to go down a little. After a picnic lunch we headed down to see the creatures.

Eben and Kivi looking for crabs. They got really good at flipping over rocks and trying to catch them before they scurried away.

Berg loved the little crabs, and his Dada ride. He wanted to see everything, so he kept leaning way over to the side. Peter said he felt like he was carrying him with one shoulder the whole time.

Opie going through the rock tunnel on the beach.

Finding stuff is hard work. Opal was done before the others so she and I sat by a big rock while the rest went exploring.

I think we saw more just looking really hard while we sat there than we did the whole time we were walking around. We found giant sea anemones, many types of crabs, chiton, mussels, barnacles, and little sculpin fish. Then I thought to turn over the big rock and look under it and we found four starfish!

It was a fun hands-on day of learning, family memories and a long, quiet bus ride home.

One Morning

2011-08-06T15:30:00.000-07:00

Life is fun and relaxing right now, sometimes crazy, but mostly hilarious. On the morning of July 6th, while sitting on my porch swing overlooking the lake drinking my must drink, Oregon Chai Tea, I captured these of our silly kids.

Berg reading a magazine in his favorite swing - right next to mine. It says, "Get rich slowly, be protected instantly." He "read" it for about 30 minutes!

Of course while we swung we were entertained with what else - a show!

Oh, to be four (and a half!! as Jasper would say). A picture says a thousand words. Here's 3,000:

The Day After

2011-08-05T21:01:00.000-07:00

It took us a really long time to clean up from the party this year. We weren't really that motivated to clean again. But we were excited to light off the rest of the little roman candles and bottle rockets that we didn't get to light the night before. Jasper was not that excited about how loud fireworks were. When we went to buy them at the firework stand they lit some off for us so we could see them and he freaked out. (During 4th he liked them as long as he covered his ears.) That's why they threw in some free lanterns! So we lit those too! Now we want to make our own. They were so fun! The kids loved them. But I'm glad we didn't release them on the 4th, we wouldn't have seen them in the dark and they probably would've gotten blow up by all the fireworks. Plus this way each kid had a chance to let their own lantern fly away by themselves. And they were the main event of the evening.

The cool-looking dead fireworks burning in the fire.

Lantern time!!

The Big 4th Party!

2011-08-03T11:02:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful day on July 4th to have lots of friends and family over to celebrate our country's independence! Peter and I were up till 2am the night before cleaning and moving all of the winter gear out from under the deck. We always need a big party to get us motivated to do deep cleaning. He and Grandpa even moved the chicken coup!

On the 4th, we had a casual cleaning and playing day until 2 when folks started coming over to swim! Opal spent her time painting everyone's nails. It's her favorite thing to do. Lately she's gotten into much mischief and is forbidden from all things polish and make-up.

The kids were drawn to the sand and ended up building a huge river and city, it took them all day.

They had great plans, and were very excited about the project.

Peter came in from riding the jet ski and the kids paused their sand play for a quick family photo!

All that sands makes for one dirty girl!

A view from the dock in between burgers and fireworks. I went crazy and spent most of my day sautéing onions and frying up bacon for the burgers. It took forever! Next year I'm going to do that stuff the day before- or buy precooked bacon. But the extra toppings sure made the burgers tasty!

The traditional 2011 4th of July sparkler picture! It had to be the most painful picture ever! We asked for good sparklers, not the cheap ones that resulted in the smoked out picture a couple years before, or one that last only a few seconds and then die. So the lady sold us some "real good" sparklers. They were "real painful" too! Especially when all of us have them going at the same time and were standing so close.

Bergie confused by the stick of fire. Actually he loved it, he just looks perplexed here.

And then the kid fireworks began! Roman candles - hurray! Jasper insisted that only Mr. Raykovitz could help him.

I love fireworks! The Woods brought an amazing amount with them and he let me light a ton of them! This huge one was called One Bad Mother-in-Law.

The lake show began, and then ended with technical difficulties. But it was okay. We had lit off a lot on our own dock from the Woods stash and everyone around the lake had lots to light off too. We still got a good show and an awesome feeling of US pride. Yay fire!

And then the kids lit off ladybugs.

California in June - Part 2

2011-07-26T22:04:00.000-07:00

So the main event - Buggy's graduation! We all got ready to go and see Buggy get her diploma on Wednesday! There were so many people however, we had a very difficult time finding her among the rest of the grads - they all look the same! And afterward trying to find our family was even harder.

But we found them, and got pictures.

And then more swimming time! Eben and Kivi got very brave and kept jumping off the top of the waterfall into the pool.

That night, Peter, Mamacita, Dodie and I all worked Buggy's grad night party as chaperones. The only thing we had to do though was ride on the bus and make sure all our kids got back on the bus at the end of the night, well, next morning. Once we got to the party we were able to do all the fun things the kids did! But I'm old, I got tired way faster than I remember getting at my grad party.

One of the days we went to the beach in Laguna. We buried the kids in sand. Bubba was a fish.

Kivi was a mermaid and Eben was a shark. Opal did not want to get buried or go near the waves.

Kivi and Eben ran away from them with Dodie.

But in the end, the one girl who got swept out to sea about 4 years ago returned to the waves and mastered them with a bogie board! Go Kivi!

Back at Poppie and Nonnie's we did more swimming. Jasper even swam around a bit without a life jacket. And Berg swam around without a bathing suit. I love how Jasper is pinching his booty while Eben is trying to pour water over my head. My crazy boys!

After Buggy's big grad party on Saturday, headed back up to WA with a short stop for breakfast on Sunday at my Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom's house. Both of my cousins were there with their kids too so it was a fun little reunion for a couple hours.

California in June - Part 1

2011-07-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

On June 17th we headed back down to CA for my sister, Buggy's, high school graduation. I cannot say it was a pleasant drive. The kids did as well as can be expected for a 2 day journey (with no stops this time). I did not do so well. I felt so nauseous - especially on those horrible winding roads and in traffic - and I was not pleasant I'm sure. At one point Peter stopped the car and let us all out although there was no where for Berg to crawl around, which was all he wanted to do we when got out of the car. So he crawled around a dirty gas station floor while Peter gave us (me) a little lecture about how the trip would not go any faster if we complain. But we got there. Actually we got to LA in record speed and then what should have been a 30 minute drive distance wise, took 4 hours sitting in traffic!

The kids with Poppie and Dada on Father's Day. We got to visit the church I grew up in on Sunday, although it's completely changed since I moved away and almost unrecognizable. We were still able to say, "hi" to some family friends.

The kids spent most of their time playing in on and around the pool. This time it had water in it! And Opal "helped" Nonnie by washing all her windows. Berg was so happy to have figured out how to get outside all by himself.

The next day my cousin Fifi had a birthday party for her new pony, Little One. It was such a cute and gentle thing and all the kids got a ride and cake!

Kivi feeding Little One a carrot.

More carrot treats by the pony cake.

Taking turns getting a ride on the pony.

My friend Lindy and her two kids came to the party too and the kids had such a great time all playing together we met up again for some swimming time at Poppie and Nonnie's a few days later.

Just a cute picture of my twins at the party:

Swimming in the pool with Dada! A lot of swimming went on that week. It was hot!

June Pictures

2011-07-26T15:00:00.000-07:00

It's already been too long, so I don't even remember all the goings on of June. But thanks to photos I can recall some fun things:

Of course, shows! Many, many shows are performed here daily. This one was of the three princesses and then a solo performance by Opal - a song called Butterfly.

A happy Berg inside his playpen. We tried a new rule of keeping Berg on the carpet upstairs. So whenever he crawled off the carpet we'd just put him in the playpen. But really liked the playpen and he liked to crawl even more, so the plan didn't really work. After our CA trip at the end of June, we put the playpen away and just let him crawl all over, teaching him what he can and can't touch. We're not big fans of baby-proofing over here.

We are in support of teaching the kids how to properly handle large weapons.

We hosted our small group at the Lake Louise Fishing Derby. Sadly, they didn't stock the lake with fish this year so no one in our group caught any fish. But we had a good breakfast on the beach and a fun morning paddle boating and playing the sand.

I finally got Berg's 4 month baby picture printed and framed on my Grandpa's old lenses that went with his huge stand up accordion style camera. But now I have nowhere to put them all. I've run out of wall space so they're sitting on the mantel for the time being.

Kivi's Ballet Recital

2011-07-14T23:28:00.000-07:00

Kivi had her first ballet recital on June 4th! She was so excited and ready to do this dance, especially since she got to perform on the stage of the Pantages theater in Tacoma. And the cute mermaid costume was pretty fun too! We took all the kids to see her perform the dress rehearsal the day before since tickets to the actual show were so much money. And they loved watching their sister dance. The night of the performance, Kivi and Mama went through the labyrinth behind the stage and got Kivi all ready, putting on her costume, fixing her hair, and applying tons of make-up - per Miss Jo's instruction.

She loved it! And had to look at her transformed self in the mirror striking all sorts of poses.

Her class before the performance. They were the littlest ones.

Kivi posing for me on the stage after the show.

She's so cute! And she did such a great job! Afterward, Grandpa and Grandpa gave her a rose and we took her get a strawberry shake, which she couldn't finish because it was almost 10pm and she fell asleep in the car.

Here it is, it's very short, but so cute. Kivi's the fourth tallest in the line.

Baby Berg's First Birthday

2011-07-11T11:07:00.000-07:00

Since Bergie was our Baby Oly in the womb we decided to have Oly's Owl Party in honor of his first birthday. Plus there are so many cute owl things all over right now it's hard not to get sucked into the owl cuteness. I had to make these adorable owls I saw on the internet, but when I realized I photo copied the pattern way too small, we turned them into finger puppets and decorated the tables with them.

Auntie Tonya, Madison and Emma helped me cut all of the fabric and we were able to make this "Happy Birthday Berg" banner out of owls too.

Bergie's smash cake. Which he ended up really smashing all over the ground. He threw it on the grass!

All the little owl cupcakes that my cousin Fifi helped me make. My mamacita, Mimi and Fifi all came to celebrate and visit with us.

We had a fun time celebrating our littlest man. We kept it simple and had pizza for dinner (I grossly underestimated the time lasagna has to cook). We played a count all the owls game. There were about 97! Team Eben and Ella won. Then we had cake and ice cream and Berg opened presents. Short and sweet just like our Berg.

Happy Birthday to Berg!

Grandpa made him his own owl bird bath out of mosaics!

Everyone watching Bergie eat his own cake.

He was very generous and shared with both Dada...

and Mama!

And then the owl cake flew away.

Happy Birthday Bergie Boo! You melt our hearts everyday! You are so fun to cuddle and love and figure out what you want - since you refuse to learn sign language! You are adventurous and strong spirited. We pray you will use both of those traits and all your talents to glorify God. We thank Him all the time for giving you to us! We love you!

Bergie's First Haircut

2011-06-14T10:49:00.001-07:00

We decided it was time to give the little man a little buzz. Peter let Berg touch the razor and feel it vibrating so he'd know what was happening on his head. It was a good idea but it didn't really matter. He didn't care for the trim.

We're pretty sure these were Berg's thoughts:

Ooooo, this feels cool. This will be fun!

Wait, this feels weird.

Stop!!! I don't like it! I don't like it!

Okay, I'm fine now. Hey, I look just like Dada!

My Baby is Amazing!

2011-06-08T10:44:00.000-07:00

All my babies are amazing, but I'm talking about my first baby. We've called each other "baby" for a long time and I thought I'd just stop calling him baby when we had kids, but five babies later and he's still my baby. He's so darn cute and soooo good to me. He loves us so much and he's become an amazing spiritual leader for our family.

Lately we've been able to celebrate our life, love, and different holidays in fun and special ways - like D.C and the sheep farm, and he surprised me with an iPad for no reason, so when our 11th anniversary came around on May 13th we decided it had already been celebrated. Or so I thought. I had been covetous of those "nice" cameras out there and made the mistake of telling my baby. I had a totally fine Cannon Power Shot, a cute little guy that fit in my (ok - his) pocket. But I sin. I want. Not too much, just every time I took a picture.

My sweet hubby surprised me with a scavenger hunt on the morning of our anniversary. I love scavenger hunts. But as the years go by, either I'm getting dumber, or he's getting more crafty.

It took me a while to find all the clues. There were more than this, but at the end was a new camera!! A Cannon Rebel, and I love it. Thank you, my Sweet Baby! I love you.

I promptly took my new toy to the Tacoma Art Museum, which is where we went that day, and took pics of the kids and this one of our family through a mirror. There's my camera, I'm taking the picture.

The museum provided the kids with sketch pads, which was a brilliant idea. They drew things they saw all throughout the museum which mainly consisted of Chihuly glass and Norman Rockwell paintings.

Opie took her sketching very seriously. The museum took my taking a picture in the Rockwell exhibit very seriously. I sin again.

I love you Babe. Thank you for being my Baby. You are so amazing.

Baby Wormie

2011-05-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

On May 4th I go to the doctor and found out we are pregnant with #6! On May 5th Peter and I go in for an ultrasound and find out we are almost 3 months along! (*We had miscarried on Valentine's Day and were just waiting for things to start going again.) And on May 6th at church I randomly tell the whole congregation we are expecting. The prize of a candy necklace was on the line for the mom with the most kids. I surprise myself over dumb competition all the time. I sit down and Peter says, "Well now we have to tell our families." And Eben, who is also in big church looks over with this, what's going on look. So on the way home we tell our kids and let them each have a 3D ultrasound picture to see Baby Wormie (Yeah, that's what Peter named this one - because she was wiggling so much like a worm.) And it worked out lovely because the next day was Mother's Day and we told our families.

*We don't usually tell people we are pregnant just in case we have a miscarriage, they are way more likely to happen before 12 weeks. So #1 it's rare to tell people we had one and #2 it's even more strange to tell people were pregnant even 3 days before 12 weeks. My relationship with God is an amazing gift and my faith in His plans has kept me thankful and full of joy during this time. A peek into Abby's mental and emotional life:

My prayer journal entry from February 15th 2011:

God, You are a great, great God. Even in tragedy I rejoice in You. Even through this loss I have joy because I know You and Your plans are greater. You know my heart and my desires. You want to make me happy because You love me. Death and destruction will happen in this world because it's fallen and that's OK because I know You're here with me. You carry me, You hold me and You know what's best for me. Thank You for the short little pregnancy - I always love to be pregnant and thank You for taking care of the baby better than I ever could. I praise You for any choice You make in my life and I give myself fully to You. Help me follow Your will. Lead me in Your ways. Help me lead and Peter lead our family closer to You. Be with Eben, Kivi, Jasper, Opal and Berg. Help them grow into men and women who are excited and ready to serve You and love others. Make our family ready for Your plans for us. I love You. Amen.

Washington D.C. or Bust!

2011-05-28T20:36:00.000-07:00

First of all, Easter was great, but strange. Peter worked on Easter Sunday so we went to Saturday night service - like we usually do, but for some reason, it felt weird. We put on our "oh so cute" Easter outfits right before church at 6pm and then promptly exchanged them for jammies when we got home. And Sunday was a no biggie day except for looking for the baskets, inside because of the rain. Oh well. God was glorified, it was just different. Peter and I did get to have tiny little parts in the Lake City Easter video that Pastor Jim worked into the sermon. So that was fun! You can see it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrXs5HiYmC0

The day after Easter my Aunt Sherri came up from CA to stay with the kids while Peter and I headed out to Washington D.C.! Well, that was the plan anyway. It didn't quite work that way. My aunt came on Monday and stayed with the kids and that part went perfectly! She did an amazing job with them and even tackled Super Buffet with all of them by herself! She sent us updates everyday via email which I'll put at the end.

What really happened was this, we had standby tickets from our wonderful friend Wendy!! We were so excited to use them and booked flights to our nation's capital. But while I was at our church's women's retreat (an awesome time!!) Peter missed his little window of booking our flight back, so he bought hard tickets instead. No problem. However, when we arrived at the airport, which we headed for after only 10 minutes of my Aunt Sherri arriving and after both of us verbally abusing her with instruction after instruction while giving her a whirlwind tour, we realized there were NO flights open to get on out to the east coast. Since we had hard tickets back we had to get to D.C. or pay an enormous fee to change our flights. Finally, we found one - to Orlando! A red-eye. So we jumped on it and after the most uncomfortable flight either one of us has ever had (Don't pick the emergency exit row with the seats that don't recline on a red-eye!) we made it to FL at 7am on Tues. neither of us having slept a wink. We didn't care though, we were still happy to have a fun get-a-way! We found a rental car and started driving up the East Coast! The good part about this is that in only one day we were able to cross four states off of "our list" that we made when we were on our honeymoon. So we made it to our destination, our friends the Dennis', after a short visit with Peter's college roommate, Wenzel, around midnight! Needless to say, after no sleep for 2 days, we slept in longer than we meant to on Wed. When we did get a start on the day our most hospitable friends supplied us with not only a place to stay but snacks and a car too! We drove into D.C. and started to see the sights!

The first thing we did was tour the Capital building, well, after 1/2 an hour of trying to return the rental car and then finding a parking spot. It was so beautiful! Peter had called ahead and booked a tour through our Senator's office, so we were able to go right past the multitudes standing in line for a tour guide and headsets. (Yes, we went to D.C. during Spring Break - we didn't think of that either. - Everywhere we went was packed with middle schoolers!)

Some advice for parents of middle schoolers - don't waste your money sending your kid, who won't appreciate, it a trip to D.C. - all they are going to do is talk about the boy/girl who is looking at them and try to throw gum in a senator's chair. Wait and send them when they are 20 or 30.

This is the very center of the capital building- and of D.C. Underneath is an empty tomb - oooooOOOOOhhhhhh (a scary sound).

The backside of the capital building - it was way less crowded than the front!

After the capital, we strolled down the mall popping into a couple of the Smithsonians, the National Gallery of Art, which I loved, and the National Museum of Natural History, which I did not. Well, we only got to see the dinosaurs-yuck!- and the rocks and gems - which were cool, but at that time we were both so tired everything was blurring together. That's also when I had my meltdown. I was so excited to be there and so sad because there was no way on earth we we going to get to see even a snippet of the amazing things D.C. had to offer.

After the Washington Monument, Peter dragged me to a late, late lunch, early dinner against my will, because I wanted to be out there seeing "stuff" even though I had no energy. We ate and sat for a while - which was good. I needed rest, it was a long walk and French onion soup always makes me happy. And decided to not be sad, and be happy for what we did get to see. Which ended up being a lot for 2 days. We saw most all of the monuments and memorials, the White House:

and ended our stroll down the mall at the Lincoln Memorial, which was swarmed with middle schoolers, at 10:30pm. It was a memorable day. Then it started down pouring and we caught a cab back to our car.

The next day, we headed to Mount Vernon. I thought this would be about a 20 minute little visit and then we'd be back to see some more Smithsonian museums. I loved it! We ended up staying for 6 hours. Peter knew I'd love it. There was so much to see, and I could see it - all. And I did. I felt like I accomplished something great. I love George Washington now.

And I love D.C. I want to go back someday with the kids, when they are older, and stay there for about 2 months - so I can see everything! (But not the dinosaurs.)

Thank you so much Wendy - without you I still would never have seen our capital!

Thank you Aunt Sherri - you came, you played and you survived all our children!

And thank you Dennis family - your hospitality was amazing and we were so blessed by being able to stay with you. Next time we'll have to spend more time together!

Here are the emails from Aunt Sherri, they're funny!

Day One (Monday):

Hi,

Just thought I would let you all know that day one is finished and it went really well. So well that Jasper didn't have to take an afternoon nap! Everyone pitched in and finished jobs and helped me out by knowing where things were that I couldn't find.

Opel is so fun and funny. I've already learned that she LOVES pink and will most likely wear only two or three outfits at the most while I'm here, these are her favorite and they are of course pink. I put her blankie in the wash tonight after she fell asleep because that is the only time her blankie can be pried from her fingers! ( I remember this well from Chad's early days). I let the kids watch a netflix cartoon and one of the characters said the word "dumb" and Opel sat up straight in my lap, looked at me and said "that was a big sin"!!!!

Kivi is soo smart, helpful and a delight. A real helper and a little mama. She had ballet today and showed everyone what she practiced. She loves craft time and tomorrow we have some fun things planned in that area.

Eben is growing up so fast. He loves the computer and has some favorite games that he loves playing so he gets his jobs done so he can spend a little time playing them.

Jasper is such a tender hearted little guy and he has stolen my heart as well. We were talking about cooking today and I asked Kivi if she liked certain foods, helped in the kitchen cooking things and if she knew how to make something. Kivi said "no I don't know how to make tht and Jasper got all excited and said "Kivi I know go to dot com!"

I'm turning in and will tell stories tomorrow if there are any and I'm thinking there will be!!!

Goodnight, :)

Sher

Day Two (Tuesday):

Hi again,

We had a great day today. We had sun on an off for almost an hour at a time so we had fun play time outside. Since it rained on Easter Sunday Peter's parent's weren't able to hide Easter eggs for the kids so we did that today. We played that game for almost an hour and then Jasper found an egg that didn't have a prize in it (this was pretty traumatic until I told him that he had found the most special egg of all the other eggs) at first he wasn't buying it until I told him that his special egg came with a very super special surprise but first he had to do 5 jumping jacks, he did the jumping jacks and I told him he was the proud owner of 5 m&m's and he fist pumped all over the backyard. Catastrophe averted! :)

My Opel story for the day is priceless. At breakfast everyone ate their cereal and Eben was the first one finished, he took his bowl to the sink and spied a few donuts that were left from the other morning and asked if he could have one. I told him I would cut the donuts so that everyone could have one. He chose the one he wanted and Opel was next, she wanted the white one with sprinkles and made sure we all knew that she wanted the white one with the sprinkles until Kivi wanted the twist. Opel decided she wanted the twist but Kivi wanted that one. Opel was not happy and fussed a bit longer than she should have and I told her that maybe today wasn't a good day for Opel to have a donut at all, she looked at me for a minute put her hands under her chin and said "Oh Aunt Therry I'm just having one of those days for me." It turned out to be one of those moments and not one of those days for Opel and she got to strike the gong at the end of the day today! Way to go Opel.

Brian and Carly came for dinner tonight and just left. It was so good to see them and visit, they held Berg and think he is precious (which he is). Carly put Berg to bed and did it like a pro. Berg you have stolen another heart. Before going to bed Eben, Jasper and Kivi showed Brian and Carly their Kung Foo Fighting dance and after it was over the kids got a standing ovation. Brian taped it on his phone and was cracking up. Carly said this makes me want to have five!!!!!!!! Go Carly!!!! Dad and I say yes!!!! :)

Kitchen clean, laundry done, Kidos asleep, no owies and all is right with the world. :)

Good night, I miss you babe but having fun,

Love,

Sher

Day Three (Wednesday):

Hi everyone,

Actually today was pretty uneventful. We had arts and crafts today and the weather cooperated long enough for all four kids to put boots and coats on and go outside to look for a special branch to make mama a special something in case she didn't get to see any cherry blossoms. Kivi and I made cherry knox blocks and Eben put on a Garfield cartoon for the little ones (and himself). We made a reading tent while Berg and Opal were sleeping.

The only funny thing today was on me. I went out to see if the chickens had laid any eggs, Puff had and I wanted to get it but Puff was in her nest right by the egg. I was scared to reach in and get it from her, every time I moved my hand to get the egg it sounded like Puff was growling which she wasn't (Eben and Kivi assured me that chickens don't growl!) Eben and Kivi got the giggles watching me be so timid. I decided to close the door and come back later to get the egg hoping Puff would be gone, I did, she was and tomorrow the egg is mine for breakfast, thanks Puff!!!

Tonight was Awana so I had cuddle time with Berg and Opal after their baths. Kivi, Eben and Jasper came home loaded down with things they had bought with Awana money, lots of treasures waiting to be played with tomorrow.

Good Night :)

Sherri

Day Four (Thursday):

Hi Everyone,

I can't believe the week has gone by so fast. It seems like only yesterday I was walking into the Johnson house looking at the "WELCOME ANT SHERRI" sign and hoping that I could keep all five kids alive until Peter and Amber came home. We have had such a fun week, thank you Peter and Amber for trusting me with your precious little ones. I know that with two sets of awesome grandparents this was a once in a life time memory for me and it will be something I will never forget.

Call me crazy, call me ambitious but I call it FUN, today I took all five kids to SUPER BUFFET for lunch. I need to thank Nonnie for this. It started yesterday at lunch when Jasper asked me if I knew how to make Nonnie Balls. I told him that I didn't know how to make them and Jasper thought he would help me by telling me they have seeds on the outside, I still didn't know what they were but assured him that when I got home I would have Nonnie tell me how to make them. Kivi then told me that Nonnie Balls were little sweet balls that Nonnie loves at Super Buffet and she gets them every time she comes for a visit. Eben said "We love Super Buffet, have you ever been to one"? "You get to eat all the food you want and I eat as much as an adult but only get charged the kid price!" I don't know why but I heard myself asking Eben if there was a Super Buffet close by, of course he said yes it was not far at all AND he offered to look it up online for me! How could I refuse? Sure enough there it was just down the freeway a bit so I showed Eben how to do a google map direction search and he printed off directions for me. I told the kids if they would continue to be my helpers we would go to Super Buffet for dinner the next night (tonight). We finished the day yesterday awesome, toys picked up, clothes put away, pillows back on the couch…you can get ALOT of milage out of a promise to Super Buffet!!!! I"m willing to bet Peter that if you had a back forty to mow they would have done that for you too!

We got up this morning played a little before breakfast and after breakfast the questions started coming when are we going to Super Buffet, when is dinner, what time is dinner, how long before dinner. I quickly realized that holding onto the promise of SB will only last so long with the Johnson kids because it is just too wonderful so I made an executive decision and we went for lunch instead. I wish you could have seen the five faces, it was priceless..Super Buffet for LUNCH and not dinner, I don't think they knew there was such a thing. Dinner is one thing but lunch too! (I know this is long but well worth the story) Before we left I had everyone sit on the couch and I told them usually there are two adults that go with them to SB but today it's only one and I need their help when we got there, they all agreed and Eben said "Um well actually Aunt Sherry there is usually five adults that go." I know I had a look of shock on my face but quickly said "Then I really need your cooperation, right?' Everyone in unison said "right!" So off we started

Kivi and Eben helped get Jasper and Opal all buckled in their car seats and I took care of Berg, after three attempts at leaving (back into the house for my wallet, another trip for a spare diaper for Berg and one last time for the directions) we were on our way. Opel does this cute thing where she closes her eyes really tight and puckers her lips she kept saying I LOVE SUPA BUFFET AUNT THERRY, IT'S MY FAVOWIT! (all caps to emphasize loud voice and excitement). We arrived and piled out of the car, Eben leading the way, Kivi next, then Jasper and Opal bringing up the rear with me following behind with Berg, we walked in, got our table and before we could sit down I realized that I had left my wallet in the car!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So back we went again with Eben leading the way, Kivi following, then Jasper and Opal and me with Berg back to the car so Aunt Sherri could get her wallet, by this time I'm thinking maybe this was not a good idea and NOT because of the kids!!!!! Back we go this time with a new leader Kivi, Jasper, Eben and Opal and back to our table to start lunch. It was great, the girls and I stayed with Berg while Eben took Jasper around to fill their plates, then Kivi took Opal, brought her back and went back again to fill her plate. We were at a table right across the food lines so I could keep and eye on everyone. Eben went a got Berg these little steamed balls he likes and half way through Berg thoroughly enjoying his steam ball the waitress leaned over and said to me "You do know that there is paper wrapped on the bottom of that, right?" Well no I didn't and Berg had eaten most of it by now but the other three he ate were paperless. The kids ate and we talked and they had so much fun and I watching them. Berg was a total mess, I'm glad you are not coming home until tomorrow Amber because it's going to take that long to get his shirt clean! Right before we left I had Eben go get everyone a Nonnie Ball and I took a picture for you Nonnie with everyone holding theirs up looking as if they are going to eat one in honor of you. Now for the best part if you're still with me. As we were getting ready to leave three older couples stopped by the table and asked if the kids were mine, I told them no and the story, everyone was so complimentary with how well behaved and adorable the kids were. By now Berg was in charge and ready to go but on the way out a young mom came up to me and stopped me and said " Are these all yours, I said no, told her the story and she said that she was new in town, only three or four months and that she and her husband have five children the youngest 5 months old and is looking for some families with more than two children who "understand what it is like" she asked if we were LDS, I told her no, that the Johnson's attend an Evangelical church in Lakewood. She is looking for friends and wanted to know more. I told her that Amber is involved in MOPS and that their church is a warm and welcoming place with large families, and family friendly. She said that she was very interested and would check it out. What I hate is that I didn't ask for her name, Berg was crying and we needed to go, but I told her that after spending the week with the five kids I so wished that Gary and I had had more children and she looked at me and started crying!! She said that she was so grateful and thankful to hear that because she rarely hears that from people. Her kids were also behaving and she just seemed lonely. Anyway I'm going to be praying that she does come to visit church and gets plugged in.

That was our crazy fun filled day. We came home made another tent, watched a little Garfield, ate a very light dinner and in bed early…it was a good day.

Good Night,

Sher

PS I'm going to the Royal Wedding online in a few hours

Sheep Farm!

2011-05-18T12:27:00.001-07:00

My wonderful hubby was going to surprise me with this amazing trip to the sheep farm (his plan for pacifying my want for sheep), but as it was in the middle of Holy Week, actually on the day I was going to have Passover, I freaked out when I saw he had "Solstice Training" on Thursday and Friday. He pulled up the website of the sheep farm called Solstice Farms and I put it together that I had just ruined my surprise. It turned out to be a good thing. If he had tried to tell me on our Passover day that we were not going to have Passover I might have passed out. So we switched it to Tuesday and left for the farm on Thursday. We left Opal and Berg with the (Thank you Schocks!) and headed over the bridge with Eben, Kivi and Jasper.

Solstice Farms is actually a B&B, so we brought our things into the house, checked out our room and got the run down of the rules (the people who had there just before us has kids who were so rowdy they had to leave). Then we walked around the farm and said hello to the sheep and chickens and neighboring buffalo. The kids won over the B&B keepers and even let them collect the eggs that they sell in town.

Next we headed to Port Townsend, and covered every inch of the old Fort Warden bunkers. The kids both loved and were scared to death of the pitch black mazes. Good thing Dada had his iPhone to lead the way!

After dinner at the cute and hippy Owl Spirit restaurant, we got the kids ice cream/gelato. And of course Dada bought Mama candy! Sea foam!

Back at the farm that night, we went to say goodnight to the sheep and lambs who had come into the barn for the night. Peter's plan was to come and watch a sheep give birth. But all of the sheep had already had their lambs which meant we didn't get to help out with a sheep delivery, but we got to see a lot babies! Jasper was the great sheep farmer. Even the farmers were amazed that so many lambs let him pet them.

The next morning, we got up early so we could feed the lambs their bottles.

They drank up that milk so fast!

After a yummy breakfast of Dutch babies and some reading time for the kids we went out into the field to hang out with the sheep.

After a little hike to the creek we went back to Port Townsend for some cheese from the local creamery and crepes for lunch before heading home.

Thank you Babe for our fun sheep farm experience! I loved it! (But I don't know if your plan worked, I think it just made me want sheep even more!)

Baskets and Hunts

2011-05-18T11:18:00.001-07:00

Basket of kids
Our traditional kids in the basket picture for 2011. This is the first year they officially didn't all fit inside.

After the basket pic the kids all jumped on the trampoline, and even sat still for a while to let Berg try it out for the first time. Any time we get any sun, the trampoline is the desired outdoor activity. Their favorite game they play on it is called "the game". I don't really get how it works, but they do and they love it.

Night Hunt
From all the Easter egg hunts we've been to in the previous years, we had quite a collection of eggs. So the kids and I spent a night stuffing all our eggs with candy. We were able to use them after an Awana night at the Schocks with our small group kids. We had the kids find one egg and then run it to their family basket, which the mamas stood in front of, before getting another one. It worked so well. We kept yelling, "Get the egg to your Mama!" Everyone found many eggs and we were able to share our collection of candy as a family since all the kids worked together.

Passover

2011-05-09T23:42:00.001-07:00

Abby did her fourth annual Passover meal this year for our family, along with my parents, Abby's sister Shannon and our friends the Schocks. This is all part of her determination to increase our family's emphasis on Easter as a celebration of Christ and how he is the sacrificial lamb for our household. Also, she goes all out and cooks a great multi course meal involving huge quanities of meat- this year was a lamb roast, which she knocked out of the park. Go Abby!

After three years, Abby succumbed and the adults got to skip the pillows on the floor and eat western style. I know it's not authentic, but I haven't sat comfortably on the floor indian style since 1983.

The seder plate. Mmmmmm....bitter herbs!

Happy adults sitting at the grown up table beautifully prepared by my lovely wife.

The pre meal excitement. Check out Eben. Nothing gets him pumped like a good rendition of the Haggadah and a generous portion of horseradish!

The "Catch Up" post for April

2011-05-09T23:14:00.001-07:00

Hi all. It's Peter. Since yesterday was Mother's Day, I'm going to help out Abby by bringing my uncritical, C+ approach to creating a few blogs that will catch her up through May. Abby is wonderfully selective concerning what she wants to blog about and which photos she is willing to edit and post. Terrific for posterity, not so much for expediency.

So sit back, relax and enjoy a haphazardly selected smattering of unedited Johnson family pics from April!

We got lucky and caught one of the 4 non raining days in the month to watch the Daffodil parade with friends in downtown Tacoma.

The Seafare pirates where on scene and loved Jasper's eyepatch! I think they thought he was a big fan, but he probably would have been wearing the patch if we had been going to Costco or church. That's just how he rolls.

We tried out the annual Easter Egg hunt at Wilcox Farms. Positives- free omelets! Not so positives- about 1000 kids and their parents had the same idea.

We did get to tour the egg packaging plant. Very cool and humbling compared to our current egg production of two a day. Positive #2- free hair nets!

I played in my second "Helmets vs Shields" charity basketball game and made it through this year's game without stitches. While the police did not win this year, we did come in a solid second place...
Note that I'm about the shortest guy in the picture. Weird, right? Thanks to our family and friends for coming out to watch and supporting a great cause.!

Pretty, pretty

2011-05-08T21:58:00.001-07:00

Before I went on our church's women's retreat on the first of April, I told the kids about how Poppie let me and my sister put make up on him whenever Nonnie went on a women's retreat. The kids loved this idea and begged Dada to let them pass on this tradition. Time flew however and they didn't get to give Dada a make over while I was gone. Luckily though, Dada held up his end of the bargain and let the kids decorate him when I got home.

Pretty, pretty Dada!

The kids love to give us shows! Dance shows, gymnastics shows, ballet, Kung foo, light, fighting, swinging on ropes, clown shows, all types of shows. This show was a dance show that included matching outfits-with tights! So pretty!

Pretty, pretty Opie with her new bangs. She loves them and she loves not having her hair always fall in her face too.

Random Cutie Pictures

2011-04-25T18:53:00.001-07:00

The rest of March summed up in pictures:

Opal holding Jasper (the chick).

The boys feeding Berg.

Eben's latest fashion accessory, Star Wars silly bands from Hannah.

The girls at a special princess night with Dada at the Olympia Children's Museum.

Berg and Opie holding Tiny II. Berg is such an animal lover. He's so soft and gets so excited to see the chicks. We still have Puff and Moony II from the original batch of chickens and they both regularly lay one egg a day. Six more should help with not needing to buy so many more eggs from the store. It's going to be crazy to see how many eggs our family eats when we have a house full of teenagers!

Theme Days!

2011-04-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

I love homeschooling. I love being with our kids all day. I love watching them learn new things. I love seeing them help and teach each other. I didn't love that we had gotten stuck in a boring pattern. We kept doing the same routine everyday. Which is ok if your not me. I need fun and excitement and that's the reason we decided to homeschool in the first place (well, there were lots of reasons). Letting the kids choose what they wanted to learn about and have fun doing it were big ones. So we are changing it up a little and spending some days just learning about one thing. The first theme day we had was Eagle Day on March 15th. It was great! We read books about eagles in our actual sized eagle nest made out of blankets, (which is 8-6 feet across by the way!) watched eagle videos, and acted out hatching and flying and catching prey. We even made eagle cookies and had an eagle sighting in our backyard. Since then we've done theme days on St. Patrick, and polar bears, and last week we studied all about weather. This week we are learning all about Shakespeare and reading the kid versions of his plays by Lois Burdett. Hurray for fun! Also, Peter bought me an ipad, so the kids are really motivated to finish their work because the first one done gets to play on it until lunch.

St. Patrick's Day was fun for two reasons. Learning about St. Patrick (which we'd actually been doing since the beginning of the month, but mostly for my own curiosity) and Irish traditions. We had Dubblin Coddle for dinner - it was delicious! And Dada decided it was the day to get our new baby chicks!

This time we went to Dell's to get sexed chicks. And each kid picked out their own chick and named it. Eben got a Buff Orphington he named Tiny II, Kivi got a Rhode Island Red she named Dotty. Dada and Berg share Friar Tuck also a RIR. Jasper chose a Black Sexlink he named Jasper, but now calls J.J. Opal has a Golden Sexlink called Pokey. Mama has a Barred Rock named Rocky. We'll see how many of these live or are actually hens. So far they are much healthier than our last batch.

A guy offered to take our picture outside of Dell's and I'm so glad he did. I love this one!

The chickies live in the fireplace for now, like the last batch did, and we get to see them and hold them all the time. Now we just have to wait - hopefully not 8-9 months this time for eggs!

Back to Washington!

2011-04-08T22:46:00.001-07:00

Our long voyage back to WA took three days! We knew we didn't want to push it and had plans to see some sights on the way. We were sent off with basket of presents day from Nonnie, Mimi and Aunt Sherri so the kids had even more toys to surround them on the drive. (Before our decent down to CA my mentor mom, Mrs. Madson, gave all the kids their own goodie bags full of car travel fun!

The first leg of the trip we made it to the Sacramento area. We crashed at a hotel which had all you can eat breakfast, all you can watch cartoons and an all you swim in pool - until the people who are trying to sleep in the rooms above the pool come in and tell you to be quiet. Do yo know how hard it is to be quiet in an indoor pool? We deemed it impossible. To be nice, even though the pool was open, we went back to watch cartoons. Needless to say we got a late start to our second leg.

That afternoon, we headed over to our friend's, the Reeds, to see their cool place. They fed us lunch, showed us their cows, chickens, lake and let us play on their trampoline and zip line! And then we were off again! We only made it to Oregon where we found another hotel with a pool.

We had to stop in Oregon so we could visit the House of Mystery the next day!

Peter and I had gone here before we got married and had fond memories of the Oregon Vortex. You can feel yourself shrinking and growing as you walk from one side to the other! It's cool! (Opal was done with the coolness at this point, but she was there.)

Peter still doesn't believe it, but look at their height difference! Even Jasper appears out of nowhere!

These ones are taken by Eben, but I think it shows even clearer how I shrunk, or Peter grew - which is it? We'll never know! Also watch for the appearing Jasper - a common Vortex phenomenon!

Our February CA Trip

2011-03-29T16:18:00.000-07:00

At 2 a.m. on Feb. 24 (The day after Berg had six shots at the Dr. - not smart) we crammed into the mini van and headed down to California. We stopped in Sacramento at one of our "lodge boy" friends' house and had dinner and slept overnight. Well, we tried to sleep. Kivi had her lovely night terrors every night during our whole CA stay. Our first night was elevated because right after Peter calmed her down - Opal woke up, walked over to Kivi's makeshift bed and did a butt drop on her head insisting Kivi was sleeping in her bed. Needless to say, much more screaming ensued. Sorry Paulsons! Thanks for hosting us and our screamers.

We went to CA for two reasons: My cousin, Tracy's, wedding and my Mimi's 80th birthday party. So we were able to see both sides of my family. And they were able to meet all the kids.

On the morning of the birthday party, all of my mom's side of the family showed up in white shirts and blue jeans so we could take a family picture. Mimi was so surprised to see all of her grandkids and great grandkids. She kept saying, "Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness."

It was a fun day to celebrate Mimi and watch her be the star of the show! We all love our Mimi so much!

The kids had tons of fun playing on Poppy's waterless pool and with Nonnie's huge Fisher Price doll house which she has every piece for.

On Tues. we had planned to go to Legoland. Poppy and Nonnie had take Eben and Kivi in Oct. and they loved it. So we knew our Lego lover would love it even more. We had even bought tickets before our trip. So come 12 a.m. Monday night, I decide we better make sure we had the correct times and even make sure it was open. Surprise! Legoland is closed on Tues. and Wed. and we were leaving CA on Wed.! So after a bit of shock and sadness, Peter decides we'll just go to Knott's Berry Farm instead. It turned out to be a great choice! The kids were still super excited, it wasn't crowded at all and they had added tons of roller coasters since we had been there years ago.

We did almost every ride in Camp Snoopy. This is on the train:

Opal and Jasper's favorite ride was the Red Barron airplane ride. We did it about four times. Eben and Kivi's favorite was the Sidewinder, which Opal and Jasper couldn't go on, but it was right across from the Red Barron - so it was perfect!

We ate lunch in a covered wagon while we watched the Wild West Stunt Show, which the kids thought was hilarious. We got our picture with the stuntmen after the show.

I just liked this picture of Mimi, Jasper and Kivi getting in line for the Log Ride.

We spent a lot of time in some insect/amphibian shack with Spelunker Sue and all her animals. She let us hold all of them. Actually, she kind of made us hold all of them. She would just set walking sticks, giant cockroaches and toads right on us.

One of the rides we'd never been on before, The Pony Express, was a super fun one. You hold onto the horse your sitting on and it goes speeding around the track. Actually, it was one of the only "big" roller coasters I could do. I got so nauseous on those loopy ones I thought I would puke all over. Peter and Poppy loved going on them all, but I was a wimp. And I used to love roller coasters! What happens when you get old?

By the time we got to the spinny, up and down, semi-fast rides. I'd gone on one too many "big" roller coasters - thinking I'd try again. And I couldn't even do the Tea Cups, oops I mean Mexican Hats.

We ended the day back in Camp Snoopy, the little kids were ready to do more rides their size. They even had a mini roller coaster that Opal could go on.

This was the little kids version of the Extreme Scream (which all the adults did, including Mimi!).

We had a fun time at old Knott's. It seemed like a super fast couple of days in CA. And then it was time to start the trek back to WA!

Opal's Baby Jesus Birthday!

2011-03-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

Opal has a baby doll that she calls Baby Jesus. It's her favorite. He goes with her everywhere. We thought this would be a December fad, seeing as how we do talk a lot about Baby Jesus then. February came along and she was still just as in love (if not more) so much so that she had to have Baby Jesus be the theme of her birthday party. She loved it! On February 11th, our family dressed up in costumes that the church let us borrow from the Christmas pageant. We built a makeshift stable out of the play toy and ordered Cuisine of India - hey it's kind of in that region of the world, right? I just knew I didn't want to spend all day making Jewish food and Indian is super delicious, all the kids loved it!

When our guests arrived at the Johnson Inn in Bethlehem we made lanterns out of water bottles and beads and stuck a glow stick inside. Then we headed out into the darkness to find the Savior of the world lying in a manger:

Opal (Mary), Jasper (Joseph), Baby Jesus and Dada (the worship leader) were waiting for us to find them in the stable.

The cute girl had her hands clasped during our whole visit, looking so full of pride and held back excitement.

We all gathered around Baby Jesus and sang "Away in a Manger", Opal's favorite song, while Dada played the guitar. Then Eben and Dada sang a worship song that Eben wrote.

Then we headed back to the Inn and ate the yummy chicken masala, lamb and other wonderful dishes you pour over jasmine rice. Opal opened her gifts and we ate cake and ice cream. Opal had specific cake requirements. It needed to have Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus and be pink. She of course ate Baby Jesus, but not till the next day. It was so funny, and kind of wrong. She'd kiss the fondant creation then take a bite, kiss it, take a bite, until it was gone.

She can be the cutest thing ever! I want to kiss her and eat her up all at the same time too.

Opal we love you so much! We love your passion for Jesus and pray that it never ceases. We know you're going to tell the world about Him someday. Carry Jesus with you every day and let everyone see Him through you - just like you do now. Happy Birthday big three year old!

January- Poppie and Nonnie and the Dining Room!

2011-03-21T21:19:00.000-07:00

Our first month of 2011 started off like this:

1-1 Bought the cabinets for our new dinning/homeschool room. (Yes, we officially went from a family of 7 living in a 3 bedroom house to a two bedroom house. Smart, right?)

1-2 Installed the cabinets.

1-7 Peter and Mr. John put on the granite counter top.

1-8 Nonnie and Poppie come to stay with us while they work on their vacant rentals. They were super busy, so we mainly only saw them in the morning and after dinner times. The day they came we were able to have a fun Korean BBQ dinner. If you haven't been, Korean BBQ is all about tons of food you cook at your table, but since we looked so helpless and so, well, white, the wonderful staff did all the cooking for us!

The kids got to have the now traditional "Basket of Presents Day". It's like mini Christmas that happens whenever Nonnie comes to town.

1-9 The kids and I, after sorting socks and realizing the abundance of lost socks, decided to turn the singles into sock babies! It was such a fun craft - the kids loved picking out the color, hat, buttons, hair color, and stuffing the sock. I did end up doing most of the sewing, but it wasn't much. They turned out so cute.

After seeing them all, and how they all look like their makers (except for the Jasper's blue haired baby) I decided to make a little Bergie one too. The complete the little sock baby set:

1-11 Roasted chestnuts and hot cocoa movie night! Those chestnuts were so sweet and yummy! We'd never eaten them before and all wanted to try them. (All those Christmas stories and songs have chestnuts roasting on an open fire.) They really are something to sing about! Poor Nonnie was plum tuckered out from working so hard on the rental. I think she got 5 minutes into the movie before falling asleep. (That's our bed, in the living room.)

1-15 Our cute niece, Marlee, decided to take Eben and Jasper to the Monster Truck Show at the Tacoma Dome. Dada treated all his girls (and Berg) to a super girly tea. They felt so special having their own desserts, pouring their own tea into the tiny little cups and stirring in lots of sugar, just like Mama!

The boys pretended to be monster trucks for the next 3 days straight! They loved it. Jasper's favorite was Grave Digger and Eben talked about Megasaurus forever.

1-17 We let the kids color all over the wall dividing the new dining room and family room while little Berg watches from the sidelines.

Then we started the wall removal process. Here's our demo team in action:

Each of them got multiple turns hammering at the wall, then watched Dada cut the wooden planks from the other side as they covered their ears. As soon as Dada got two boards out, all the kids had to climb through the little hole to the other side.

1-21 Peter installs the new hardwoods!

1-22 Nonnie goes back to California to poor lonely Buggy. Poppie stays 2 weeks longer to finish the second rental.

1-30 Berg masters "the trick"! (Yes, he's wearing tights, much to Dada's objections). He usually has pants over them. It gets cold here, so they are like baby long johns, and he can't pull them off like he does with socks.

Grandma and Grandpa's Gift!

2011-03-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

Grandma and Grandpa's present to the Johnson clan was a trip to Leavenworth this year! We all drove in the bus together over the Snoqualmie pass right after Christmas day. We stayed in these cute little cottages called the Apple Blossom Inn, Pear Haven and The Farmhouse. They were newly remodeled and so cute! We found them on our trip to Leavenworth in the summer. They are actually owned by the cute country store, Smallwood's Harvest, that you can see from the main highway.

We had so much fun, mainly dancing to Wii's Just Dance (thank you Schocks!). It was a big hit. No one could beat Dada's high score - he's just too good.

We went sledding on a massively steep hill going down into the orchards, right on the property. On Kivi's her first ride down, her boots filled up with snow and she froze. She was a good sport and tried again with Marlee, but they hit a big bump, rolled and Marlee landed on top of her. It was quite a sight, but Kivi didn't think it was very funny, so she was done. Eben had some good runs and one all by himself. He was mainly interested in throwing snowballs at whoever was trying to climb the wall of snow back up to the top of the hill.

We went into Leavenworth to go sledding and walk around, but soon realized that our own awesome sledding hill was sooo much better than the ones in town. We didn't even take our sleds out of the bus. We headed staight for a candy store! The kids got lollipops, and after a very short stroll down the main drag we had seen enough and went back to our little bungalos.

Peter and I, Marlee and the kids (minus Berg who stayed at the Apple Inn) went for a beautiful snow walk along the Wenachee River. The kids actually ended up pulling me longer than I pulled them.

On our walk, we met up with our friends the Metcalfe's who were also vacationing. Kivi and Brayden held hands from their two sleds, so cute. We also went to the Lebows' house, our friends who were in our small group for years and recently moved out to Wenachee

Chris joined us for little while between work, so we were able to get a family shot with everyone.

This was our view from the Apple Blossom Inn:
It was so beautiful with everything covered in snow and orchards as far as you could see. Here's something I got addicted to on this mini vacation - puzzles! We did a 1000 piece one and had so much fun, we stopped by a local thrift store and bought another, so we could do one the next day. We all finished it right before we left.

Here's some of our wii dance-a-thon. I love to watch Bubba in it - he's a riot! And he's not even playing.

After returning from Leavenworth is actually when we took the kid's picture by the tree (not of Christmas day.) There was too much going on; new stuff and a really messy house. When we got back from our mini vacation, we donned our jammies again, took pictures, and ate the very old and very hard gingerbread houses!!. We took pictures again with Dada for our family pic, which didn't make the Christmas blog.

So here it is,

Johnson Family Christmas Picture 2010:

Taken on Dec. 31 finally posted on, what is this, March already? 2011? Sheesh. Took me long enough.