Natalie Jane Johnson

Natalie Jane Johnson, born Thanksgiving day at 9:46 PM.
Little Natalie was polite enough to wait for Grandma and Grandpa Jay and Careen's arrival and for the end of our Thanksgiving feast. Let's just hope that she continues to have such good timing the rest of her life. Natalie has been a tremendous blessing in the Johnson household and we are grateful to have her.

Soup

This morning at breakfast, Julia informed me that she was planning on making a soup after school. Not wanting to discourage her from pursuing things of the kitchen, I asked her what type of soup she wanted to make. She started to think and after a minute or two, decided to write a recipe. When the recipe was complete, she put it on the recipe holder and then got ready for school. When I picked her up from school, one of the first things she asked about was when she could make her soup. I told her that she could get started right away.
After faithfully following her recipe, she decided to give the soup a taste. To my surprise, she said that it was good. She then got Audrey to give it try. I was again shocked to hear Audrey tell Julia that it was good.
I now offer the recipe (complete with Julia's spellings) for your consideration.

SOUP

Flower (Flour)
Ster (Stir)
Salt
Ster (Stir)
Cheas (Cheese)
Mickrwave (Microwave)
Done

It should be noted that as the two of them sat down to eat their soup, they decided that it needed a little bit of sugar. As best I could tell, the optimal sugar to liquid ratio that they decided on was about 2 to 1.

No News Yet

Girl #3 does not seem to be in a hurry. We're all getting a bit impatient to meet her but she seems quite content right where she's at. Maybe she knows what she's in for when she arrives.

Home Again

After being gone for over a month, I made it home just in time to celebrate Julia's 6th birthday, attend Julia's violin recital and to hear Audrey's thoughts on her future sister "Stacy." We're not sure where the name Stacy came from but Audrey seems to be stuck on it lately. We're glad that girl # 3 didn't arrive while I was away but now that I'm home, we wouldn't mind it too much if she made her appearance a bit early.

Family Prayer

The time for the Marine Band's 2009 West Coast Tour has come. I departed yesterday and won't be back until Nov 3. The tours used to be seven weeks long and and I'm grateful that they're only four weeks long now. However, four weeks sure seems like a long time to be away from Karen and the girls. Yesterday, before my departure, the Johnson family along with Grandma and Grandpa Jay and Careen (who flew out to help Karen) knelt down to have a family prayer. Karen started to say a beautiful and heartfelt prayer which was emotional and touching. My tender emotions got interrupted slightly by some odd noises coming from the bathroom. I opened one of my eyes and noticed that Audrey had excused herself. The odd noises got louder. They were grunting and labored breathing type of noises followed by a few "doink...doinks." Thanks for keeping the mood light, little Audrey!

Pregnancy Olympics

This video speaks for itself. Only another month and a half to go!

Party

"First Kindergarten girl in the Johnson's"

• 

Julia decided to throw herself a party a few days ago to celebrate completing her first week of school. Audrey and Dad were invited. (Mom was working and Maisy had diarrhea)

"Welcome to Julia's Party"




"My Class"





"One of Julia's Parties of Kindergarten"

First Day of School

The long awaited first day school has finally arrived. Julia has been looking forward to this day for months and I'm not exactly sure why. She's been most excited about the bus ride and when the bus pulled around this morning, she did a little happy dance. She got on without a hitch and the bus pulled away and that was that. Audrey was a little bit confused because she thought that she was going with Julia. It was also Audrey's first day of preschool today so she insisted on taking her rather large backpack with her to walk Julia to the bus stop. I think that she was ready to hop on the bus to go to school but, alas, not for two years. When we were dropping Audrey off at her preschool, we went in for a few minutes to make sure everything was OK. After telling one of the teachers that she was wearing her favorite shirt and further explaining that our dog Maisy has the poops, she walked in and started playing with the toys. After a minute or two, she looked up at us and asked us what we were still doing there. The difference in our two girls is fairly striking.

Both girls did great today and we love both of them. It's a big change for all of us but that's what life's all about.

Here's an Audrey story: on the weekend, Mommy needed some alone time and I turned on the tv to find something for a minute to let my brain zone out. I found the ballroom championships (which I love!) and a latin dance couple was on. Audrey walks in, assesses the situation, and asks, "Mommy why is that lady naked?" yup......

First Blog Attempt

So, after many months of putting off blogging, I've decided to give it a whirl. I have to admit that the biggest reason for starting a blog is that I'm pretty much a journal failure. I have a grand total of three journal entries that cover a total of 35 years of life and the thing that is really lame is that I never finished any of those entries. I started writing down some important event in my life (mostly out of guilt) and I didn't finish the entry. "...So then I reach down to pick up my new daughter for the first time and with much emotion I..".Oh, hey...the football game is on. Unfortunately, Karen's journal efforts haven't been much better so we thought that we'd give this a try.
I'm not sure what's going to end up on our blog but I thought that I'd start with a couple of Julia quotes since they're fresh. Last week in our Family Home Evening, I was doing my best to teach the girls about the importance of letting the Savior into our lives. I pulled out a print of the famous painting of the Savior knocking on a door that has no doorknob on the outside. I asked the girls what Jesus was doing. Julia: "Knocking." Me: "Do you notice anything unusual about the door?" Julia: "There's no doorknob." Me: "So, how's Jesus going to get into the house?" Julia: "He's going to have to break it down."
After my rather unsuccessful lesson, Julia had the responsibility to lead the song. She informed us that she had composed a new song about modesty for the occasion. She started singing and conducting her new song all about how everybody should wear modest clothing and how Heavenly Father doesn't like it when people wear skimpy clothing, etc. The song lasted a good couple of minutes and was pretty thorough. The curious thing is that she sang the entire song while wearing nothing but panties.