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!
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)
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.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
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......
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.
