Well, a few years went by and no posts. We are going to start making cute funny videos of our kids. Julia is not in it because she made the videos.

11 Years

Karen and I just celebrated our 11 year anniversary in June. We intended on going somewhere "big" for our 10 anniversary but never did since Natalie was still a young baby so we decided to take our big trip this year. After exploring a bunch of options, we decided to head up to Maine because it was pretty close, it had cool weather in the early summer and since it had some great hikes. We called upon the services of Grandma Johnson's Babysitting Company to watch the girls while headed up for our trip. Karen and I ended up enjoying a few carefree days of hiking, shopping, eating several pounds of lobster and, best of all, sleeping whenever we felt like.(!) For any of you parents of young children, I highly recommend getting away for a few days as a couple. As much as I love my children, I also know that they will eventually start their own lives some day and move out. I see a couple's retreat as a very wise investment. The only question that I have is who had a better time; Karen and I or the girls with their grandma?

Another Johnson Graduate

Since our last blog entry was seven months ago, it's probably time to do a little bit of catching up....
Last month, Audrey had an Aquia Harbour Preschool graduation ceremony. Audrey has been our little social butterfly. She's a little bit shy but she really loves her friends and she made some good friends during her two years of preschool. It's hard to believe that she will be riding the bus with Julia to elementary school in the Fall but I guess that time never stops. I have a feeling that I will want time to stop as the girls get older and start getting closer and closer to moving out and starting their own lives. In the meantime, I'm just trying to enjoy our growing little family.

Merry Christmas

Julia's first grade teacher asked us if we could come play some Christmas music for her class today. We decided to get everybody involved so we had Audrey bring her cello and brought a couple of "drums" for Natalie. We taught the kids about the different instruments of the orchestra and then each of us demonstrated our individual instruments. We then played "Joy to the World" as the encore. Right before dinner tonight, we decided to get our little encore on tape. We ran through it once and decided that it was too slow so we taped it one more time and got the following video. I'm not sure how Natalie knew that it was right time to give us drum hit but she really nailed it.
Merry Christmas everybody!

Audrey's First Cello Recital

Audrey had her first cello recital a few weeks ago and she was clearly the best girl in her row. She's been working hard to learn how to hold the cello and the bow. She did a nice job at her recital and we're looking forward to many more good things from Audrey.

Natalie's 1st Birthday

Natalie had her first birthday last month and we had a little party with Grandma and Grandpa Jay and Careen who were here for Thanksgiving. We love our little Natalie but it's always a relief to make it to the first birthday. I almost feel like parents should get the presents on their children's first birthdays for keeping them alive. In any case, Natalie had a good day and she seemed to enjoy her first birthday cake.

two fairies, a good witch, and Cleopatra

On Halloween, the girls spent the better part of the afternoon decorating our yard for Halloween. We already had some spooky ghouls, spider webs, and pumpkins out, but they wanted more and they did it for the most part all on their own. Julia added a sign post with directions to the "White ghost yard", the "skull yard", the "vampire yard" and other scary places. Perhaps the best one though was the poor scooter flung haphazardly on its side, buried with leaves. The girls are standing in front of a sign that tells of the "Legend of the bad crash of the scooter: 200 years ago thear was a famos scoter rider that was riding a scoter in a grave yard then a ghost showd up and made a huge crash hapen then the famos scoter rider was killed." R.I.P. scooter rider.