February-March 2013

In February 2013, I believe over President's Day, my brother Chris arranged for us as a Johnson clan to go hiking along the Second Water Trail (not too far away).  I was about 14-15 weeks pregnant and grateful that the trail was not too strenuous.  We harnessed Easton with his lion backpack/leash in hopes that this would keep our "runner" close to us.  Unfortunately he tripped on the rocks quite a bit and got frustrated with the least.  David had to carry him in the hiking backpack on our way back to the car and luckily Easton fell asleep :).

 

 The crew that came hiking.  Chris and Jessica's family, mom, Kyle, me and David.

 Unleashing Easton

 Stopping for lunch

 All this hiking business wears me out!

 David had two interviews for PA school this 2012-2013 cycle.  The first interview was in Pennsylvania and David felt like it didn't go well at all.  He noticed that nearly every guy interviewing had a suit and he wasn't wearing one!  When Midwestern University asked him to interview, he went out and bought himself a suit!  He felt like the interview was much more relaxed and we both felt really good about it.  However, David did not make it into either one of the schools.  Time to reapply in April!

 We had a CRAZY storm in February which left our backyard COVERED in hailstones.  It look like it had snowed!  Easton was not dressed very warmly when we ran outside to see the amazing sight-so as you can see in this picture, he is not very happy.

 In March, our family went to the Aloha Festival at Tempe Beach Park.  It was raining and slightly cold most of the day.  We had bought a Papa Johns Pizza (my favorite!) on our way to the festival so that we wouldn't be tempted to buy the 10$/plate food.  The Festival was not very exciting this year and all of us were bored quickly.  We left after about an hour.

 Over Spring Break, David and I decided to do 2 things:  Paint the trim on our house and re-do our backyard (install a sprinkler system, put in sod, make gardens, lay a patio for our bbq and make a sandpit for Easton).  Little did we know how much WORK those two things would turn out to be!  I started painting the trim on the house and ended up getting really sick towards the end of the week (it was super windy one day and I think the exposure to dust/long hours of sun did me in).  We realized that neither of us knew anything about how to install sprinklers.  Thankfully David's brother Ryan (the handyman expert) saved the day!  Here are some "before" pictures of our yard after David and I removed all the rock.

 Laying the sprinkler line.

 Bringing maneur into the yard.

Did I mention that during all the craziness of renovating our backyard that our dishwasher decided that it no longer wanted to drain water?  400 unexpected dollars later, we had a new dishwasher!  Easton enjoying sitting in the "Lowes" truck as they delivered our new appliance.

 

 Over Spring Break, we found at that we were having a baby GIRL due in August.  At our gender reveal party, we invited family to our neighborhood park.  We sent everyone on an Easter egg hunt to collect eggs filled with blue and pink jelly beans.  After all the jelly beans were collected, the family had to see which color had more in order to determine the gender.  Of course pink had several more, but just to be sure (since a few eggs were missing-a little girl at the park stole some!) we cut open a cake with pink frosting in the middle.  Everyone was ecstatic to have another girl join the family.  Chris and Jessica found out a few weeks later that they were also having another girl!

 David decided to buy a tree for me for my Mother's day present an install it while renovating the backyard.

 Ryan doing sprinkler work

 Installing backyard flood lights through the attic

December 2012-January 2013

Time to play catch-up!

In December, we got to celebrate Easton's 2nd Christmas.  David surprised me with Tandem bikes and Easton got a train set.  I gave David a Dremel tool set.  We opened presents at my parents house as tradition holds and announced that we were expecting baby #2.  To do this, we created a shirt for Easton to wear that said "I'm going to be a big brother".  We had grandma Joylene Johnson "help" Easton open the box that had the shirt in it.  She was so excited!  Easton then wore the shirt with a jacket over it to Grandma Bunzell's house.  David took the jacket off and David's sister Fawn started reading the shirt.  The whole family was surprised and ecstatic at the news.  We enjoyed our usual overnight French toast and quiche breakfast.  In December, my littlest sister Heather announced she was engaged to a boy named Andrew Perazzo that she met up at BYU.  FINALLY one of my sisters was getting married.

 "Santa" bought my two sisters bicycles for Christmas.  Kyle had to read the tags and check out who the bikes were for.  He was quite disappointed to find that one of the bikes was not for him.

 Gathered around watching Chris and Jessica's family open their presents.

 Around December-time, Grandma Sannette Judy invited all the family over to eat and learn the "Virginia Reel" dance.  We had a great time and Easton got to pretend to ride some of Uncle Kelly's four wheelers.  They were just his size!

Around Christmas Eve, our Johnson family clan also took a trip up to the Payson/Star Valley area to play in the snow.  Most of the sledding hills in the area were closed off and deemed to dangerous.  We found a hill next to a small gas station/café and had a great time sledding.  Easton did better this year with the cold and snow, but after about an hour, he became whiny and was done!  I wasn't able to find suitable snow boots his size so we went to target to buy some "rainboots".  I thought we could just put several layers of socks on to keep his feet warm and that the slick outside of the rainboots would prevent the melted snow for coming in.  I learned quickly that multiple layers of socks did NOT keep his feet warm--we needed insulation!  I was mad that I had wasted 20$ on those lightening McQueen rainboots.  However, Easton has been insisted on wearing them on a near daily basis since that trip.  So I guess we got our moneys worth!  On our trip, David decided to try and be clever and make a "pregnant snowlady".  He posted a picture of me standing next to it on facebook as a way to announce our pregnancy but in a more subtle way.  Only one or two people got it!

We also enjoyed our ward Christmas party which was  a "Mexican Fiesta".  We sat next to our friends Craig and Sarah Reynolds with their two cute girls Raylee and Adley.

 

 In January we decided to try out the new fire pit that David got for Christmas and we roasted marshmellows!

October 2012

Time to do a quick re-cap of our trip to the New England area:
David and I have been wanting to go out to New England in the Fall for several years.  David served a mission in New Hampshire/Vermont/New York area so he has seen the beautiful fall foliage.  I needed this experience for myself. Fall is my favorite time of year and here in Arizona, the leaves on our trees just don't change color very much if at all.  Southwest Airlines had an incredible sale during the summer and we were able to get flight tickets for about half of the usual price.

So bright and early Tuesday October 16th morning (4am), David and I headed to the airport.  We left Easton in the care of my mom as we knew we couldn't site see all the places we wanted to if we had him with us.

Around 2p.m. Our plane landed in Baltimore Maryland. Immediately I was entranced by how many trees there were and all the colors! The weather was a beautiful 60 degrees. We got our tiny Ford Fiesta rental car and headed to Washington D.C. We paid 20$ for about 2 hours worth of parking. Crazy! In D.C. we saw the White House (which was much smaller than we thought it would be), the WW2 Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool.

 

Enjoying the beautiful fall foliage in the park surrounding the D.C. Memorials

 Lincoln Memorial

 View from the Lincoln Memorial looking toward the Washington Monument

 Pretty picture of the "White House"

Of course we have to show proof we were there!

 Vietnam Memorial-David finding another "David"

 David standing in front of the US Deparment of Treasury

That night, we stayed in a hotel in Baltimore Maryland and it was a little odd.  Our room, although nice and grandiose was next the the elevator shaft so all night we could hear the elevator moving up and down and dinging when the door opened.  Because of the way the building was situated on the street, I always felt the hotel was leaning-it kind of felt like the "tower of terror" to me lol.

The next day, we went site-seeing in Philadelphia.  We saw several historic sites including Independence Hall where the fouding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.  While in that very room, we could actually"feel" something...not sure how to describe it.  We knew how important the events were that took place in that room. 

The actual "Liberty Bell"-just like in the movie "National Treasure"! As we were site-seeing in Philly, I just kept thinking about that movie.

 David in front of Independence Hall

 Standing in "Washington's Rose Garden" which literally consisted of about three small rose bushes.  Such a joke!

Tomb of the Unknown soldier.  The flame right next to me is continuously burning.

For lunch, we stopped in this really small cafe and had a Philly cheesesteak.  You can't go to Philly and not have a cheesesteak!

Lastly, we spent two days running around Manhatten. It's a good thing we got to see almost everything we wanted to see in our first day in Manhatten because the second day it was raining the whole time.   We saw the 9/11 Memorial (so powerful!) and the new World Trade Center towers being built, Statue of Liberty, Time Square, Mary Poppins on Broadway (so amazing), Central Park, and ate at an Olive Garden in Time Square.

 Standing in the middle of Central Park-such a nice place of refuge from the craziness of the city

 Standing next to one of the Subway lines with two of the four new World Trade Centers that are being built in the background.

 Rockefeller Center-the ice skating rink that I have seen on T.V.!

 The church where many of the 9/11 victims are buried.  Many of the families waited at this church to wait for news of their loved ones who were in one of the world trade centers.  The world trade centers were just across the street from this church.

9/11 Memorial-I read the names surrounding the reflecting pools and saw one that said something like "Donna Hughes and unborn child".  This wrenched my heart thinking what this mother, who was expecting a child, went through on that terrible day.

 We learned that we never ever want to live out East if we can help it.  If David gets into a PA school out there, we will make do.  But driving there is so stressful and crazy!!  And people were so not helpful!  We paid so much money in tolls, especially in New Jersey, as well as parking garages and public transportation.  We took a few wrong train lines getting to and from Manhatten but in the end we made our way to where we should have been.  What an adventure :) All in all, our trip was amazing.  We saw so many historical sites and places where significant events took place many years ago.  We stood on many grounds where people died-and it was so crazy to think of the lives of all those people. 

Now onto planning the next vacation-hopefully somewhere much more relaxing!

Halloween 2012

This year, Easton and I courageously braved 4-yes FOUR trunk or treats.  My mother-in-law invited us to her trunk or treat the Saturday before Halloween.  I invited my mom and brother out as well.  My little brother wanted to get candy and no candy was being passed out so after eating and visitng with my in-lawes, we hopped in our cars and went to my wards' trunk or treat.  As usual, the people in my ward decked out their cars with lights and all sorts of amazing decorations.  Two days later, my mom invited me and Easton to her stakes' trunk or treat where we ate chili again (for the third time) and gained more candy while trunk or treating.  By the time Halloween hit on Wednesday I decided I couldn't handle one more bowl of Chili.  So right after work, I donned my witches hat and Halloween colored clothes and headed to Chipotle where I bought TWO chipotle burritos for 4 dollars total (normally each burrito is 6$ a piece but if you wore a costume that evening, Chipotle gave you a nice discount).  After Chipotle, Easton and I went to my brother's ward's trunk or treat which was really fun.  They had lots of games boothes, popcorn, cotton candy, a small petting zoo, and an area filled with snakes and all kind of bugs that a man in his ward collected.  It was pretty fascinating to see some critters that I had never heard of!  After the trunk or treat, my family went to several houses and did some trick or treating with the little ones.  Easton scored his mom and dad a decent amount of candy which we will gladly enjoy over the next several weeks.

 

Me dressed as a witch with Easton the "jack o lantern"

 My brother and his family

 At the petting zoo, checking out the chickens

 Seeing Easton's cousins pet the snake

 All the grandkids with their uncle Kyle (my brother)

 Trick or Treating in the neighborhood

 Cousin love:   Easton reached over the give his cousin Dallin a hug.  After awhile, Easton still wouldn't let go and it made Dallin a little upset.