April-May 2013

In early April, David and I got to go to our first Arizona Rattler's game with Chris and Jessica.  I saw some cheerleaders and jokingly told David we ought to get our pictures taken with them.  David thought this was a good idea so him and Chris actually did it!

 

 

At the end of April, our family made a 4 day trek to Utah to see my sister Heather get married in the Salt Lake temple.  We left for Nephi Utah around 1p.m. on Wednesday (I didn't want to take any extra time off of work) and got onto the 202 freeway.  Traffic came to a dead standstill and I thought "Just great, now we are going to be even later making it to our hotel".  The traffic standstill became a blessing as another car pulled up to us and said that one of our tires was flat!  I was driving and stressed out of my mind.  We got off the freeway, were able to fill the tire up just enough to get us to a tire repair shop nearby.  Needless to say, we made it to our hotel room close to 3a.m. in the morning.  As tired as we were, we were just grateful to have made it their safely.

In the morning, we rushed to get up and out to the Salt Lake temple a few hours away.  It was my first time going in that temple and sealing room was beautiful.  So many family members on both the bride and grooms side. 

 

 

 

We had a yummy lunch with chicken, veggies, salad and ice cream at the Joseph Smith Memorial building after the wedding. 

 

 

David and I also go to take Easton up to the top of the Conference Center and see the gardens/waterfalls. (View from the top of the conference center)
Easton learned to say "temple" after this trip.

 David's cousin Ben Shaw and his wife Megan were so kind to let us stay at their home that evening. 

For breakfast the next morning, we enjoyed a yummy subway sandwich-wahoo! (I know....we were eating like kings and queens ;))

We spent the day taking Easton to Thanksgiving Point and got to see a bunch of animals.

 

Then we headed down to Southern Utah so our trek home the next day would not be as long.  On the way, we saw the St. George temple, ate at Kneaders Bakery (fell in love with that place) for the first time and visit our friends Josh and Krystal Roberts in Las Vegas.Lots of driving for a 4 day trip!

Heather's wedding reception down in Mesa turned out beautifully.  Not as big of a turnout as we had expected however.  We were glad that the stress of the wedding planning was over and life could return to normal.  Heather was and still is (several months later) super sick over her wedding.  Poor girl!


In May, we also finally installed the sod in our backyard (thanks to David, his brother Ryan, mom Dove and friend Brooks Crandell)!

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!