Our February CA Trip

At 2 a.m. on Feb. 24 (The day after Berg had six shots at the Dr. - not smart) we crammed into the mini van and headed down to California. We stopped in Sacramento at one of our "lodge boy" friends' house and had dinner and slept overnight. Well, we tried to sleep. Kivi had her lovely night terrors every night during our whole CA stay. Our first night was elevated because right after Peter calmed her down - Opal woke up, walked over to Kivi's makeshift bed and did a butt drop on her head insisting Kivi was sleeping in her bed. Needless to say, much more screaming ensued. Sorry Paulsons! Thanks for hosting us and our screamers.

We went to CA for two reasons: My cousin, Tracy's, wedding and my Mimi's 80th birthday party. So we were able to see both sides of my family. And they were able to meet all the kids.

On the morning of the birthday party, all of my mom's side of the family showed up in white shirts and blue jeans so we could take a family picture. Mimi was so surprised to see all of her grandkids and great grandkids. She kept saying, "Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness."

It was a fun day to celebrate Mimi and watch her be the star of the show! We all love our Mimi so much!

The kids had tons of fun playing on Poppy's waterless pool and with Nonnie's huge Fisher Price doll house which she has every piece for.

On Tues. we had planned to go to Legoland. Poppy and Nonnie had take Eben and Kivi in Oct. and they loved it. So we knew our Lego lover would love it even more. We had even bought tickets before our trip. So come 12 a.m. Monday night, I decide we better make sure we had the correct times and even make sure it was open. Surprise! Legoland is closed on Tues. and Wed. and we were leaving CA on Wed.! So after a bit of shock and sadness, Peter decides we'll just go to Knott's Berry Farm instead. It turned out to be a great choice! The kids were still super excited, it wasn't crowded at all and they had added tons of roller coasters since we had been there years ago.

We did almost every ride in Camp Snoopy. This is on the train:

Opal and Jasper's favorite ride was the Red Barron airplane ride. We did it about four times. Eben and Kivi's favorite was the Sidewinder, which Opal and Jasper couldn't go on, but it was right across from the Red Barron - so it was perfect!

We ate lunch in a covered wagon while we watched the Wild West Stunt Show, which the kids thought was hilarious. We got our picture with the stuntmen after the show.

I just liked this picture of Mimi, Jasper and Kivi getting in line for the Log Ride.

We spent a lot of time in some insect/amphibian shack with Spelunker Sue and all her animals. She let us hold all of them. Actually, she kind of made us hold all of them. She would just set walking sticks, giant cockroaches and toads right on us.

One of the rides we'd never been on before, The Pony Express, was a super fun one. You hold onto the horse your sitting on and it goes speeding around the track. Actually, it was one of the only "big" roller coasters I could do. I got so nauseous on those loopy ones I thought I would puke all over. Peter and Poppy loved going on them all, but I was a wimp. And I used to love roller coasters! What happens when you get old?

By the time we got to the spinny, up and down, semi-fast rides. I'd gone on one too many "big" roller coasters - thinking I'd try again. And I couldn't even do the Tea Cups, oops I mean Mexican Hats.

We ended the day back in Camp Snoopy, the little kids were ready to do more rides their size. They even had a mini roller coaster that Opal could go on.

This was the little kids version of the Extreme Scream (which all the adults did, including Mimi!).

We had a fun time at old Knott's. It seemed like a super fast couple of days in CA. And then it was time to start the trek back to WA!

Opal's Baby Jesus Birthday!

Opal has a baby doll that she calls Baby Jesus. It's her favorite. He goes with her everywhere. We thought this would be a December fad, seeing as how we do talk a lot about Baby Jesus then. February came along and she was still just as in love (if not more) so much so that she had to have Baby Jesus be the theme of her birthday party. She loved it! On February 11th, our family dressed up in costumes that the church let us borrow from the Christmas pageant. We built a makeshift stable out of the play toy and ordered Cuisine of India - hey it's kind of in that region of the world, right? I just knew I didn't want to spend all day making Jewish food and Indian is super delicious, all the kids loved it!

When our guests arrived at the Johnson Inn in Bethlehem we made lanterns out of water bottles and beads and stuck a glow stick inside. Then we headed out into the darkness to find the Savior of the world lying in a manger:

Opal (Mary), Jasper (Joseph), Baby Jesus and Dada (the worship leader) were waiting for us to find them in the stable.

The cute girl had her hands clasped during our whole visit, looking so full of pride and held back excitement.

We all gathered around Baby Jesus and sang "Away in a Manger", Opal's favorite song, while Dada played the guitar. Then Eben and Dada sang a worship song that Eben wrote.

Then we headed back to the Inn and ate the yummy chicken masala, lamb and other wonderful dishes you pour over jasmine rice. Opal opened her gifts and we ate cake and ice cream. Opal had specific cake requirements. It needed to have Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus and be pink. She of course ate Baby Jesus, but not till the next day. It was so funny, and kind of wrong. She'd kiss the fondant creation then take a bite, kiss it, take a bite, until it was gone.

She can be the cutest thing ever! I want to kiss her and eat her up all at the same time too.

Opal we love you so much! We love your passion for Jesus and pray that it never ceases. We know you're going to tell the world about Him someday. Carry Jesus with you every day and let everyone see Him through you - just like you do now. Happy Birthday big three year old!

January- Poppie and Nonnie and the Dining Room!

Our first month of 2011 started off like this:

1-1 Bought the cabinets for our new dinning/homeschool room. (Yes, we officially went from a family of 7 living in a 3 bedroom house to a two bedroom house. Smart, right?)

1-2 Installed the cabinets.

1-7 Peter and Mr. John put on the granite counter top.

1-8 Nonnie and Poppie come to stay with us while they work on their vacant rentals. They were super busy, so we mainly only saw them in the morning and after dinner times. The day they came we were able to have a fun Korean BBQ dinner. If you haven't been, Korean BBQ is all about tons of food you cook at your table, but since we looked so helpless and so, well, white, the wonderful staff did all the cooking for us!

The kids got to have the now traditional "Basket of Presents Day". It's like mini Christmas that happens whenever Nonnie comes to town.

1-9 The kids and I, after sorting socks and realizing the abundance of lost socks, decided to turn the singles into sock babies! It was such a fun craft - the kids loved picking out the color, hat, buttons, hair color, and stuffing the sock. I did end up doing most of the sewing, but it wasn't much. They turned out so cute.

After seeing them all, and how they all look like their makers (except for the Jasper's blue haired baby) I decided to make a little Bergie one too. The complete the little sock baby set:

1-11 Roasted chestnuts and hot cocoa movie night! Those chestnuts were so sweet and yummy! We'd never eaten them before and all wanted to try them. (All those Christmas stories and songs have chestnuts roasting on an open fire.) They really are something to sing about! Poor Nonnie was plum tuckered out from working so hard on the rental. I think she got 5 minutes into the movie before falling asleep. (That's our bed, in the living room.)

1-15 Our cute niece, Marlee, decided to take Eben and Jasper to the Monster Truck Show at the Tacoma Dome. Dada treated all his girls (and Berg) to a super girly tea. They felt so special having their own desserts, pouring their own tea into the tiny little cups and stirring in lots of sugar, just like Mama!

The boys pretended to be monster trucks for the next 3 days straight! They loved it. Jasper's favorite was Grave Digger and Eben talked about Megasaurus forever.

1-17 We let the kids color all over the wall dividing the new dining room and family room while little Berg watches from the sidelines.

Then we started the wall removal process. Here's our demo team in action:

Each of them got multiple turns hammering at the wall, then watched Dada cut the wooden planks from the other side as they covered their ears. As soon as Dada got two boards out, all the kids had to climb through the little hole to the other side.

1-21 Peter installs the new hardwoods!

1-22 Nonnie goes back to California to poor lonely Buggy. Poppie stays 2 weeks longer to finish the second rental.

1-30 Berg masters "the trick"! (Yes, he's wearing tights, much to Dada's objections). He usually has pants over them. It gets cold here, so they are like baby long johns, and he can't pull them off like he does with socks.

Grandma and Grandpa's Gift!

Grandma and Grandpa's present to the Johnson clan was a trip to Leavenworth this year! We all drove in the bus together over the Snoqualmie pass right after Christmas day. We stayed in these cute little cottages called the Apple Blossom Inn, Pear Haven and The Farmhouse. They were newly remodeled and so cute! We found them on our trip to Leavenworth in the summer. They are actually owned by the cute country store, Smallwood's Harvest, that you can see from the main highway.

We had so much fun, mainly dancing to Wii's Just Dance (thank you Schocks!). It was a big hit. No one could beat Dada's high score - he's just too good.

We went sledding on a massively steep hill going down into the orchards, right on the property. On Kivi's her first ride down, her boots filled up with snow and she froze. She was a good sport and tried again with Marlee, but they hit a big bump, rolled and Marlee landed on top of her. It was quite a sight, but Kivi didn't think it was very funny, so she was done. Eben had some good runs and one all by himself. He was mainly interested in throwing snowballs at whoever was trying to climb the wall of snow back up to the top of the hill.

We went into Leavenworth to go sledding and walk around, but soon realized that our own awesome sledding hill was sooo much better than the ones in town. We didn't even take our sleds out of the bus. We headed staight for a candy store! The kids got lollipops, and after a very short stroll down the main drag we had seen enough and went back to our little bungalos.


Peter and I, Marlee and the kids (minus Berg who stayed at the Apple Inn) went for a beautiful snow walk along the Wenachee River. The kids actually ended up pulling me longer than I pulled them.


On our walk, we met up with our friends the Metcalfe's who were also vacationing. Kivi and Brayden held hands from their two sleds, so cute. We also went to the Lebows' house, our friends who were in our small group for years and recently moved out to Wenachee


Chris joined us for little while between work, so we were able to get a family shot with everyone.

This was our view from the Apple Blossom Inn:

It was so beautiful with everything covered in snow and orchards as far as you could see. Here's something I got addicted to on this mini vacation - puzzles! We did a 1000 piece one and had so much fun, we stopped by a local thrift store and bought another, so we could do one the next day. We all finished it right before we left.

Here's some of our wii dance-a-thon. I love to watch Bubba in it - he's a riot! And he's not even playing.

After returning from Leavenworth is actually when we took the kid's picture by the tree (not of Christmas day.) There was too much going on; new stuff and a really messy house. When we got back from our mini vacation, we donned our jammies again, took pictures, and ate the very old and very hard gingerbread houses!!. We took pictures again with Dada for our family pic, which didn't make the Christmas blog.

So here it is,

Johnson Family Christmas Picture 2010:

Taken on Dec. 31 finally posted on, what is this, March already? 2011? Sheesh. Took me long enough.