Then and now . . .

The adorable picture you see of Benson in the Santa Hat was taken last year when my cute neighbors came over and sang us Christmas carols. When I pulled this picture up, Keith said, "He looks the same." Well, I beg to differ. Holidays and birthdays are a good time to reflect and notice just how much we have all grown up. It is true that last year at Christmas I weighed an additional 30 pounds (well, I guess Griffin weighed about 7 of it) and I was so miserably pregnant that I couldn't stand it. Benson was just barely talking and walking, he was still sleeping in the crib that Griffin sleeps in now. And now things are so different, practically everything has changed it seems like. Last year we stayed home for the holidays because I was restricted from travelling due to the baby bump and people came to us. We enjoyed that so much that we have decided we would always like to spend Christmas Eve at home with our kiddos. Although I missed my mother so terribly that I thought I might spend the whole day weeping, it was so MAGICAL to spend Christmas at HOME. And once again, neither of my kids cared much for opening presents. They do love the train table and train set that Santa brought for them. We had to force Benson to eat on Christmas day, it was all we could do to take him away from it, and he brought his train to each meal. And people came to us. . . Grandma and Grandpa Johnson braved the weather and drove to see the boys. My parents are coming in a few days and we can't wait! It was fun to have the whole family (Keith, the boys and I) all home, all day together. I love my little family and truth be told, I can't wait to make it even bigger . . .someday, definitely not today, but someday.

Merry Christmas Eve

Christmas pants from The Children's Place: $4.99

Christmas Sweaters from Old Navy: $3.96 (Don't you love the Sesame Street Door, it's in our new playroom)

Having two boys to buy Christmas outfits for: Priceless

I sure love these boys, they are the best! Last year I was a huge pregnant lady at Christmas dreaming of the next year when I would have a sweet baby at our house. Yay for Griffin's first Christmas! Too bad he doesn't seem like a baby anymore, he is getting so big. We love you all! We hope ya'll have the merriest of Christmases!

Baby, it's cold outside

Today we got one of the Utah snowstorms that I love so much. Okay, you caught me. I do not like the snow. Why live in Utah then? Who knows? I actually like the snow until Christmas day. After that I HATE it! Especially when it lasts until May like it did last year. Benson loves the snow. He loves to watch it fall from the sky and he loves to stomp on it. Last year he even made a snow fort with his dad. So today while Griffin was still in DreamLand, Benson and I braved the cold for just a few moments. Extra bonus: we got to see the schoolbus! B loves the schoolbus. See if you can guess the picture where Benson first spotted the magical bus.

And yes it must be said, I can't believe Christmas is in less than a week! I love this time of year. I was quite nervous to put up our tree (as this year I have two little ones instead of one little one), but my kids haven't touched it. They must have thought I was serious when I told them "no touching the tree or else!" One of the best purchases I have ever made is the tree skirt under my tree. It has jingle bells all around it, so if the boys get near the tree I get a warning to let me know and this also helps keep the kids away. I haven't been brave enough to wrap presents under it though. Last year Benson wouldn't even unwrap his gifts because he thought he might get the bust. It took a lot of convincing to finally get him to open his presents. Perhaps this year the opening of gifts will go better!

One more note: One of my favorite things about Christmas is of course, the music. The year before my grandma died, she spent Christmas with my family in Boise. She gave Keith and I a copy of "The Forgotten Carols." I so cherish this book and can barely sing a song without tissues. It may be one of my most prized posessions. If you do not have this book, you need it! Anyway, there is a song in the book that I love and the best line in it is:

"I cry the day I take the tree down. I want the season to last all year round. And I am dreaming of Christmases when, we'll be together again." Even though I am generally glad to put my Christmas tree away, I do wish the season and spirit and magic of Christmas could always last (and I wish my Grandma was here too).

And for those of you who would like to know, my favorite Christmas song is "Last Christmas" by none other than, WHAM!

30 Dollars!

Yesterday we bought our boys their BIG Christmas present. I have known for some time that I would like to get them an activity/train table and a train set. For anyone who has boys, you know that they put trains and trucks everywhere! Especially on things that are just their height, i.e. furniture, kitchen chairs, windowsills, toilets, bathtubs, beds, nightstands . . . you get the picture (maybe girls do this too, I wouldn't know). I have been looking all over (online) and Keith and I decided that we would like to get a nice one made out of real wood instead of a cheap one. Anyways, we decided on the train table from pottery barn kids, hence the reason for our FHE trip to Salt Lake. As I have shopped I have had several impressions to go to the DownEast Outfitters Home Store. I followed that impression last week and went to take a look. I got there just before closing time and they had a few, but they were all tall. I knew that wouldn't work, because Griffin is still so little and Benson isn't that big either. Anyways, so last night at PBK Keith suggested that perhaps we should see if they have a Downeast in SLC and they did. . . just down the street from where we were. So we went and found a beautiful Crate and Barrel kids activity table for 30 dollars. 30 dollars! 30 dollars! Can you believe it? We were expecting to spend quite a bit more than that and we were so excited to find this great deal. The whole way home I kept saying, "Keith, 30 dollars!"

Moral of the story: Heavenly Father is involved in all aspects of our lives. He loves us all so much and answered my prayer to help me find the perfect activity table for my kids' Christmas gift. There is no problem BIG or small that He can't help us with. It seems amazing to me that He would help me with such a small thing, but I am so grateful. It is a huge blessing for us to not spend very much money on the table. . .whew! Certainly feels like the windows of heaven opened . . .

Here's a link to the table we got for 30 dollars! (Minus the carts . . . can't find those ones yet)
http://www.landofnod.com/family.aspx?c=2008&f=3821&pc=1225

Griffin's first word

Tonight for family home evening we are going to PotteryBarnKids in Salt Lake City. Spiritual eh? I can hardly wait! I just recently found out that there is one at Trolley Square and so we are going. I thought before we left that I would write a little note because we have had some significant happenings around here. First, Griffin said his first word. Of course he babbles and babbles and says mamamamam and dadadadada. However, I am convinced he does not know the meanings of those quite yet. But on Thursday night there was meaning behind the word and the word is . . . . . . CAKE! That's right, Griffey's first word was cake. We were eating chocolate cake from Sams Club (if you've never had it, you must try it, it is unbelievable) and apparently I was not shoveling it in fast enough because when he ran out of cake in his mouth or there wasn't some coming at him 100 mph he said, CAKE! So cute right? Tonight he added a second word to his vocabulary. He said SHOOSH: translated: JUICE! Honestly I am so in love with this kid I can hardly stand it. What a babe!

Also, Benson is totally #1 potty trained, I think. He only had two accidents on the second day of potty training and other than that he has stayed dry during the day. I am so proud of him and me too. We are still working on #2, but it was always my plan to conquer one and then the other. If anyone has any good advice on that one, I'll take it!

Well, off to Pottery Barn. Ahhhh, paradise!

We have carpet!

Well, I cannot believe the day has finally arrived. We have carpet in our basement. Last night as I did some last minute painting and scraping in the basement, I got a little weepy knowing that our finishing basement days were over. It seemed pretty ridiculous, but we have put so much work into it and I actually never really thought we would get it finished. Yeah! We are done . . . well I guess we have to decorate it and stuff. I took the boys down (and Cali, a little friend of Benson's that I am watching for a few days) and Benson ran and screamed all over the place. He was so excited! I am too! I am so grateful for Keith and all of his "fixing and building skills" and really grateful for my parents who gave us some wrought iron fencing to help pay for some of the carpet. What a huge blessing! Thanks! Now we hope to get lots of visitors to come and stay in the basement.

By the way, Benson is not wearing any pants because we are in the process of potty training. It is by far the scariest thing I have had to do thus far as a mom. He is doing really well, I hope the progress continues. I think he gets the #1 part, but not so much with the #2. Pray for us!

San Diego

Here is my long overdue report of our trip to San Diego. It may have been the best trip I have ever been on. I have created a Top 10 of my favorite moments and things from our vacation. Here we go . . .

10. Eating out. I love to eat out. Mostly I love the fact that I didn't have to prepare or plan a meal for almost five days. We found a really fun restaurant at Seaport Village and enjoyed a bread bowl filled with clam chowder, yummy. Keith ordered onion rings for an appetizer, they were huge! I don't even like onion rings, but these weren't that bad.

P.S. You'll have to excuse all of the pictures of me in this post. You know how it is when you go on vacation with two people. . . you get a lot of 'one person' photos.

9. It's pretty bittersweet to go on vacation without your kids. I missed them like crazy but it was kind of nice to feel like a woman again, and not a mom for just a few days. Of course I told everyone about our kids and couldn't stop talking about them. I think it is good for Keith to spend time with his wife too. :)

8. The hotel! Since this was planned by Keith as a surprise, he got to choose the hotel. He chose The Hilton Resort and Spa on Mission Bay. It was fabulous. Honestly, staying in hotels is probably one of my favorite things ever, even if it is the Super 8 in Winnemucca (haha). We had a beautiful view of the bay and a king size bed. We made the mistake of only getting a queen size for our home (which is fine, except for when I double in size during pregnancy).

7. SeaWorld! Here we are in line for the 4D Sesame Street movie. I love the animals and the shows. We went on the Atlantis ride over and over and over and over and over again. We went home after we got too soaked to dry. One of the best things about vacationing with Keith is he doesn't feel the need to stay somewhere all day just because we paid for it. He says we should stay as long as we want and go home when we want to. I love that about him. There was probably less than 100 people there.

6. Visiting "San Diego's Best Donuts Shop." I wish I had a picture of this place. There was about five homeless people standing outside but we were starving and it was the only breakfast place we could find. The donuts were absolutely disgusting, but the chinese lady who ran it told me "she liked my face." I thought it was the funniest compliment I had ever gotten, at least I think it was a compliment. I have decided that I will now start telling people that I like their face. Keith couldn't stop telling me how much he "loved my face" that day.

5. The Zoo. I loved every second of the zoo, we stayed there the entire day. It was not crowded at all. I think it is funny when people take pictures of everything at the zoo. The monkeys were definitely my favorite, the snakes were definitely not.

4. Choosing the time that I woke up in the morning. We still woke up at 7:30, but there was a definite freedom in knowing that I could stay in bed longer. One day we forced ourselves to go back to bed and slept until 9:00. We felt pretty yucky that day. It was nice to remember that sleeping in isn't all it is cracked up to be.

3. I found a sweatshirt at Seaport Village that I could live in. I love it, I wore it almost the whole time because we didn't intend on it being as cold as it was. We also went shopping in a five story outdoor mall and found all kinds of goodies. . . a great pair of pants, a skirt, a cardigan, the list goes on and on. Oh yeah, and we were the only people older than 13 in the movie theatre when we went to see High School Musical 3. It was pretty entertaining, mostly just listening to all the girls sigh when Troy Bolton was on screen.

2. Spending time with my favorite person in the whole world, Keith. I love vacationing with him, he is the best. I still can't believe he took me on a trip for my birthday, he sure has a lot of tricks up his sleeve. We went ocean kayaking one day. I was so nervous, but I was totally calm once I knew I could be in the same kayak as Keith. I trust him completely. It was the best part of the trip by far. Sea lions popped up really close to our boat and we even saw sharks (not real scary ones, but sharks just the same). It was amazing.

1. Coming home to my boys! I think it is a good experience for them to spend time with their grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins without their mom. They were really good boys (at least that is what Mary told me). I love being all together as a family. I love being a mom. It is by far the greatest blessing in my life. It is always fun to go on vacation, but I love coming home.


What a wonderful vacation!