The Johnson Family

I haven't had a lot of time to update and load pictures on here individually, so I am going to share a SNAPFISH link for those of you that might like to see Christmas at out house this year. I'll update later....

We saw this in the Pottery Barn catalog and thought it would be nice for Danny's new TV. We had originally planned to have a wall unit put in, but our friend Julie said that was out of style and and everyone was going with consoles instead, so we followed orders and went with this...

We actually decided to have the same guy who made our dining room table make us one instead of ordering the one from PB. The price was the same, but this way we got a solid piece of furniture with no veneers and we were able to get it made a little bigger and the color we wanted.

He delivered it this morning and we LOVE it! We still need to have an electrician come out and install 2 new outlets so we can hide all the wires, but that'll have to wait.


We moved our original TV cabinet to a different wall and we're going to use it to store toys and other things we need out of the way. Right now, it still has a TV in it that we need to figure out what to do with.
And here are our stockings. I just love them! Hopefully by next Christmas our handy furniture maker will be able to make us a mantel to hang them from, but for now, this will have to do.

We found Greg on Craig's List (surprise, surprise) HERE is the link for his website..

We were on our way to the Farmer's Market to get a tree and turned to see Owen had already fallen asleep, so we jumped on the interstate and headed to Maggie Valley to a tree farm. We got the whole U-pick, apple cider and hot chocolate experience. Owen was cold and not in the best of moods and we are all covered in mud, but it was still a lot of fun.

** Please excuse my blogging absence lately. We've not only had a lot going on with the holidays, including traveling, The Southern Christmas Show, and Thanksgiving with both sides of our family, but we've also been dealing with a very sick house for 3 straight weeks.**

Wednesday before Thanksgiving we took the kids to see Nemo on Ice. Owen was so excited and even more so since his buddies Miles and Liam were coming too. Danny was able to get us 7 tickets through his work, so we had a seat for each of the adults and "big kids" and one for all of our coats and bags. Maggie and I held the babies, which we would have done anyways (otherwise, Ben would have been sliding across the ice with the skaters.)

When we got to our seats, the lady behind us gave a big bag of "popcorn." It was more like cheese puffs, so it was actually better so all the kids could have some. It came in handy during intermission when the kids were losing interest in sitting there.

my little magazine baby?











I had responded a while back to a Goodyblog.com post about ideas for taking month-to-month pictures of babies. I guess they liked my idea and one of the editors e-mailed me wanting pictures and permission to use it in Parent's Magazine. I sent them 6 of my favorites and they asked for one from each month. I had no idea what they would do with them and really thought it would be a little more than this since they requested one from all 12 months. This was actually my least favorite picture. They must have done a little editing on it to make it at least printable. It was the most blurry and there was a baby monitor in the background.

Oh well... It's still cute and worthy of including in his baby book :)

My seriously sweet and handsome little O is growing up way too fast! This weekend we celebrated his 3rd birthday. Does that not just sound crazy?!?!

Just after he went to bed Friday night, I got out the leftover streamers and balloons from Ben's party and started decorating his bedroom door (I stole this idea from Joanna....) and I finger painted a Happy Birthday sign to hang at the top of the doorway.

As soon as Ben woke up Saturday morning, we got up and waited outside Owen's room so we could capture his excitement as he walked through the streamers and discovered that today was the day we had been talking about for weeks now!

Well, I was afraid we might have to sit there for awhile, so I knocked on his door and a very grumpy boy stumbled through the streamers and looked like he was going to cry (not exactly the reaction I was going for.) Finally after he "woke up," he was super excited and kept thanking us for the streamers and balloons. (And then I had him pose and smile...the first picture I took was of him looking mad and half asleep.)

Owen LOVES muffins, so we came downstairs and started a batch of Pumpkin-bran muffins and then sung Happy Birthday and he blew out 3 little candles on his muffin (note to self: let muffins completely cool before putting wax candles into them.)




We then marked off the final day of his birthday countdown...

Got dressed...as I was dressing him, he said to me, "I don't want to look like Daddy."I thought he looked handsome in his button down shirt. I guess he was content in his t-shirt and jeans...

He then stood at the window waiting ... He said, "Have my guests arrived?"
We had a cake made at Coldstone Creamery that was supper yummy! They didn't have a dinosaur cake in their book, but the owner worked with me and we came up with this...

and he loved it
We decided to celebrate with a small gathering at our house on his actual birthday. It was us, my mom and Chip,my grandmother, Nana and Bobo, Danny's dad and step mom and Julie and Shon. We had a perfect day with cake, snacks and lots of presents!

Later that night, me and Danny got started on a homemade Dinosaur cake for his party on Sunday.

A little embarrassed of all the attention...
a group shot of the kids (we had to jump in and hold the babies...)
We waited until that night to open gifts at home. We had so much fun watching Owen get so excited and he LOVED everything he got. I know he was so tired of baby toys and now he finally has some big boy stuff to play with.
I get so stressed when it comes to favors for the kids. I didn't want to do candy since it was just Halloween and I didn't want to fill bags with junk that the parents would just throw away, so we made these name tags for all the kids. And by made, I mean just putting their names on them, drilling holes and adding ribbon.

(I would share more pictures, but the setting must be off on my camera or something, because almost all the pictures are really blurry. )

moments like this!
(the only thing that will guarantee both boys sitting still is a little Green Eggs and Ham on Youtube.)

This little guy