Grandma

While we were in Disney World, we received word that my grandma Clark had passed away. The event was extremely bittersweet as she had suffered for a long time, and she was truly ready to leave this life. She didn't want a funeral, so on Saturday we held a memorial service at her home with close family members only. It was a wonderful gathering where we all got to remember what a remarkable woman she was in this life, and how great a legacy she left behind. I will miss her. Some adjectives that I would use to describe my grandma are: Strong, loving, protective, glamorous, intelligent, long-suffering, and level-headed. She was amazing. She will be missed. I love you Grandma.

Merry Christmas to us!

A week and a half ago Ben and I were talking, wondering to ourselves why it was that we hadn't planned a vacation during the time that he has off, seeing as how he will not get ANY vacation time for this first year working at Mesaba. It suddenly occurred to us that we were going to miss our one chance to take a family vacation this year if we didn't act quick. We started planning something small, like a quick drive to Lava Hot Springs or something like that, but then when I mentioned our plan to my mom, she informed me that she had a week with the Marriot time share that they own that was going to expire, and that we could use it if we wanted to. In about an hour, we had thrown together a vacation back to my favorite place........Florida! It was so perfect. I felt like our leaving Florida was so rushed and that I never really got to "say goodbye" like I had wanted to. We left last Saturday and got back yesterday. The weather was gorgeous, the crowds were small, and I was in heaven. We spent three days at the Disney Parks and one at Sea World. It was tough to come back to the snow, but it was sure a great Christmas present!

Happy Birthday Jacy Bug!

Happy Birthday Jacy Bug! Today is Jacy's official birthday, and yesterday we had a really fun party for her. We had a ton of family from both sides there with some great food and a lot of cake! We've had so much going on in our little family lately, it has been hard to keep the blog as updated as I would like to. Right now, Ben is waiting to train in the simulator, which is backed up, so he is home until the 27th of December. We are LOVING LOVING LOVING having him around all to ourselves after going for almost a month without him. Plus, it couldn't be a more perfect time of year to have him around for all of the holiday stuff that's going on. So, we've been pretty happy lately. I can't believe that Jacy is a year. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I'm not a big fan of the first year of life, and getting to the one year mark is a major milestone in my book, so it's as much a celebration for me of surviving the first year as it is a celebration of her birth. Anyway, I'm so greatful for the opportunity to share a mother/daughter relationship with Jacy in this life! I'm so glad that she was born! Happy Birthday Jacy!

Thanksgiving

A quick note of Thanksgiving. Today, I am thankful that we do not have to move out of my parent's home like we thought we were going to have to last week. The buyers rescinded their offer, and it looks like we will be able to stay here until at least next spring. I am very thankful that we don't have to box things up and try to find somewhere to live that we can't afford. I am very thankful for wonderful, caring friends and family. I'm thankful for life, and for experience, and for relationships. Lastly, I'm thankful for each moment that I am able to feel love coming from a source divine both for myself and for others. Happy Thanksgiving!

A Sincere Thank You

I just wanted to say thank you for the outpouring of friendship, offers to help, and sympathies. It has moved me to tears today (not that that is hard to do right now :) ). I keep telling myself that this is really not that big of a deal, because it's just a move, and no one's dead, and we'll be okay eventually when we're settled in somewhere for at least a year or so, but it's nice to have validation from sympathetic blogging friends/moms who understand the stress load from relocating in such a short time with small kids and a husband who is necessarily consumed with his career right now. Anyway, thank you, thank you, and thank you again. As soon as we find a place to go on Saturday, we will eventually need help moving some of our heavy furniture around, and Ben and I feel that we expended our Elder's Qourum quota when they helped us move in three weeks ago. So, if there are able and willing volunteers who would be around on a Saturday morning at some point in the near future, we could sure use your help, and would appreciate it very, very, very, very much! Thanks again!
-The Johnsons

A Johnson Update

As I was driving to Logan this morning to finally see my parent's new house, I heard a noise from the back seat and turned just in time to see Daxton spew cocoa pebble vomit all over our car. He then proceeded to spew three more times. I continued driving in silence, breathing in the chocolaty vomit fumes and I thought to myself, "Well, your life has reached an all-time low. What are you going to do now?" I'm pleased to say that although the past few weeks have been some intensly difficult, emotionally and physically draining ones, I'm still here, and I still believe that everything will eventually work out for the better. So, here's our latest update.....We successfully made the move from Florida to my parent's house in Sandy, and Ben started his training in Minneapolis. He has been commuting home on Friday nights to help us move things in on Saturdays, and then flying back to Minneapolis on Sundays to start training again on Mondays. We have had a lot of help from family, which has been nice because the kids and I got extremely sick right after we moved in. After three weeks of getting things settled into the house, yesterday the house sold, and sadly, we have to be out of it by December 15th. We had hoped that things would work out so that we could stay in the Sandy house until Ben got promoted at Mesaba, but it just plain didn't, for a number of different reasons that are too many to go into. Anyway, Saturday Ben flies home again long enough to go looking with me for a new place to live, and then we're packing up again and moving again...........big sigh. So, aside from a great deal of stress, we're really doing fine. Nobody's dead. That's a plus. It's just another pain-in-the-rear move to somewhere not free.

Ode To Florida

Okay, so this has to be one of the world's longest posts....sorry. We have finally come up with a "game plan" of sorts, and Wednesday will be our last day here in Florida. My parents have moved from Sandy to Logan, and have left a vacant house, which they have consented to let us live in until it sells. Last Thursday, I hopped on a plane at 5:30 a.m. with the kids and flew out to Utah to leave them with Nana and Grandpa Kent. Then, I hopped onto another plane that left SLC at 11:30 p.m. and flew into Atlanta at 5:30 a.m. I caught another flight to Orlando at 7:30 a.m. and was home on Friday morning at 10:30 a.m. It was a LONG day. With the kids taken care of, Ben and I have been packing up the house, and we have just about finished it up. The moving truck was dropped off this morning, and we're loading everything into it tomorrow. On Wednesday morning, Ben and I going to start the drive back to Utah, and we hope to be there by Friday. Then, the kids and I are going to move into the Sandy house, and Ben is off to Minneapolis on Monday to start his six-week training. We don't know where he will be based after that, and for the time being with the free rent and all (thanks mom & dad!), Ben will just continue commuting back and forth between Minneapolis and Sandy whenever he can. It's a new chapter in our lives, and although in some respects it is going to be very difficult to adjust to, I feel confident that we are ready. That being said, I am very nostalgic tonight thinking about all of the WONDERFUL memories that we have created here in Florida. I started putting together some of my favorite pictures, and I just couldn't stop. There are too many. We will always treasure the time that we were able to spend here.

Getting good at the tagging game..

Here comes another tag compliments of Shelley....
What was I doing 10 years ago?
My freshman year at BYU with Mindy as my roommate, living in Heritage Halls, and enjoying college life!
What are 5 things on my to-do list today?
1. Go for a walk (wards off depression)
2. Take Jacy for her nine-month checkup (a month or so late)
3. Work
4. Take Daxton for a bike ride
5. Figure out what to have for dinner.......sigh
Five snacks that I enjoy?
1. Roasted red pepper and tomato soup (organic) with pretzel sourdough nibblers in it.
2. Low-carb sandwich wraps.
3. Lifesavers wintergreen mints and sugar-free jolly ranchers.
4. Sour patch kids and sweedish fish
5. Chocolaty-chip teddy grahams
Places I've lived
Utah (Sandy and Logan), Nebraska, Florida, London
5 things I would do if I were a billionaire
1. Pay off debts
2. Buy a house
3. Buy Ben a plane
4. Further my education
5. Try to live my life like I WASN'T a billionaire
(oh yeah, and give to charity and all that good stuff...)
Now I'm going to vary from the tag format and create one of my own:
5 of my Quirks/pet peeves
1. Milk carton expiration dates. I love to buy milk cartons with meaningful expiration dates on them, i.e., my birthday, anyone in my family's birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, etc.
2. Dirty microwaves. Gross. Admitedly, my microwave is currently not up to par, but seriously, how gross is it to open one up and see gunk all over from past microexplosions?
3. Syrup-smelling children. It completely grosses me out when little kids eat syrup for breakfast and then smell like maple for the rest of the day. Granted, eggo waffles are a favorite of my kids, and Jacy is the queen of getting syrup all over her hands and then rubbing it into her hair. I do my best to wipe her down and get it all off, but the end result is usually that she smells like maple, and it grosses me out.
4. Children with dirty fingernails. Gross. Having a calling in the nursery, I see a lot of these. I know it's not easy to get your kids to sit still enough to clip their fingernails, and I know there comes a point where something like this gets put low on the priority list, but I guess, for me currently, that's just one of those battles that I choose to fight. Well, in all honesty, it's a designated responsibility of Ben's currently, so I guess I should say it's a battle that I choose to have him fight. Regardless, I just want to vomit when I look at a kids' fingers and see a thick layer of dirt in each nailbed. Yikes!
5. Smelling gasoline. I really like the smell of gas. I like filling up the car and standing outside at the pump breathing in the air full of gasoline fumes. Weird? Yeah, I guess so.

The End of an Era

So, Ben got the "magic" phone call this morning. He was offered a job (WITH A CLASS DATE!!!!!!)at Mesaba Airlines! We are very excited about moving on from Delta Connection Academy and beginning the process of paying off the debt that we incurred coming out here. The airline is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and that is where Ben will do his six-week training course. After that, they should give him a line somewhere, possibly in Memphis, Tennessee? It's scary to think of leaving here. In our almost-five-years of marriage, we have moved multiple times, and our sojourn here in Florida has been the longest. It has been WONDERFUL! I am crying buckets just thinking about moving away. I have a new-found appreciation for warm weather that I never had before. I wanted to attach a picture taken of me when I was little that expresses exactly how I feel about the cold. Unfortunately, wherever we go from here is bound to be colder, maybe much, much colder. :(
So, stay tuned for more details as they unfold. We know very little ourselves. What we do know is that, in keeping with our tradition thus far, you will probably be looking at our blog next week and find that we have moved across the country, bought a new home, and had another kid (okay, probably not the kid part). We just like to make huge, life-changing decisions all at once, so that we can have the most stress possible in the least amount of time. I guess that's just how we roll! Cheers!