HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACY NOEL JOHNSON!!!!!

I can't believe my little girl is 2! We had a little party (VERY little!) yesterday to celebrate Jacy turning 2 years old. She had a great time blowing out her candles, singing to herself, and opening up her presents. We're so glad to have Jacy in our family!

News......

So, I'm not even sure which kid this ultrasound picture is of. In any event, the news is that we are expecting another baby, due on April 24th, and the most exciting part is that yesterday, we found out that it is a BOY!!!!! We are very excited and looking forward to the birth of our third baby Johnson!

Happy Halloween and other October events...

It has been a quite a month! Pictures include: Dax and Ben camping, Ben's last flight as a pilot for Mesaba Airlines, and possibly the last flight of his career as a commercial airline pilot, kids in Halloween costumes (pilot and flight attendant).

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAXTON MORRIS JOHNSON!

I can't believe my baby boy is four years old! We had a little party with two of Daxton's best friends, Sarah and Ben. We were going to have a Diego party, but Mom was in a time crunch, and the only pinata's they had at Wal-Mart were transformers, which was Daxton's second party theme choice, so we went with that. It was a great party, and Daxton was so cute. Honestly.....when he said the prayer on the food and thanked Heavenly Father that "his Mom could make him a transformer's cake," I teared up. What a sweet boy we have been blessed with. We love him all to bits and pieces! Happy Birthday Dax!

Old Navy Weekly Score!

If you're not familiar with the website www.oldnavyweekly.com, then you probably wouldn't appreciate this post. Ben and I were introduced to this website about a month and a half ago, and we've been trying since then to score some coupons off of it. Last week marked our sixth attempt at this, and we were finally able to secure two 50$ off of 100$ purchase coupons!! Hence, we went on an Old Navy shopping spree, and I had to take a picture to show off some of the adorable things we got! And, of course, we had to have a "try on" session when we got home, which the kids hated, and I enjoyed much more than I should have. We decided to try on all of the winter clothes (boo!) at the same time to make sure we are prepared for our first midwestern winter (boo!). The kids got excited at least.

PreSchool

Daxton on his first day of preschool. He's going to a little Lutheran school down the road and he loves it.

The Grand Teton

I called up my friend Cody a couple of weeks ago and told him that I wanted to climb a mountain. So, less than two weeks later we were starting the 7000 ft. accent to the top of the Grand Teton. We left on Saturday afternoon and hiked up to a place called "The Caves" to spend the night. We tried to fall asleep as soon as the sun went down because we were getting up at 3:30 am to start our summit hike. We wanted to be sure we were on our way down before noon in case weather started to role in. So we hiked by head-lamp the first few hours of the morning. The sun came up right about the time we started getting to some more technical parts. We only had to wear our harnesses and rope up for a couple of sections. And then not because it was that technical but because it was a 2,500 ft. fall straight down if you made any small mistake. Unfortunately it had snowed on Aug 9th, so the route we picked had some ice on one of the "chimneys" that we had to climb that wasn't supposed to be that difficult, so we hadn't roped up. Needless to say, all three of us are grateful to still be alive. From there the summit was easy, a long rappel by-passed the climbing sections, and then it was a LONG hike out to the car. We would have been on the road by about 7 pm if I hadn't been a little delirious from hypoxia (altitude sickness) and thought I was lost. That little gem set us back another couple hours. It was a cool experience. But next year I will try to be a little bit more prepared physically and give myself a little more than 24 hours to adjust to the altitude.

What we did in June/July

A visit from Nana, some trips to Greenfield Village, Johnson Family Reunion, Benny's birthday, my first experience giving Ben a haircut, camping with the fireflies in the rain..........that's what we've been up to, among other things. Sorry for the blogging void. I'll be candid, life's been stressful. Ben's getting furloughed. He has officially been named as one of the pilots being furloughed, only with a date that is "to be determined," which almost makes it worse because there is no way to make a new plan for survival because there are too many unknowns. With our luck, we'll be making another cross country move within the next six months. Why ruin the trend, eh? Anyway, I'll humor the optimisitc people of the world and just say that we're going to enjoy the time that we have left here in Michigan and make the most of it. Really though, it's hard sometimes not to just ask God, "what's the point of this again?" Not that our life is so bad, because really it's not. It's just feeling the frustration of taking a few steps forward only to get pushed ten steps back, if that makes any sense. In the end, I am confident that it will all work out. It's just a stressful blip in the world of Ben and Jennifer Johnson. Enjoy the pics!

What we did in May...

Well, it has been extremely difficult to find time to do blogging lately. I've been taking on a lot more work since we moved out to Michigan, so time is scarce, and the time that I do have has been spent making new friends, exploring Michigan, and developing a routine to keep us sane while Ben is gone on his trips. So, I've put on a collection of pictures from some of our May adventues. We've been really blessed moving out here to have met some wonderful new friends, and we've also had a lot of fun with some visitors lately. Enjoy the pics!

A visit from Grandma and a quick trip to Niagra

We had a nice visit with Grandma Clark a few weekends ago, and we were able to drive into Canada to see Niagra falls while she was here. It's only about a 4 1/2 hour drive from where we live, so we just did it on a whim and only stayed one night. It was a lot of fun to be with Grandma and see such an amazing feat of nature! I have to admit, I was so nervous to let Jacy get anywhere near the water! Daxton, I wasn't really concerned about. He's has such a nervous personality, I knew he wouldn't have wanted to get near it, and I was right. Jacy would have gone head first over the edge if we had taken our eyes off of her for two seconds. She is CRAZY! There was an indoor water park across the street from the hotel we stayed at, and we took the kids there on the night we arrived. It was really fun, and I wish that I had taken pictures, but alas, I'm not gifted in this area, and I took not a single one. You'll just have to take my word for it that it was a dream come true for any kid, and Ben too! Thanks for the visit Grandma!