My First Post

This is my first official blog posting. I'm trying to get the hang of it so that Ben isn't totally burdened with keeping it up all the time. We get so many complaints from people when we don't keep our posts updated (Donna!). Anyway, it's great to be a contributor now to the publishement of our family's happenings. I wanted to attach a good family picture, and now I realize that a new family photo is way overdue. Not only is my hair now shorter and blonder, but Daxton has doubled in size and we've added one more member, our little girl Jacy, to the bunch! We promise it's coming soon. Just as soon as Jacy gets a little bit more camera friendly. She's still on the border of the "lifeless grubworm" and "cute smiling fat baby" stages. If we took her to get a photo now, she'd come out looking like Daxton did when we tried to get his portrait taken at 5 weeks. Maybe I'll attach one of those beauties just so that you belive me that it was bad. Only REALLY excited new parents would look at a picture like this and think, "ohhh.....he's BEAUTIFUL!" Here are a few of my favorite shots from that photo shoot. Enjoy!





Well, I don't have much more to say at the moment, but you can expect that to change as I get more "into" the blogging trend.....never been a big fan of scrapbooking, but this seems to be the right alternative.

Smiley

Jacy's starting to smile and coo. It's fun to watch them change from being a vegetable all day to becoming a person. The picture is from our first Sunday going to church at the one o'clock block. We came home frustrated because Dax was even more fun than usual since we're now at his least favorite place right during his nap time. We started making some food and Dax went to playing the piano. After a couple of minutes the lovely music stopped, so we walked into the family room to see what he was doing and this is what we saw.

To Infinity...

We went back to Utah for a week of relaxation, family, and skiing. Jen and the kids were actually there for an additional week before I got there. It's great to fly for free, but that means we fly stand-by. Luckily Jen traveling alone with the two little ones got three seats next to each other to make the trip just barely tolerable. When I tried to fly out the next week, I wasn't able to get a seat, so I ended up flying into Vegas with another instructor from the school and we rented a car and drove all night and got into SLC around 7am Sunday morning. But at least it worked out because we had family come into town for Jacy's blessing that day. Please don't be offended that we didn't call anybody to hang out, I was so set on trying to relax that I didn't even take any pictures or videos the entire trip, I just wanted to relax. So here are some pictures we took of Jacy in her blessing dress after we got back home, and a video of Dax from the other night after he had watched "Toy Story". He just started doing this on his own completely unsolicited; he just picks up on stuff from movies without even trying.

First Visit To Disney World

Sorry that these posts are so few and far between. Now that I have a real job, and one that makes me work an average of 13 hours a day, 5 days a week, it's just hard to find time for anything else. I've got to teach Jen how to do this, even though she doesn't have much more free time than I do, maybe even less, but at least she's at home. We ventured out to Disney World for a few hours last week and got lots of funny looks from people. They were all either "Oh, she's so small and cute!" or, "What are you doing bringing a baby that young out into the world!?!" She survived it though, and enjoyed it too. That was her longest streak of being awake to date. We rode the train around the park, watched Dax and Mom speed away at the race track, and watched as Dax was petrified of his first roller-coaster ride. Good times.

Merry Christmas To All

Merry Christmas everyone. Hopefully posting this many pictures makes up for not posting anything last week. Well, it's Christmas day, and the novelty of opening gifts and playing with toys all morning has already gone. It's funny, you look forward to it subconsciously all year, and consciously for at least a solid two weeks, and then it's over so fast. Now, everybody is taking an afternoon nap, then we'll have a quiet, relaxing evening, and then it's back to real life, like it or not. This Christmas was different for us because we didn't have any family around, it is just the four of us. And no offense to anybody, but it is quite a bit more relaxing, even though it isn't as exciting.
Everything is going well. Jen and Jacy are both healthy and strong. All the ladies around are mad at Jen for how skinny she already is. Jacy didn't pass the hearing test in her lest ear at the hospital when she was born, so we had to take her to a clinic for a more thorough test. She passed that with flying colors and it's good to know that everything is just fine. Dax doesn't seem to mind her too much, at least he hasn't inflicted any serious injuries yet. He does seem a little too intrigued with her eyes, that could get dangerous. He wouldn't sit on Santa's lap for anything, but he sure loved the cupcake he got for going. Well, at least he loved the frosting off the top of the cupcake, cause that's about all he ate. They had one of our "larger" managers in the Santa suit, I'm scared of him too.

Jacy Noel Johnson

Boy oh boy (or should I say "Girl oh girl"?) are we glad she didn't wait until Christmas eve to be born. Not only were we very ready for her to come, but she was ready too. She was born 8 lbs. 7.5 oz. (they rounded up to 8 on her birth certificate), so another couple of weeks and she might have been 10 lbs. plus! Jen started having contractions Friday night about midnight (so I guess I should say Sat morning [I'm using a lot of parentheses in this post]). She woke me up around 2 am, and we called our friends to come over to stay with Dax. When we got to the hospital around 3, she was having pretty strong contractions about every 3 - 5 minutes and was dilated to about a 5. The on call doctor was already there for another patient, so she came in to take a look, and we were very glad when she told us that Jen was progressing well and they were just going to keep us there. Then we were able to grab the anesthesiologist before he had to do a C-section, and got Jen's epidural all set up. After that we got about an hour and a half of sleep, before they came back to check her again. She was still progressing well, but they gave her pitocin to help speed things up. Didn't take much and Jen was having to really focus on not pushing so the baby would stay in until they were able to get the doctor there. When the doctor finally showed up, Jen only had to push for about 7 minutes, and Jacy was born at 08:35 EST. She was 19.5 inches tall, with a full head of dark hair. Jen's Mom flew in Saturday to stay with Dax, and has been a huge help. Both Jacy and Jen were doing so well, they let us leave the hospital on Sunday just after lunch. Now we are home and comfortable. Unfortunately, Jen isn't getting much more sleep, but that should improve. So, there's the story.

Flying Fortress

Dax and I went to see one of the only 13 airworthy B-17s left in the world. You can pay six dollars to tour the plane, or four hundred to take a flight in it. It is a beautiful plane, Dax really enjoyed it, we walked through it twice. You might notice the corner of a yellow sign next to him in the captain's chair. It said "Do Not Cross", but with Dax's face and smile, that kid gets whatever he wants. Is it weird that I took a picture of my son all happy and smiling next to some fake bombs that represent real one dropped during war to kill people? It made e remember Catch-22, good book. We had fun day together. It's nice to be working full time again and actually have two days off to do whatever I want.