At the end of every school year we celebrate big! It usually consists of a party at the neighbors house with pizza, candy toss, and the favorite slip n’ slide. It is a tradition and all the kids love it!
I also started another tradition. Anytime I have a six grader, we have a big party with their class. This year, my neighbor joined in since she had a six grader too and it was a blast. We rented a huge blow-up slide. We had a bbq, games, cotton candy and dancing. It was so fun to see Katelyn, Parker and their classes having so much fun. They loved it. It was a great way to say “goodbye” to elementary school.
I am so grateful to be a mom and be able to do all these fun things with my kiddos. They grow up too fast not to love every minute.
My commute to work today was much shorter than it has been for some time. You see, my employer, Ancestry, moved its headquarters to nearby Lehi. I’ve been working at Ancestry for about a year, and before that I was at a neighboring building at Morinda for 10 years. I burned about an hour a day in travel time working in those locations. Doing the math is pretty depressing – I’ve spent almost 4 months of my life driving to and from work at Morinda and Ancestry down in Provo.
The new commute is now about 5 miles right along the Timpanogos highway. That goes pretty fast in my car. Or on my motorcycle.
There is also the Murdock Canal bike trail which covers nearly 90 percent of route. So, I plan on bike commuting a lot too. But, because it is close and relatively flat I wanted to be able to ride in my work clothes instead of getting all decked out in my lycra and riding my fast bike.
So, it was a perfect excuse to buy a new bicycle.
I found a 2016 Trek District listed on KSL Classified. It’s basically brand new; the little nubs are still on the tires. The owner blacked it out, and then had a hard time selling it, so I got it for a bargain. It’s a great bike and super quiet. Makes zero noise with the belt drive and internal geared hub.
I’ll probably have to get a bell or something so I don’t scare fellow trail walkers, runners, riders. I’ve christened her “Stealth”.
Anyway, change is good, especially when that change involves much less time driving and a new bike. It is nice to be close.
I wanted to go camping again, but this time with the entire family. So, I talked it over with a few folks, and eventually found several neighbors to come along. We called it the “Fathers and Families Camp” since the official ward “Fathers and Sons Camp” is next weekend. The Hunters, Bergerons, and Rowberrys all joined us.
We borrowed Cousin Eddy again and headed out into the desert. This time we went out to the Pony Express trail road out near Simpson Springs.
Beau Hunter had told me roughly of this site just beyond Lookout Pass, up in the cedars on BLM land. It was primitive camping, no bathrooms, running water or improved camping sites, but the weather forecast looked good, so we set a date and got it on the calendar.
We left just after 4pm on Friday. The other families were running later than expected, so the Mighty Johnsons were the first ones out there. The Faust road was in miserable shape, and since I didn’t know the exact spot we were camping, things got a little stressful while trying to deal with overly-excited kids, mystery camping spots, and hauling the trailer over rutted roads.
Thankfully, Beau showed up after about an hour, and lead us right to a great site (at precisely 40.113103, -112.642726). The spot was actually down the first road that I had thought to explore before reconsidering, doubling back, and exploring frustrating dead ends. Arrgh. At least we could finally unpack and setup camp.
The Rowberrys brought their 4-wheeler, the Bergerons brought their RAZR, and the Hunters brought two horses, so everyone had fun things to do. We had camp calzones for dinner which were delicious, then I made a cherry and peach cobbler for dessert, which turned out good (although a little too cake-y). The next morning we had dutch oven mountain man hash for breakfast which was big group meal.
Drew was a little nervous around the horses.Even Megan and cousin Kate got a little ride
However, it wasn’t a perfectly executed camping trip.
Here are a few things to remember next time:
Don’t worry about coordinating group meals. It’s harder than it seems.
If possible, get exact GPS coordinates of the site beforehand.
Having a trailer to chuck things into makes camping easier. It might be time to look for a covered trailer to purchase.
But, overall it was a success. I think we’ll have to do another “Fathers and Families Camp” next year.
Manina found some kind of bargain and was able to secure tickets to the Heber Valley Railroad evening train ride. So, for family night we boarded the vintage rail cars and enjoyed a 90 minute ride through the beautiful mountain valley.
Jake had to stay behind to work on homework, but all the other kids seemed to enjoy the train ride, even with the sometimes-silly entertainment.
The weather was a bit cool, but seeing the sun set over the east face of Mount Timpanogos was worth the price of admission. It also gave me a chance to tell the kids about their Grandpa Johnson, who was a train engineer back in West Virginia. A quick and easy, but memorable train ride.
Ellie has been losing her teeth for the past few months, but more than anything she wanted to loose her two front teeth after learning the song in her kindergarten class last Christmas.
Her wish came true a couple weeks ago when both came out within a couple weeks of each other. Now she is missing half of front teeth and loves that she can’t say some of her words!
A while back you may remember that I made another post about Drew and his love of reading, especially at night. I tuck Drew in around 8:30 every evening. For whatever reason, he has never been able to sleep that early. I told him he can read, do homework, write in his journal or anything that is quiet. He usually falls asleep around 10 pm.
Another activity besides reading that you can find him doing is puzzles. More than a handful of times I have found him working on them till the wee hours of the night. Anytime I find a good deal on a puzzle, I snag it because I know he will get it done.
This puzzle was 1000 pieces and one I got in Disneyland (not such a good deal but I thought it was cute). He did finally complete it after several weeks. I don’t have the patience for puzzles. I just can’t sit still for that long, but that is not the case for Drew. He gets that from his dad. I may have seen Seth sneak in there a time or two and spend a little time with Drew working on the puzzle. Melt my heart.
Ellie is a mini-me. She follows me around the house most mornings once the other kids leave to school. She cleans beside me, she does her own workouts, she even likes to sit and do my hair while I work. She is my cute little sidekick.
When she isn’t doing chores (which mind you, she often prefers to playing), she likes to dress her babies and take them on walks along the sidewalk out front. After returning from her walk, she unloaded her babies beside her on the couch and asked if she could use the Ipad while the babies rested.
Seriously, I could die! When I walked into the living room and saw this, I knew I needed a picture to remember these days. I know all too well how quickly they grow up. Man, will I miss her next year when she is gone all day. What a cutie!
A couple weeks back I got a call that started like this, “Hi Mrs. Johnson, this is Mr. Whitaker, the principal here at Mountain Ridge Junior High, and I have Megan Johnson here in my office…” My first reaction would normally be that of concern, but since I know Megan all too well, I knew it couldn’t be bad. He went on to talk about how all the teachers got together as a group and voted her in as Student of the Month for the the whole 8th grade. He assured me that it was a big deal and quite a lot of time and effort goes into making this decision. He then read me some of the quotes that her teachers had written about her (see below).
As a parent, it is pretty wonderful to get this kind of news. We are really proud of Megan around our house. She is such a devoted, kind, hard-working gal and boy do we love her! Way to go Megs!
We spent our week of spring break in southern California (along with 50 percent of the school district). We had a great time overall and wanted to record our adventure for our memories.
Happy 10th Birthday to our Claire Bear! Unfortunately her birthday fell the day after spring break ended and after we returned from our spring break trip. I gave her a couple options and she chose to skip school and go see Zootopia with her friend Allie. We dropped them off at the theater. They thought it was especially awesome to go all by themselves.
For dinner we let her choose where she wanted to go. She picked Pizza Pie Cafe. Afterward we came back home to celebrate with a little ice-cream cake.
Claire is her very own person. She is friendly to everyone, kind, thoughtful and loves to hug and be hugged. She is a bit of a spit-fire, but also very confident and will do anything she sets her mind to do. We love our Claire!
MightyJohnsons 