MightyJohnsons

Drew is Eight!

Our little Drew Buddy has turned eight! He wanted more than anything to have a few of his buddies over to celebrate. Although my energy level is less than stellar a week or two after Christmas, I conceded and allowed him to have six of his buddies come with us to the Museum of Curiosity.

I am obviously not around boys enough because their energy level blew my mind. They played so hard and never let up until I made them head to the car. Their sweaty hair and foreheads proved it.

Even the car ride home was full of energy. Drew was being the joker and all the boys were laughing their head off at him. I never see that side of Drew so it was kind of fun to watch it happen.

After arriving home we opened presents, had cupcakes and the boys continued to play until their parents arrived. Drew loved all of his presents. He got a star wars puzzle, Star Wars Disney Infinity set, some infinity characters, a rockets, and an Ipod touch from us and his grandparents. He was thrilled.

Drew is unique character. He loves to learn about facts. He enjoys putting things together and figuring things out. He loves puzzles and is currently working on a 1000 piece one all by himself. He goes to bed when instructed at around 8:30 but then stays up in his bed reading Magic Treehouse, Boxcar Children, and the Diary of Wimpy Kid series for a couple hours every night. I try to get him to fall asleep sooner, but for whatever reason he is a late-nighter. I can’t complain as it has helped him be one of the best readers in his class and he currently reads at a 4th grade reading level. He has a tender heart and loves to write us notes to tell us how much he loves us. We can’t imagine our family without our little book reading, soccer playing, puzzle solving guy in it.

Megan’s Survivor Obsession

Megan loves Survivor. You know, the show where a group of people are abandoned on a tropical beach and vote each other off the island one by one.

Surfing Pinterest while streaming Survivor

During Christmas break, Megan spent most days streaming entire seasons of the show. She is convinced she is going to join the show and win it some day. She has even started keeping a list of necessary training and skills she will need to win the million dollar prize.

Looks like we will be enjoying many more fun backpacking adventures in the future to get her ready for her Survivor debut. We will definitely be cheering for her to win.

2015 Year in Review

Twenty-fifteen has been a great year for the Mighty Johnsons. Here are some of the most memorable experiences that we documented on our site this year. What a great year!

MJ_Best_of_2015

Every New Year’s Eve has a countdown, so here are the top 10 posts from 2015:

10. Be like Siri and vote for Megan

9. Farewell to Morinda

8. How to vacation at Bear Lake

7. Katelyn’s week at Clear Creek

6. Scoutmaster Emeritus

5. Kid Kamp

4. Mom is gone survival guide

3. Girls can backpack too

2. Skydiving

1. Montana wilderness adventure

As you can see, we had some great memories from 2015. We wish you a very happy new year from our family to yours.

Christmas 2015

We had another wonderful Christmas season. We had our annual Christmas Eve festivities with Grandpa and Grandma Johnson and all of Seth’s siblings and their children. We love the delicious food and great company. Every year the performance of the nativity gets better and better as the older kids are able to better help the younger ones. The candy bar game was a little more complicated than normal as Seth’s rules were tricky this year, but everyone had a great time.

We came home to open our pajamas, have apple cider, sing songs and read “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

The kids actually slept pretty good and our first wake-up call was at 7 am. We gathered our kids in our room and then sent them out one by one to see what Santa had brought. I always love to see the excitement on their faces as they come out. The spirit is Christmas is magical.

Everyone seemed pleased with their gifts. Some of our favorites were the game “Pie Face”, Megan’s Arvo watch, Jake’s phone, Katelyn’s penny board, Claire’s doll stuff, Drew’s tether ball, and Ellie’s horse and camper. I got some sweet cordless headphones and Seth got a new Apple watch. Presents were fun, but as Jake always reminds us every year, the best part of Christmas isn’t the gifts, but rather the feelings, smells and time we spend together as a family and most importantly the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

Sharing Christmas 2015

We were happy when my parents gave us a similar Christmas gift as last year: a roll of $1 bills and a note telling us to spread some Christmas cheer. We absolutely love this tradition because it helps put all of in a “how can we help others?” mindset.

So, this is what we did with our money this year:

Lunch on Us Envelopes

We decided to create several “Lunch on Us” envelopes. We gathered some Christmas cards, stuffed them with some cash and had the kids hand-write a message inside.

The note said something like this:

Merry Christmas!

You are great. We’ve noticed you and want you to enjoy lunch on us.

Giving you this small gift helps us remember the gift of Jesus Christ. He fed the hungry more than once when He was on the earth. But, now it is our turn to do something kind.

We invite you to join us in giving acts of kindness to complete strangers during this holiday season. In doing so, we hope your Christmas is a little brighter.

Love,

The Johnsons

The idea was that as we were out-and-about we would look for opportunities to give these out. It really made a big difference to our mindset as we ran our many holiday errands. Here are the people we gave envelopes to this year:

The Costco gas lady

She was out on a bitter cold night just doing her job. Ellie ran up to her and gave her an envelope and said “Merry Christmas!” The lady couldn’t stop smiling and she walked over to our Suburban and waved to us. Hopefully it warmed her up on that cold night.

A guy in uniform at Kohls

A serviceman was walking out of Kohls in his digital camouflage and wasn’t looking too happy (who would be after being in that absolute nightmare of a store). Manina got out, chased after him, and said, “Thank you for your service. Have a Merry Christmas!” Hopefully it made him forget his crappy experience at Kohls.

Our mail lady

This was an easy one that we just dropped in our front mailbox. She’s a civil servant, and could use the break.

The nice receptionist at the AF Rec Center

We targeted her because she is always so nice and friendly. After a workout, Manina ran an envelope and gave it to her at the front desk.

Our waitress at Buffalo Wild Wings

We went to dinner for Manina’s birthday and had a great waitress. We left her a good-sized tip, but felt like she deserved an envelope as well.

The friendly janitor at the mall

She was working on Christmas Eve and Drew finally worked up the courage to go give her an envelope. I caught some great pictures while pretending to get a drink from the drinking fountain. She said, “Oh that is so sweet! Can I also get a hug?” Drew obliged bashfully, but it totally made him feel good to make her day.

A construction crew on break at 7-11

These hard working guys rolled up next to us at 7-11. They’d obviously been on a job. Manina jumped out of our suburban and put an envelope on their van while they were in the store. One of the lucky guys came back out and grabbed it and opened it up while we watched stealthily from our car a couple spots down from his.

The car wash attendant

Katelyn went up to a car wash attendant and gave him an envelope. Her target ended up switching spots with another guy, so he got the lucky envelope.

An unlucky cashier

We did have one envelope mishap. On Christmas Eve Jake presented an envelope to a cashier at Holiday gas station in Riverton.

The only problem was that we had given him the wrong envelope! Manina discovered the error when looking for a gift card we had purchased for my brother. We raced back and swapped envelopes with the cashier who was wondering why we’d given him an envelope addressed to “Jesse and Mikaela.” Katelyn observed that it was a good thing the cashier’s name wasn’t Jesse or we would have really been in trouble. Hopefully our cashier friend will still be happy with his “lunch on us”.

Christmas Giving Tree

We also donated some money to our church ward giving tree. The bishop identifies a family in need and uses this money to help them out during Christmas. We decided to use some of our money to help an anonymous family in our neighborhood with Christmas.

Holiday Festivities 2015

December always brings lots of fun performances and activities. This December didn’t let us down. We had several performances and events to attend. Plus, we made time to decorate cookies and even a gingerbread house. We do the same things every year during the holidays. We are funny that way. If I try to go off the path, my kids quickly correct me and remind me that we need to stick with our traditions. See below for pictures of the things we have been doing…

Izzy, Ellie & Dylan after their class Christmas concert.

Claire playing one of the Cratchit children in her class play, The Christmas Carol.

Sledding for Manina’s Birthday

Having Manina’s birthday so near Christmas makes it a little difficult for gift-giving. So (and entirely to her credit) we usually take time to do an activity as a family for her birthday. This year, we decided to all go sledding.

We all had a great time sledding and more importantly, no one got hurt. We finished it up with a family dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings, followed by a traditional birthday DQ ice cream cake.

Happy birthday, Manina!

Anniversary Vegas Trip

Because of its proximity to Christmas and Manina’s birthday, our anniversary usually either:

gets rescheduled (we choose to celebrate it on a different date)

gets minimized (we go out to dinner at a nice restaurant and call it good)

This year a few things happened to help make our anniversary plans be a lot of fun:

BYU and Utah got matched up in the Las Vegas bowl
Manina got a fun bonus at work
Weather and work allowed for time off for a road trip

So, on Friday we headed down to Vegas for our anniversary. Part of Manina’s bonus was for a great room at the Palazzo resort.

We decided to splurge and eat dinner at the best seafood restaurant we could find. Conveniently, the conjoined Palazzona and Venetian resorts had a restaurant that fit the bill — Aquaknox.

Manina and I are both cheapskates and would normally have much difficulty spending that much money on food. But, we soothed ourselves by saying we were spending it on a memory, and that would make it worth it.

We had king crab, lobster, shrimp, and a pretty spectacular filet mignon.

The food was delicious.

After dinner we tootled around the shops, but couldn’t bring ourselves to spend any more money.

Saturday was game day. We woke up early and worked out at the fitness center. Then we drove to the game. The weather was beautiful and everyone was excited for a good football game.

Unfortunately, it was a horrible game.

Our beloved cougars started the game with 5 turnovers for touchdowns. In a row. Down 35-0 in the first quarter set the stage for a boring game. Utah would play conservatively and burn clock, and BYU would scrap and scrap and never dig themselves out of the early hole they dug for themselves. Frustrating.

I wanted to stay another night, but Manina wanted to get back for the Christmas program on Sunday. So, we knew we were going to leave the game early. After the first quarter performance, I was ready to leave. But Manina made me stay at least until after halftime.

In hindsight, I’m glad I did because the Cirque du Soleil performers were impressive.

We listened to the rest of the game driving through the Nevada desert back to Utah. When the Cougars pulled within 7, Manina punched me and said she’d never forgive me if they came back to win.

They didn’t, so that’s one less thing she has to forgive, meaning maybe we can make it through yet another year of wedded bliss.

Ellie’s Gymnastics

Ellie has been doing gymnastics with Alpine Aerials for a year or two now. In December she had her little performance. Ellie and her bestie, Izzy are the oldest in the class and lead the kids in most of their routines. I enjoyed watching her and her friends perform and show off all they are learning. We are proud of our little gymnast.

Creating ParentClue

Since I’m no longer a scoutmaster, I have a bunch of extra time on my hands. I typically just wander aimlessly around the house looking for something to look busy with so Manina doesn’t assign me any chores.

I got busted doing nothing one evening so Manina volunteered me to go with her over to help some friends with a technical problem they were having.

Our friends, the Bergerons, wanted help setting up their old iPhone so their kids could use it. We had told them about some of the controls we set for our kids and shared some of our best practices. As we were stepping through some of the setup screens, Penny said, “Hey, you’re pretty good at this.”

Mike had just completed an online webinar, and explained how helpful it had been. Mike started talking doing this kind of training as a business. I mentioned I have been learning about the online courses for a while, and that I loved the business model — if only I could find a topic to teach.

We talked about the fusion of these concepts and came up with a really rough idea we called ParentClue. I didn’t really love the name, but I came home that night and did a quick search to see if the name was available. It was. I bought it. ParentClue it is, then.

And I have been working on it ever since.

I typically do one or two things every day to try to see this crazy experiment has potential.

One of my first failures was the logo. I went to a site and paid a small amount to get a logo designed outsourced for cheap. I explained what I wanted, and I got back this:

I wasn’t very happy with it, and asked the designer to put a little more thought and effort into it. He’s still ignoring me. Oh well, you get what you pay for.

So, I had to go and do some of my own logo design work. I ended up whipping up this which isn’t great, but will do for now. Much better than the “professional logo design” I paid for.

I’ve experimented with my ParentClue Facebook page, even buying ads to drive more traffic (hint: it doesn’t work very well). I have social media accounts at all the usual places.

But, none of my efforts have been an overwhelming success yet. I can really help parents with this stuff though. I’m a good teacher, I know the technology stuff inside and out, and I have six kids to parent (and experiment on). So, I’m going to keep pressing forward.

My current plan is to create an outline for a course. I will then create all of the videos, documents, cheat sheets, and slide shows for the first module or lesson. I am going to give away that first module for free and see how it does. If I can’t get any traction, then I will pivot and see how else I can help people in this area. But, if I can get an audience, and then get several people to pre-purchase the course (early buyers will get lots of insider info and also become my beta-testers), I will dive head first into creating the full course and sell it like crazy.

I don’t think this will replace my full-time job or anything. But I do think it will be very helpful to parents of kids with mobile devices (all parents these days, right?). In any case, it’s a good side project that I will learn a lot from. And, if I can really help some people along the way, I’m going to keep at it.