Claire is Five!

Last week we celebrated Claire’s birthday but she didn’t actually turn five until Monday. Every birthday is exciting but this one has been particularly important for her. She knows that once she turns five she can go to kindergarten. Daily I hear, “When can I go to school with my sisters?” Of course that won’t come till August but she did get to go to the doctor and get her kindergarten check-up yesterday. She was nervous because I warned her she would have to finish off her immunizations but she was equally excited.

She breezed through all the tests and examinations. Then when the nurse came in with three needles she got a little uncomfortable. She looked at me and I reassured her and held her hands. She was so brave. She never cried and only said “ouch” once on the shot they gave her in the backside of her arm. I was so proud of her! She got a special prize package from the doctor, which made it even better. Of course I had to treat her to a slushie and some gum afterward but that is the fun part.

Our Claire is growing up. She has always acted older than she was, but now it is hitting me that it is really happening. Another little one will be going to school. Claire is such a sweetheart. She loves to give everyone in the family lots of hugs and kisses. She is super enthusiastic about everything. There is no doubt that she is my dreamer. She is someone or something new every day. She loves to have her picture taken and dance around the house. She is one smart cookie too! All my kids have been reading their easy reader books by kindergarten, but Claire was reading them at the beginning of this year and has moved on to harder books already. The craziest part is that I didn’t teach her. My time is stretched thin and I haven’t been as good with her as I have with the others. She taught herself! She pushes me daily to sit down and listen to her read. She is doing great! We love our little Claire and although she gave me a run for my money as a toddler, she is an amazing little five year old!

Happy Birthday Claire

Claire’s birthday is during spring break this year so we decided to celebrate a few days early. She decided she wanted to do a baking party. We began by sending out this darling Invitation (made by Seth).

We decided to make aprons for each of the guests with their names drawn on them with fabric paint. Once the guests arrived they put on their aprons and began designing their chef hats. Next, we decorated sugar cookies. Frosting, M&M’s, sprinkles and green coconut were flying every where. Each kid designed their masterpieces just as they liked. After cookies we moved on to pizza. Each kid made a pizza with their choice of toppings. We had everything from cheese-less pizza to pizza with so much cheese I couldn’t fit it in the oven!

While the pizzas were cooking, the kids played a few games (find the egg; cook, cook, chef, and pass the spatula). Following games, they ate their pizzas. Well actually most of them ate one piece of their pizza and preferred to play the rest of the time. We then opened presents and finished off the day with cake and ice-cream. I made the cake look like pizza so the kids were a bit hesitant at first but once they realized it was actually cake, they dug in.

Although the party took a lot of preparation, it went really well. The kids seemed to have a great time and Claire was thrilled to have a special day of her very own. She told each of the kids as they arrived that they needed to wish her a happy birthday. Bossy? Yes. Unexpected? Absolutely not. That’s just Claire.

A super special thanks to Rachel for helping me pull this party off. I couldn’t have done it without her taking pics and helping take care of the needs of 10 little kids.


Most of the crew (minus one girl who hadn’t arrived yet)


The kiddos decoration cookies


Claire decoration her cookies


The finished products


Time to make pizzas!


How else would a brother and sister work together in the kitchen?!


Now it is time to eat the pizza…Drew is lovin’ it!


More pizza eating


Now it is time for games!


and presents…


Lastly, we had our “pizza” cake and ice-cream


The cake turned out great!

Highland Elementary Spelling Bee Champ II

Jacob won the spelling bee at his school! Again! Two years in a row. Being a little more experienced this year, he wasn’t nearly as nervous as last year. He had studied pretty hard and it was just a matter of spelling all his words correctly while waiting for the other kids to make a mistake. He did just that and came up with a win.


Asher, Jake and Micah

The best part of it was his two buddies from his class took 2nd and 3rd. As each one spelled a word right the others would give the speller a high five. Those type of things make a mom’s heart melt.

The words seemed easier this year than last. Jacob didn’t really get any super hard words. Here are the words in order from the first round to the final round: luxuriate, especially, acknowledge, articles, precision, requisition, longevity, ultimatum, hysteria, clavicle, ledger, illegible, daunt, anarchy, geranium, bureaucrat, adjudicate, phenomenal, wriggle, migraine, tarantula, slaughter, sanction, splotch, botulism, pollution, mediocre, noxious and lymph

Jacob and Asher went back and forth on about 10 words before Asher misspelled noxious. Jacob spelled it correctly and then went on to spell lymph for the win. Watch the video to see it in action. Congratulations Jake!

“Tangled” with girls!

Our copy of Tangled (the Disney cartoon) arrived on Wednesday. I tucked it away and told the girls they could invite a friend over for a late night of pizza, playing and a movie. This small event turned into quite the girly gathering! Megan invited a set of twins, Claire invited her friend Allie, and my social butterfly couldn’t pick just one friend so she invited her friends, Tess, Mia, Emma and Kate.

All the girls arrived in their PJ’s and thanks to the beautiful weather spent an hour playing outside. Later we had pizza and drinks. Then we finished off the night with popcorn and treats while watching Tangled. Such a simple get-together and they had so much fun. I love my girls!


KK & Tess on the tire swing


The whole gang


Cups for all the guests


Watchin’ the movie (a little grainy – still trying to learn to work my new camera)


Ellie loves to play with the big girls

Spring has sprung (sorta)

We have had an unusual amount of warm weather this past week. Our family has caught spring fever. What happiness warm weather brings! There have been walks to the park, hours of sidewalk chalk, running around the neighborhood with friends, and we even started on a little yard work.

Unfortunately we all woke to a few inches of snow on the ground this morning. I am going to stay optimistic and say it will be gone by morning. If not, well that’s okay because we are headed to warmer weather for spring break.


Drew buddy


Ellie Belle


Drew on his bike


Ellie playing on our swing set


The kiddos watching our load of compost (for our garden) being dumped…ewww, it stinks!

AND THEN THIS HAPPENS…


What?!

Doin’ a little prankin’

Happy April Fool’s day! I love this holiday. I am convinced it was created for mothers. It allows us to get a little crazy and have a little fun apart from our daily routine of parenting and housework. This year I read up online about a few fun things to do in the kids’ lunches. I try to change things up each year so I am hoping this catches them by surprise.

Here is what I did for their school lunch:

1) I emptied their bag of chips and filled them with carrots and used double-sided tape to seal it back up. They look seamless!

2) I made “grilled cheese sandwiches” but instead it was pound cake with a little cinnamon to make it looked toasted with orange frosting in the middle. My kids will probably request it every year! I also used my trusty double-sided tape and closed their ziplock bags so they will have a tough time getting them open.

3) I made cute mini hamburgers that are really made out of cookies, coconut, frosting and mints. These are more just fun as I assume they will know right away they aren’t real.

4) I gave each kid a piece of double-bubble, but took out the gum and put in a macadamia nut. I fear major disappointment on this one.

5) Lastly, I gave them each an apple with a gummy worm coming out it.

Lets hope they still love me after the day is over!

Ski Date: Deer Valley

Just like last year, I managed to get a free ski pass to the world famous Deer Valley resort. I thought it would be fun to bring Manina along this time so we could make a date out of it. Manina was pretty nervous. So nervous, in fact, that her anxiety was making her borderline grumpy. She thought I was going to take her up a mountain and ditch her on a double black diamond run as a joke. She obviously has never seen me ski before—I’m a complete novice.

Grandma Jan came down to babysit the kids Saturday morning and we hit the road at about 9AM. We got to the resort at about 10am, got our free passes (thank you Oracle) and got our gear ready. Both of us borrowed gear from friends and family which worked out great. We hit the bunny hill first, and Manina got less nervous. She insisted we do it again so she would be more comfortable. Then it was off to the Success run.

After doing the Success run, Manina started to get much less anxious about skiing with me—she’d figured out that I wasn’t any good and wouldn’t be taking her to any daredevil runs. We had lunch in the Silver Lake lodge, and skied just about every nearby green (beginner) run. Ontario was our favorite.

We probably squeezed in a couple more runs than we should have, because when we finally pulled off our boots at about 3:30pm, we were totally exhausted. We had been invited to a customer appreciation dinner, but were simply too wiped out to stay any longer. So, we headed back toward home. We stopped for a quick bite at Chipotle to give us enough energy to deal with the kids when we got home.

It was a great date and a very fun day on the slopes. Also, check out the video of our lack of skiing ability.

Pins were the real winners

We needed to just get out of the house the other day, but it wasn’t warm enough to play outside, so we decided to go bowling as a family. We’re not big bowlers, which is obvious by looking at the scores below.

Claire and Drew (he took the second shot) could barely get the ball onto the ramp, but once it was up there, they did pretty good. Jacob decided to try to beat Manina, so it was his first time without bumper lanes. By the end of it, he was pretty frustrated. Megan started to get it down, but still had lots of help from the bumper lanes. Manina avoided getting beat by Jacob, but had a hard time avoiding the gutter. KK finished strong, almost pulling off the turkey dinner right at the last. I played pretty well with a 163, but was disappointed not to see more strikes. I didn’t leave very many open frames though, so it was a pretty good day.

The kids found this activity more frustrating than enjoyable, so I don’t know when we’ll be going back. The pins don’t have much reason to worry about us Johnsons.

Busy, busy

Where does the time go? Well I am pretty sure I know! We get through winter by keeping busy with various activities the kids enjoy doing. I love keeping the kids involved in activities, but I also cherish my lazy days so somehow I managed to cram all of our activities into two days (Tuesday and Thursday). Needless to say, my kiddos are plum wiped out at the end of those two days. The great thing is, all the other days we can play with friends and hangout at home together. Overall I think we have a pretty good balance. Here is a list of what we have had going on the past couple months.

JACOB: Continues to play the guitar weekly. He has his recital coming this weekend. He also played on the Knights team in the Dimple Dell basketball league. He had a great season! He was the leading scorer for the team and although they didn’t get past the semi-finals, he thoroughly enjoyed himself. Baseball starts in a couple weeks!


Unfortunately with my camera on its last leg, I never got a pic of him playing in his games, but he is ALWAYS out in the back yard practicing.

MEGAN: Megan continues to play the piano. She is working on her piece for her recital and is doing great. She just finished off her basketball season as well. She was also the leading scorer and really improved a lot from last year! Soccer starts up this week so expect to see more of her in the near future.


Megan’s basketball team (Yep, Seth was the coach).

KATELYN: Katelyn is my little gymnast. She has been doing gymnastics since September (and off and on years before that as well). She recently advanced to level 4 and is doing so good. She can do amazing tricks on the bars, balance beams, and floor. She also started up with swim lessons in March. I wanted to be sure she knew all of her strokes since she is considering joining Meg on swim team this summer.


Katelyn working on her floor routine.


Katelyn posing after doing a flip off the bar.


Katelyn during her swim lessons.

CLAIRE: Claire takes a little “basement boogie” dance/tumbling class once a week. She insists she wants to join Katelyn’s gymnastics class but I am trying to put off that commitment for another year. 🙂 She also started swim lessons in March. She is doing really well and she is so determined! She also just finished up her story time session at the library.


Claire at her swimming lessons.

DREW & ELLIE: I can thankfully say we have no official schedule for them. They did attend story time with Claire, but that is about it. Their agenda includes unloading, emptying, and destroying most everything in our home. Of course I wouldn’t have it any other way!