Too Much Time on My Hands

Further evidence I've had WAY too much time on my hands can be found in my having bothered to create not one but two versions of the same photo slideshow.

The first version is our usual format, an Adobe Photo Album PDF slideshow. The pictures are mostly from yesterday and the days leading up to Christmas, but there are also several others from the weeks since we last created a slideshow after Rex was born.

The second version, my personal favorite, was an opportunity to showcase a song from one of my Christmas gifts from Margie, the soundtrack from the movie Open Season, with songs written and performed by one of my all-time favorites, Paul Westerberg.

Sorry for being such a blog hog the last couple days ... or in our vernacular, I guess that would be either a Blogger Clogger or a Blagger Clagger.

Christmas Knievel

As promised, click here to see a Pittsburgh- Johnsons Christmas video.

The main attraction is Felix performing stunts on his new slide. The video is a little less than three minutes.

We'll have to post some video of Rex separately. Additionally, we will probably also put together a little photo slideshow to share.

Merry Boxing Day, everyone!

More Photos of the Boys

Felix enjoying the manger












Relaxin' Rex

Clowning Around

Felix and I were clowning around with his camera (i.e. our old camera he broke, which is why the pictures are blurry) tonight, and the picture at left resulted, among others.

Thought I'd share it.

Keith with other Notables!

Janet wanted everyone to see this list of Award Winners from the Springville Museum of Art. Please note that Keith received an Award of Merit. His name is among the names of many other famous Utah artists. Great job, KJ! (please remember that I'm tech-challenged and don't know how to size a picture from a scan!)

Blog At A Standstill

The Blog has come to a screetching halt as far as new posts and comments go. I am as guilty as anyone, but I must call everyone to repentance. The blogmaster will forgive...

Anyway, I heard there were grumblings (Keith) that we hadn't posted about our new van. Yes, we bought an'04 Toytota Sienna from Gaylen. We like it a lot. We will have to post a picture of it before we head to Denver. We are planning on leaving Thursday morning at about 3 a.m. I'm hoping we can all get some sleep before there is too much traffic on the road. Riley is very excited to see Grandma and Grandpa Johnson. We also recently bought a NordicTrack treadmill at a Fitness Liquidation Sale (Christmas for both of us). We got a steal of a deal and have both enjoyed getting a little exercise. With the high being in the teens each day it isn't fun to run outside.

Trying again---photographic proof of work

Here's the proof---I hope!

Book Celebration!

This is proof that I do work occasionally. On Wednesday, one of the local elementary schools received the books purchased with a $10,000 donation from Wells Fargo Bank. At the end of the presentation, the adults helped the students put stickers in each book indicating who the donor was. These were 5th graders, so I was back in my element working with them.

Yeehaw!

I'm home sick, AGAIN! I got a cold over Thanksgiving weekend while Keith was here, and missed a couple of days of work recovering from that. Then, just when I thought I was kicking it, I got sick again. Turns out I never really got better...my cold just turned into a nasty sinus infection. :P Isn't it "funny" that I never had a sinus infection before last year (that I knew of, anyway!), and I've had 3 since last June! Crazy, and not fun!

Anyway, I figured that since I am down for the count, I would take this opportunity to post some pictures from my adventures in Nashville. I don't have all of them on my laptop, but I'll share a few that I do have loaded:



This was from the Country Music Hall of Fame. I'll tell you, I learned more about country music that day than ANYONE ought to know! It was quite interesting, though, and reminded me of a couple of country songs that I want to put on my iPod...#1: The Gambler by Kenny Rogers. :)



After spending a good part of they day at the Hall of Fame, I walked to this restaurant for some barbeque. I hate to admit that this was a planned destination from day one, because in a TV spot John Mayer went to this restaurant to eat. So my plan was to go eat there and try to sit in the same booth that he did. Mission accomplished! The food was REALLY great (the lady at the Hall of Fame said she would have recommended Jack's if I would have asked for a barbeque recommendation), and here is a picture of me in John's booth of choice:



It may be a little pathetic, but it was a fun adventure, and worked out really well since the restaurant was SO close to the Hall of Fame! It was meant to be!



This was just a picture from the "deck" of the ridiculously HUGE convention center on the first day of the conference. It was a chilly morning, but so pretty with the mist and the colors! Despite what you might think if you watch CSI, we don't get a lot of mist/fog in Vegas, and we definitely don't get much color on our trees! It was such a peaceful, gorgeous sight, I had to take a picture!

I also went to the Hermitage which was Andrew Jackson's home, and to the Belle Meade Plantation where they used to raise champion horses. That outing was an adventure in and of itself because the tour bus driver was holding a microphone and singing to us while he drove! Now THAT's entertainment at it's finest!

Riley's Birthday Party

I just wanted to post a link to a web album of photos from Riley's Birthday Party. There are also a few pictures of her throwing her blankets away - that was a very big deal. These were the blankets she would suck on to go to sleep! She has been coping well with post blankey life!

Here is the link: http://www.picasaweb.google.com/ToddValerie

Please see below for this year's list of Christmas gift-exchange assignments. Merry Christmas and happy giving!!!

	HAS
Lizzy	Keith
Todd	Lisa
Valerie	Lizzy
Amy	Todd
Scott	Valerie
Margie	Amy
Keith	Scott
Lisa	Margie

The big reveal...

I did it...

After approximately 5 years of not cutting my hair significantly, I have gone and completely cut it all off! It was a little traumatic at first, and I'm still getting used to it, but I THINK I like it! I like it in a different way than I liked my long hair, but I like it! So here I am at work, taking pictures of myself to share! It's a little wind-blown, but you get the general idea!

What do you think??

First Snow

I got up this morning to find that there were 3-4 inches of snow on the ground. It all depended on where in the drive way you were. Hard to believe it was 60 degrees two weeks ago. Apparently we are to get additional snow tonight, but the roads are clear. Had to do some errands this morning and had no problems.

Engaged, at last!!

You'll all be happy and surprised to learn that I finally got engaged today, especially when you find out that my husband-to-be is Keith! :) After we left church, we went down to the area of town where all of the wedding chapels are so that Keith could take some pictures. He wanted to see the inside of one of the chapels, so we went in and pretended that we were scouting locations for our upcoming nuptuals. It was funny stuff! But in reality, I would be pretty mad if I was engaged to Keith and he wanted to have a $199 Elvis Wedding at the Graceland Chapel, complete with an Elvis impersonator walking me down the aisle and singing us a song. That's a depressing thought!

I'll leave it to him to tell you about (and hopefully share) the pictures that he took at the Drive Thru lane at the Little White Chapel. It is SO fun to watch him work! He is amazing with people, and has such a great eye for quirky, interesting, cool pictures! We have had such a good time together, and I am going to miss him when he leaves. *Sigh*

Black Friday

Well, my apologies to Scotty for calling his fancy pants chart an organizational chart! If we were together, I would go into my Ms. Smarty-Pants voice and make a remark...so you'll all just have to imagine it for yourselves! :)

I wanted to start out for apologizing a little bit for Keith and I being sort of incommunicado the past couple of days! We have just been busy little beavers, and usually don't get home until it's too late to call anyone without making them mad! Today we spent approximately 9 1/2 hours shopping...for Keith! I tell ya', that guy can SHOP! It was fun to help him pick out some new "drasual" (that's dressy/casual) clothes for times when he doesn't need to wear his finest, but also can't pull off a t-shirt and jeans. He found some nice, nice stuff, and will certainly be the best-looking and best-dressed guy at church on Sunday.

I, too, seem to be suffering from some illness. I don't feel sick (yet), but have a pretty nasty sore throat and a scratchy voice! Hopefully it won't turn into anything worse...I'm just hoping that I have some Cepacol in my medicine cabinet for my sleeping comfort!

Hope everyone is enjoying their down time, and that anyone who is even a little sick will recover quickly! Love to you all!

Who was Gantt?

I've never heard of a Gantt Chart--nor Gantt! Were he and Milty friends?

We loved the names on the chart as well.

Janet has been taking care of her in-valid sister. I've developed a cold--nose alternating between runny and stuffy and sleeping sickness from the medication. Mouth breathing has been the norm. She wakes me to feed me and tell me when to go to bed! Since I'm awake, you can guess that a meal on its way.

Kacie and Jamie stopped by last night--that was a treat for us. When Janet hugged Kacie she indicated that Kacie had passed her in height! "Bumpy" looked cute with her long hair curled.

Johnson Family Blog

Johnson Family Blog

Medical Update!!!

I saw the Gastroenterologist last Friday. He was pleased that I had been eating a Regular? diet. But he told me to be verrry careful. So I haven't had a lettuce salad yet and am trying to stick to mostly soft foods. Maggie and I had dinner at the Hotel yesterday, sorry Todd, no Banana Cream pie, we just had the small Pumpkin Tarts as we were pretty full of turkey, stuffing, potatoes and salad. I was careful.

I am to see the GI doc again in 6 months.

Thanksgiving Video

Here's a little video from our Pittsburgh Thanks- giving gathering.

Sadly, this may prove a little scandalous and undermine confidence in my kitchen staff, but I thought I'd go ahead and put it out there anyway. Enjoy!

Clarification: Gantt Chart vs. Org Chart

I just wanted to make a clarification: Amy referred to my Gantt chart as an organizational chart.

For the record, I have included an org chart as well, since the delineation of responsibilities was pretty clear yesterday (all part of the plan).

The one person missing from the org chart (apart from the babies) is Lisa, whose birthday it was, of course. As such she was exempt from any formal responsibility. However, they do say the customer is king, so maybe I should have added a level above me in the org chart!

Celery sauce????

I won't even comment on the fact that my brother had a "master plan" for thanksgiving. Then again, I'm sure our pilgrim forefathers had a master plan for their day: which belt buckle to wear on their hats, sweet or mashed potatoes, how to make polite conversation with the naked natives at the dinner table etc. (Just as a side note, I believe that the first loin cloth was implemented by native americans following the first Thanksgiving feast where there was an unfortunate hot gravy spill in one of their laps. I won't tell you what his Indian name was changed to after that.

I think it is also obvious why celery sauce USED to be sold by HEINZ. I think it was discontinued about the same time as giblet pie.

There was a classic moment today when Amy and I arrived at LAWRY's for dinner and the mandatory valet parking was in effect. Needless to say, the valet obviously had never seen a "freakin' dumbmobile" (to quote Jamie ) before. I think he was also pleasantly surprised to find out that he not only was driving a brown '99 chevy prism, but that he also had to roll down the window to open the driver's side door because the inside handle is broken. Hey, it's paid for.

Hope everyone had a Happy Turkey day (with no gravy incidents).

Live from Las Vegas.

KJ