Somebody had a birthday...

**Note-somehow this blog got totally screwed up, but I am posting it anyway cause it took me forever to do it. I will try to fix it later.**Well, now that I am back into blogging, I should mention that my handsome oldest son turned 5 on April 5th-that's right, it was his special birthday. We left to drive to Utah on Friday April 3, stayed overnight in Cheyenne and intended to leave there and get to Utah in time for a party at like 4ish that night. Instead we left Cheyenne early, went the hour or so drive to Laramie, where we got stuck with the road closed due to snow and wind. We got a hotel, went over to check in and found it was trashy-I would say at least as bad as our honeymoon Castaway hotel. There was a liquor store attached to the hotel with crazy scary looking people in and out at 10 AM as we tried to check in. I freaked and started to look for other lodgings, was told by every hotel that they were booked up. I hung up with the Days Inn who told me they were totally booked, and my mom called me. She looked online and found a room for fairly cheap open online at the very Days Inn that had just told me they were booked. We booked that room and canceled at the yucky place. We checked in there in the afternoon, after a LONG lunch at the Burger King with a playground and 2 very long trips to the super Wal-Mart. We swam and watched a movie and tried to make it fun. The next morning we planned to get out as soon as the freeway opened. And to make a long story short (too late) we ended up leaving about 10 AM. We made it to Utah in time to have a lovely Greek Easter meal (a couple weeks early) at my parents house and a party for Ender. That was his actual birthday. He had a second party at Wes's parents house the next night. I somehow did not get a picture of the cake at my parents house though. In fact I didn't get a lot of pictures there period. Tell me if you have any good ones...In the meantime, enjoy the many pictures I DO have from the parties...

Birthday Boy!Opening presents
He got a camcorder-his great aunt Kris loves and spoils him! He loves that camcorder!

Army, Stef, & Mel staying entertained.

Party 2 cake

Goofball 5-yr-old

Spence, Sol & End

Mel, Stef & the sleeping beauty

Sol

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Great-Grandma Gerry

Still a goofy 5-yr-old

Reading a card

Tom, Grandpa & Mel

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Me & Army. (If you are into Killer Bunnies, you should note that I am wearing a Killer Bunny necklace that Kris gave me!)

Mel laughs!

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Solace

Spence

Uncle Cody

Daddy Wes

Grandpa

I-MXk/s1600-h/April+Utah+295.jpg"> GG (She made the game for us by the way!)

AAAAAAAAGh4/69iCfoXcO14/s1600-h/April+Utah+299.jpg"> Mamma Bear (note Wes behind me wearing my glasses)

60s/s1600-h/April+Utah+301.jpg"> The awesome racing tack we gave Ender

600-h/April+Utah+304.jpg"> Happy Birthday Ender!!!

Kindergarten choir concert

Just before we left for Utah, Solace had her school choir program. She was lovely! Here are a few pictures followed by the videos of the songs. You have to know that during the video, Armour rolled all the way across the front of the gym and I was grabbing him while I recorded...um...yeah.

Dinner...with a twist

On April 1st, the kids and I thought it might be a funny joke to make cupcakes & french fries for dinner to fool dad. Little did the kids know what they were in for...

Here is our dinner all ready and waiting for daddy to come home... Armour isn't too surprised by his first taste-he was in on it and helped mom all day...
Kindle loved her "french fries"

Here is Solace. She is waiting to see dad's reaction to the cupcakes-she cannot wait to fool him...

Ender is equally excited and mischievous...

Dad walking in...

Solace opened up her cupcake, and said "ew...,mom, there is something wrong with my cupcake..." I captured the moment perfectly in this picture...(FYI-the cupcakes were actually meatloaf "frosted" with mashed potatoes and the french fries were actually little mini churro-like desserts.)

Ender bravely tries it...

April Fools dinner was a blast!!!

Update

We did make it out of Laramie on Sunday. We will be driving home on Saturday & Sunday. Hopefully we will not get stuck again...

Stuck

Well. We are stuck in Laramie, Wyoming overnight (well, since like 9 am.). Hoping I-80 will open in the morning so Ender won't spend his whole birthday on the road or stuck in Wyoming. It is crazy here! Just and FYI. I am going to bed now!

Solace and her awesome hair

One day for school we decided to fix Solace's hair in a funky, different, cute way. Here is what it looked like (at the end of the day):

A few nights later we decided to try bubbles (as we call them) all over her head to see how curly her hair would be for church the next day. Here are a few pics of the bubble-head. (I forgot to take pics of the curls at church the next day, so you will just have to take my word for it-it was curly!)

Isn't she lovely?

Thoughts on Twilight movie

OK, So I promised I would post my thoughts on the Twilight movie for those that might care. I would like to say that overall, I try to just enjoy movies and not critique them too harshly. It is hard. I am very critical of acting and directing especially, so it is hard for me to just enjoy any movies (or tv shows, or plays...). I have learned to expect nothing so I will not be disappointed. It is also hard to enjoy movies with Wes watching with you. Not one mistake will go by without comment or making fun of. Luckily with this movie, I expected less than nothing as most of my friends panned it. Because my expectation to like this was so very very nonexistent, I found that I did think it was alright. I MIGHT even go so far as to say I liked it a bit.

I actually enjoyed the book. Thought it was an interesting take on the whole vampire thing, and a very different story. It didn't make sense, but I was happy to suspend my disbelief and just enjoy the sappy, silly love story. The writing was poor. Very poor. But she had a good idea that intrigued me and I wanted to read more-to read the whole series (and I did). Bella was far too whiny in the book. Edward was far too willing to ignore her faults in spite of his century+ experience with people. And lets be honest, what the heck was she even doing with Edward when Jacob was the one that treated her so well. Edward is like the bad dangerous boy that she cannot resist and Jacob is like the nice guy that treats her well. Weird...anyway...

I bring all this up because it brings me to my first point about the movie...the acting. Given the material, I wondered how the actors could even do it. I saw the girl playing Bella in the movie Speak, and she is a GREAT actress. I hoped this role would not ruin her. I have to say that given the character and material, she did remarkably well. Bella was much more manageable to me than she was in the book. However, the main important thing to get that movie right was to have some MAJOR chemistry between Bella and Edward, and there was none. Can I also throw in here that the entire Cullen/vampire clan with the exception of Esme and maybe Alice was miscast. Rosalie was a character I actually liked int he book-this was SO the wrong actress for her. All the Cullens were way wrong...

One more very annoying thing for me...what the heck was the sparkling thing in the sun. It sucked. Where were their awesome special effects? That was like-hey lets throw some minimal glitter on our actor and call it good. What the heck?! Was this a studet production on a shoe string budget or a Hollywood movie? SO BAD!!

And the final fight-come on. It was just so minimal. Again, was this a budget issue or were we really making the choice to show so little of the fight and to do it in the background while we focus on Edward on Bella only. Duh.

Best characters/actors: Jacob & Esme (also must mention here that the evil vampires were great as well-especially the evil chick-she rocked!!!)
Worst characters/actors: Rosalie tops the list with the rest of the Cullins (Edward & Dr Cullen included, Alice excluded) in second place.
Worst scenes/effects: glittering vampire, and fight scene.
My favorite scene: the very last 10 second of the movie. Please oh please give evil Miss vampire much more screen time in the next movie!

I give the movie a 2.5 of 5 stars. I did not HATE it, but I didn't like it a whole lot either. It was middle of the road at best.

We are the Johnson parents and we are handy!! (Part 2: Wes the plumber)

Saturday night March 14, Wes and I hear a funny noise in our house. We think it is weird, but it only happens once, so we don't think much of it. Fast forward to Sunday March 15th, in the early evening, after church. Wes goes outside in the backyard to play with the kids. There is water leaking all along back of the house, between the siding and the house. Wes thinks, "Hmmm, this looks like a burst pipe, or maybe it is run-off from the warming we had that day." So, to test his theories, he turns off the water in the house to see if the leaking stops. It does. Darn, it must be a burst pipe-Wes is sure of it now, and it explains the strange noise as well. Double Dang-that sounds like a very expensive repair for us, and remember it is a Sunday night at that point.

Being the responsible adults that we are, we decide to look up our insurance to see if this is covered, and to see what our deductible is. This is the first time we have needed our homeowners insurance. The weekend lady tells us that she isn't sure and the week day lady will have to let us know later in the week. So for now we just need to get it repaired. Oh as a side note, we have no way to just shut off water to that faucet/pipe, so until it is repaired, we are stuck with no water on in the house at all.

We do not know who to call or who we can trust to be our new plumber. So we start calling people in the ward to get recommendations. One guy in the ward does that stuff, and could help but not for a week, so he recommends calling someone that is non-union. People we talk to do not give us specific recommendations, but we do get some DO NOT CALLs... So, we keep looking and start calling plumbers listed in the phone book. I am starting to think this will be VERY expensive and I am getting more frustrated. I am also learning how much I love and rely on my running water. I cannot get anything done that was on my list-no laundry, no dishes, not relaxing bath at the end of a horrible 3 hours of fighting kids at church...we cannot even flush the toilet (ew). It sucks.

Regardless of the horror of the situation, we are able to determine that we will save SIGNIFICANT amounts of money if we wait until Monday (the next morning) to have a plumber come out, and we determined one that our real estate agent recommended (he has the greatest connections ever, and is like the most helpful guy to know in Omaha). So we have to live through at least one day with no water. OK

After all that, we get a call from our bishop who we had not gotten a hold of, but had left a message asking if he knew a good, reliable, reasonably-priced plumber. He calls back to say that, no he knows none. In fact he was so frustrated by plumbing bills and problems, that he watched the plumber at his house a couple times doing stuff, figured out how to do it himself, and bought the necessary tools. Since then, he has been doing his own plumbing, oh and hey he offers to bring over his tools and help Wes fix it late Monday night (after family night and his kids are in bed). We gratefully accept his offer.

Monday I needed to get the house, mainly the laundry room as it is the interior access point to the pipe, clean so the bishop can come and do this. I also need to go get the supplies. Wes said he would get them on the way home from work, but it seemed stupid to have him do that when I was going to be home all day. I was freaking out about everything as Wes went to work (just in my head-not aloud for Wes to hear). However, my husband is acutely aware of the things that totally throw me off, so he goes to work, and as soon as he gets there decides he cannot leave me with all the kids (all because Solace had no school that day) trying to get everything ready. So, he walked in to work, explained the situation and said he needed to take a vacation day.

We worked together and got all the supplies, cleaned the house, and when the bishop came, he and Wes worked and got the pipe fixed by about midnight. It was amazing! And guess what-it worked (still works). They even added an off switch so if this happens again, we can just shut off the water to that faucet, and not the whole house! YEAH!!! AND-now Wes knows how to fix it next time on his own!!

Thanks Bishop!

Thanks Wes!!!

Ever Wonder what a burst pipe looks like? Here's Ender modeling it:

New and improved:

We are the Johnson parents and we are handy!! (Part 1:Beckee the mechanic)

If you are a long-time active reader of this blog, you might remember that I mentioned once that I missed the Utah bowl game because I backed into my mother-in-law's new car right at the beginning of the game. Yeah. Dang.

Anyway, we reported to the insurance to get her car fixed, but I figured I could fix the damage to my car by myself. This is what it looked like:
I am not an experienced mechanic, I have never fixed my car myself, frankly, I don't even change my own oil (thanks dad and Wes for doing all that for me always). BUT, I do know HOW to do those things, or I think I do, or I could figure them out anyway...So I decided that.

It took me a long while to find the right part and at the right price, but in the end I got it. A few weeks ago, I pulled apart the light and figured out how to replace the break light bulb as it went out (not when I hit the car, but just randomly burned out). So, when my part arrived in the mail, I felt like an experienced light getter-offer and onner. I went out to the front drive during nap time one day last week, and I just did it. It is beautiful! Look at the final product (and ignore the messy, winter van)...

Isn't it lovely?!

Lost me marbles...

So, Solace's class did a "shape gallery" in the main hall of the school. Solace displayed a sphere, and she chose a marble. It was stolen or lost from the table. She asked her teacher if she could write some posters to get it back. The teacher said yes and she made and hung up posters. A few days later, the 3rd graders found a marble out on the playground that they could tell from the drawing was not the right one, but they cleaned it up and gave it to her anyway as no one claimed it. On Tuesday we were up at the school for Solace's Discovery Fair, and we saw her note. It was so funny I had to take a picture and post it:

It says "If you stole a big marble polees breeng it bak? To Mrs Andersons class room."