Christmas Day finally arrives!

Merry Christmas! What a blessing it is to be with family on Christmas. I know that I treasure it every year. And every year it seems to be more and more special to me.

On Christmas morning, the kids woke up when Santa rang his sleigh bells to let them know he had just dropped off their gifts. This happened at 6:00 am. So we all got up and raced into the living room to check out what treasures were left. The kids first explored their stockings. I'm so glad that Santa doesn't leave them a ton of candy. The kids sure don't need any more sugar! But they got lots of little things in their stockings that made them very happy!

Then it was on to the gifts under the tree. Each one received 4 toys from Santa, and there was even a family gift for us all. Santa had heard that we are probably going to do several road trips this summer so he brought a dual monitor DVD player for the car. That will be great!!!!

After opening gifts and playing with them for a while, we all packed up and headed over the river & through the woods to Grandmother's house. Or should I say to my parents house. My siblings & their spouse's were already there waiting for us. We had a yummy egg bake breakfast & then started opening up gifts again. It was fun! We were all in our pj's to ensure that the tradition lives on. Plus it is just more comfortable to be in jammies!

Then came the gorging of a food filled dinner. We ate so much that we couldn't even take a single bite of pie! Wow! But it was so great to spend the day with family. Eventually we had to head home in the evening. Our doggie needed some attention, too! So off we went, back over the river (we actually do go over a river - funny, huh?) and through the woods to our little home sweet home.

Now, as life returns to normal, we hope that the kids continue to appreciate all that they have. A huge Thank You to everyone who sent us wonderful Christmas cards! It was so great to see what everyone was up too!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Here the kids are pulling things out of their Christmas stockings.

Holly opening up one of her Santa gifts. It was this little puppy dog that barks and zooms around the floor. She loved it!

Santa brought Myles this football game with little football guys that you put out on the field. He is really into football, so it was great that Santa brought this gift!

The other cool toy that Santa brought was a Nintendo DSi. Myles seems to like it. Although he still asks to play with our iPhone. He even said it would have been good if Santa gave him an iPhone. Yeah.... like that is going to happen!

Santa gave Holly these roller skates. She loves them! And has already figured out how to balance most of the time on them.

Here is what my parent's Christmas tree looks like. Well, it looks a little more empty now that we've opened all the gifts!

The adults got Christmas Stockings at my Parents house. Holly was "helping" by emptying one of them.

Myles reading a book that my Mom got. He is also wearing the new Star Wars shirt that Aunt Erica & Uncle Pete gave him. He loved it and wants to wear it on the first day back to school.

Holly got some chap stick in her stocking & insisted that she bring it over to my parent's house. She put it on her lips & face all day long! But then she fell and shattered the plastic top so I ended up having to throw it away the other day. She hasn't asked where it is, and I'm hoping she has forgotten about it!

Random cute picture

This was just to cute not to share. Enjoy!

We were driving home from somewhere on 12/23 when Erik took this super cute picture of Holly! I just had to share it with the world. My glamorous little girl!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve with Team Johnson was great!! Erik and I were home with the kids all day, and just hung out with them. Then in the afternoon we had to hustle to get ready for church because if you don't get there early, you don't get a spot to sit. We were there 25 minute early and got one of the last seats in the whole church. Next year we'll have to get there 35+ minutes early just to be on the safe side. Both kids had a bag of activities to keep them occupied and quiet during the service. They colored and read a few books. The folks around us commented on how cute and well behaved they were. Whew! It was much less stressful this year than in past years when they were younger.

We then headed home for Erik to cook us a yummy dinner. Crab legs seems to be a tradition. I believe this is the 2nd or 3rd year in a row that we have done this. Myles LOVES crab! Holly... not so much. So Erik made a few fish sticks for her, and Myles even ate a few of those.

After dinner comes the exciting part... presents! This is a blend of Johnson tradition & Bietz tradition. Erik grew up opening all his gifts on Christmas eve (even Santa gifts), but my family just did one gift on Christmas eve so that we opened everything on Christmas morning. So the blend of our traditions means we open family gifts on Christmas eve, and Santa gifts on Christmas morning. It works out great! So the kids and parents took turns opening up one gift at a time, and had a blast! I think they both were happy with what they got (well, maybe not so excited about the pj's, but it was still fun to open the wrapping paper!).

We then played with the new toys for a long time before we finally told them it was time to get ready for bed. So we quickly tossed out some oats into the snow for the reindeer, and picked out cookies for Santa before going to bed. Erik and I then had a nice glass of wine and relaxed for a bit before getting everything ready for Santa to come in the morning.

It was a wonderful day & evening at home with the family! I'm already looking forward to it next year!

How cute are the kids in their Christmas outfits! I didn't even tell Myles to put his arm around Holly - he just did it on his own. What a great big brother!

During a weak moment I let the kids open one gift before dinner - Myles picked this little lego set that Holly gave him. So he followed the directions and put it together himself while Erik was cooking dinner.

And here is a picture of the yummy crab that we ate all up! Sooo good!

And now it was time to tear into the gifts! Here is Holly opening up one of the toys that we gave her. It is a mommy horse and baby.

Myles was thrilled to get yet another lego set! Sometimes I think he is a little lego crazy and only has legos on the brain!

Myles also got this electronic drum set. Yes, this was my brilliant idea. :) Both kids liked hitting the drum sticks on the drum pads.

Here is cutie Holly starting to slow down. The cute little monkey pj's next to her are the new ones that we gave her. They are so cute!

Making Christmas cookies

On Thursday last week (12/23) I was at home with the kiddos, and we decided to make some frosted Christmas cookies. This was a must as we needed them for Christmas eve.... how else would we have 2 cookies to leave out for Santa to eat after delivering his gifts for the kids? :) So we had a blast cutting, baking, and frosting our little cookie creations! Luckily we only had enough dough to make like 20 cookies. We don't need that many sitting around the house tempting us (or begging kids at 7:00 am to please have just one cookie).

Both kids cutting out some holiday shaped cookies

Here is what it looked like - small, but fun!

After baking comes the fun part - frosting them! (and licking the frosting off the knives once we are done - yum!)

Myles is concentrating hard to make his really good.

Here is what they looked like once we were done (and had a few for taste testing!).

Pre-School Holiday program

Holly had her Pre-School Holiday program yesterday, and it was sooo cute! The kids had been working hard at learning a few Christmas songs, and the day finally arrived where they could show off their skills to family & friends. Both Erik and I were able to attend, and Holly was thrilled about that! She knew I was coming but Daddy surprised her. She shouted out "Daddy!" when she saw him. So cute! The program was about 20 minutes long (or less), and 10 of those minutes was a cute slide show with picture of what the kids have been doing this past month. The first half was the kids singing a few Christmas songs. They needed lots of prompts from the teachers and there were several parts that were just a mumble. But the parts they knew well, they belted out! After the program, we all went to the classroom for cookies and juice. It was so much fun!

The pictures are a little blurry - the lighting wasn't the best, and I had to zoom with my iPhone which makes it a little less crisp in quality. But she is still cute as a button!

Holly looking so cute in her little red & black outfit! I didn't want to put her in her fancy Christmas dress, but thought she should still have a Holiday look to her. She loved the little jewels on her black leggings!

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Here is the whole group - it was great to have Holly up front so we could easily see her singing! She kept looking over at us. We blew kisses back and forth to each other.

Another group shot - Holly's hand looks blurry because she was shaking her jingle bell with gusto!

This first video is of the kids singing their first song - jingle bells. It was cute but I don't think they knew when to stop.....

Just one more little clip of them singing a different song - cute!

Our Christmas tree

Team Johnson went out on Sunday afternoon to locate and chop down our 2010 Christmas Tree! Well....ok, we didn't really chop it down because it was so cold outside. But we did search the tree lot for the perfect tree! Ok.... the kids didn't really pick out a perfect tree, as it has a big hunk missing in the back, but they love it, so that means we love it! They had fun looking at all the trees, and couldn't wait to get it home to decorate it! Now the challenge becomes remembering to water it so that it doesn't become a fire hazard in our home. But the next several weekends felt so busy that we had to get it this past weekend. Plus it helps the house seem more like Christmas & gets us in the holiday spirit!

Can't wait for Christmas! (I sound like one of the kids!)

Holly all bundled up and ready to find our tree!

Myles poses by the chosen tree.

The kiddos by our tree.

And finally, here is what it looks like once we got it home & decorated it!

Your next Olympic Gold medialist!

Holly started Gymnastics last week - she loves it! She looks so cute! She is in a small class with 5 kids, and they will be covering all the basics for about 10 weeks. The teacher is really nice, and Holly wanted to give her a hug & kiss after class last week! :) So I think this will be a good activity for my bouncy little girl! I'll try to get some more cute pictures as the class goes on.

Holly in her cute little leotard!

Here she is learning how to flip around on the bar.

Not sure if this video posted well, but I took it on my iPhone so it might not work well. Hopefully you can figure out which one is Holly in the video.

The dentist

Holly had her first dentist experience! Thank goodness we go to a dental location that is close by, because we got dumped on with a November snow storm! My car slipped all over the roads for the 6 blocks that I had to drive. But we made it! Holly was really good - they were able to take x-rays, clean her teeth, & do a fluoride treatment. Good girl! Then the dentist came in and gave us a good little lecture about Holly sucking her thumb. It is starting to affect her teeth. Even we could see that. But it is super hard to get her to stop sucking her thumb because it happens when she is sleeping. Guess we'll have to get creative.

Halloween 2010

We had a wonderful Halloween this year! The family kicked off the festivities with pumpkin carving. We picked out the biggest pumpkins we could find, and 2 days before Halloween we spent a good hour after dinner cutting, gutting, and carving our creative creations! It was a ton of fun.

These are our pumpkins. From left to right: Frankenstein (by Myles), Scary face (by Erik), Happy guy (by Holly), and Pretty lady (by Andrea).

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On Halloween, we had a great evening! We started off having dinner with a bunch of neighbors. Chili & sandwiches were served while the kids played & the adults chatted. We learned that some new neighbors are preggers - congrats to Emily & Matt! Then it was time to get the kids in costume & hit the sidewalks for candy! We only went around 1 block, but the kids had a blast and filled their buckets. (that is both good & bad - now we will be eating candy for a long time!) But it was a ton of fun and I'm already looking forward to doing this again next year!

Left to Right: Neighbor boys Preston & Mason in their Power Rangers costume, Myles as a Red Dragon Ninja, and Holly as Super Girl!

Isn't Myles so cute??? He had a ton of fun going house to house with his buddies, and probably would do this every night if we let him!

My sweetie Holly. She loved her Super Girl costume. At first she insisted she was Superman, but by the time she was out trick-or-treating she had it figured out.

Johnson's go to Florida!

Team Johnson went to Florida over the MEA Weekend - it was AWESOME!! The kids were great (well, Holly could have slept a little better at night, but oh well.) and they had a ton of fun! I am already looking forward to when we can take them on a trip like this again!

We got there on a Thursday, and hit the pool as soon as we could. The kids LOVE to swim! For dinner we tired the restaurant at the hotel by the pool. Not good. After we just relaxed a little in the hotel room and got everyone to bed at a decent time so that we could enjoy the next day to the fullest!

Typically, the next 4 days went like this: Get up slowly, go have breakfast, hit the beach during low tide to go shelling & exploring, back to the hotel to get ready to swim, in the pool around 10 am, lunch in the hotel room @ 12:30 pm, nap time for Holly, back in the pool at 3:00 pm till 6:00 pm, dinner at a local restaurant, back for relaxing in the hotel before bed time. It was GREAT!

After you look at the awesome pictures below, I'll tell ya about the trip home... ugh!

Here is the Resort that we stayed at. They have 2 buildings. We were in the one on the right.
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Stunning picture from dinner the first night. We almost vowed to stay forever....

This is the pool that we swam in daily - shallow on the right, deeper on the left.

There was one other little kiddie pool that Holly enjoyed a few time, but we didn't play there much. Here are the kids in their swimsuits - cuties!

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Holly in the lower right with a squirty blaster thing. I'm in the upper right (white swimsuit) tossing a ball up in the air for Myles to catch. He was loving it!

The kids & I. Here we are in the Gulf water. We didn't swim much or play a ton in the sand. But they thought it was awesome when the Stingrays would swim past us!

One day the hotel had a tattooing activity by the pool. Both kids were excited to get one. They lasted a couple days. Myles thought he was so tough looking!

Here is Holly getting her tattoo - a mommy & baby Dolphin. She loved it!

One evening we took a Sunset & Dolphin cruise on a boat. It was fun! Since there were only a total of 3 families on the boat, we got lots of personal attention from the captain. It was a ton of fun to have him tour us around and give us lots of detail about ocean life.

Holly brought her little stuffed animal and insisted that it looked out at the water with her. Cute!

The Captain let both kids drive the boat. They were so thrilled with this chance! Since they were the only kids on the boat, they got to do this for like 15 minutes each.

Holly taking her turn to drive the boat.

In the early mornings, the low tide gave us a great chance to go hunt for shells and see the neat sea creatures. The kids loved doing this! Here Erik is showing the kids a neat shell that had a crab in it. The kids were allowed to collect shells that didn't have a creature living in it. So we now are the proud owners of a million smelly shells....

We often found star fish that were stranded in the wet sand as the waters dropped in the low tide. So we enjoyed rescuing them by putting them back in the ocean. I've never held a live star fish so it was really cool!

Just us walking along and looking for shells or sea creatures in the wet sand.

The kids doing their own hunt.

We were told that this restaurant called Nervous Nellie's was a tasty place to go. They were right! It was so good - Erik ordered some stone crab, and I got some kind of fish that had grilled shrimp on top of it. I think we both ate every single piece of food on our plate. Holly hated her pizza, so she ate all of Erik's fries. Myles had the best tasting Lasagna I've ever had. We had a great time and would go back if given the chance!

Here we are waiting for our food at Nervous Nellie's. The weather was perfect for sitting outside. Plus there was a live band playing so we had free entertainment!

Me at Nervous Nellie's

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After eating at Nervous Nellie's we walked down a little Pier to check out the water. Got this cute picture of Erik & Myles.

Back to the pool! Again, swimming is what we did the most of. Here the kids were just being silly so I took some cute pictures (btw - Love having a water proof camera! I would recommend one!)

My silly little Holly!

This is a cool underwater picture of Myles. He thought it was neat to take a picture while being underwater.

Myles really had a great time - he made a few friends at the pool. On our last day, he played all day with 2 boys from England. They taught him how to do a flip off the side of the pool. Myles thought he was soooo cool!

Erik zooming Holly around on a little kick board. Holly had so much fun doing this that she insisted for like an hour that we do this with her.

Sigh.... here we are at the airport waiting to go home. And it is the beginning of the drama we experienced getting home!

Cool picture out the window of the plane.

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So... the story. In Florida, they delayed our flight by a few hours due to weather back here in Mpls, but we thought all was well when they allowed us to board the plane. The flight was uneventful until we got to Mpls. The whole plane knew it would be bumpy because the winds were gusting up to 50 mph. During the first attempt to land, Holly started to yell loudly to me that she had to poopy badly right now. Not a chance since we were all flying around in our seats even though we had our seat belts on! Then suddenly Myles started puking in the barf bag on the other side of me. That's when I noticed that more than a dozen passengers were also using their barf bags. Yuck. I was crying and silently praying for safety. It was the scariest thing I've ever experienced. The pilot took the plane back up to circle around again. Then began decent #2. The whole plane was freakishly quiet. We were tossed all around for another 5 minutes before the pilot took us up again.

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That's when the Captain got on the speaker and told us it was to dangerous to land and we were going to Des Moines, IA for the night. Well, I've never been so happy to be in Iowa! By the time we got to the hotel that night it was 10:30 pm. We went straight to bed. Everyone slept except me. I was to wired and worried. We were up at 5:00 am for breakfast and at the airport by 6:00 am (per the airline's directions). Then we sat on the floor for the next 3 hours. The kids were AMAZING! So well behaved. They just played nicely with their toys. We got a dozen complements by strangers about how well behaved they were! What a blessing that was because Erik & I were tired and stressed.

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We finally made it home 23.5 hours after we checked out of paradise in Florida. But it was good to be home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!