Aaron and I were very motivated to show our new housemates the wonders of Tucson and convince them that they never want to leave. It helped that they came in the winter when the weather was perfect for desert hikes (although Claudia was very disillusioned to find out that she still needed to wear a coat in the mornings and nights when walking Chocolo).
First Stop: Saguaro National Park
Stephen was all about the barrel cactus fruit. I think that stuff is gross, but he never missed an opportunity to snag one
The kids all wanted to try one too, but had a hard time getting over all the seeds inside.
Eating a picnic lunch in the stone house. It is amazing how much cooler it is in there
Our next stop was down to Tumaccacori. We have been there before, but this was the first time Elliot has been old enough to grasp any of the history. Mostly we had to scramble to constantly pull our kids off of the ruin walls, but a little bit of history was learned. The best part was definitely the tortilla lady who was making free fresh tortillas on an old fashioned wood fire grill. We each got to try one with homemade refried beans. It was SO GOOD and inspired Stephen to try to make his own at home.
Oh Ethan :)
Throwing sticks into the river- every child's favorite activity
The trees in the picnic area were thoroughly climbed
Elliot and Eowyn
Equally as fun but sadly less documented was our trip up to Mary's house. She managed to fit all of us! Well, Andrew and Benjamin got to have a sleepover while everyone else piled in. The enlarged cousin pack had a grand time in the hot tub and running around outside.
In December we got the best news ever- Aaron's brother Stephen got a job in Tucson! The plan was for them to live with us while they waited for their house in West Virginia to sell and then move into their own place nearby. Claudia flew out with the kids on Jan 8 (two days after we got back from our vacation). Stephen drove their van across the country and arrived with a very numb butt two days later.
We now had a literal pile of kids with 10 people in our 4 bedroom house
They paid to have Stephen's car shipped across the country. In retrospect, they should have just sold the car. They had a terrible experience with the car shipper and the moving company.
We got creative with sleeping arrangements. Luckily our kids have been trained to sleep anywhere by years of camping and cramming into Airbnbs. Annie slept in a pack and play in the laundry while Elliot slept in our walk in closet. Stephen & Claudia got the guest room, Ethan got Annie's room, and Brianna, Eowyn, and Tata got Elliot's room.
Elliot couldn't move into a new "room" without decorating it with some art. This little guy cracks me up every time.
My kids were in heaven from day 1. They ADORE their cousins, and it was so good for them to have some older role models. They started a spy club, a ninja school, opened a salon, and played countless games of "the floor is lava."
Elliot is working hard on his tree climbing skills to be able to keep up with his monkey cousins
You can see Elliot's foot behind the tree. He refused to go on the "baby part" for the picture but couldn't quite make it up to the top part. Keep working on it buddy!
Ethan and Annie are the ultimate frenemies. Annie is only 6 months older than Ethan, but she will be quick to tell you that she is a big kid and Ethan is a baby. If anything goes wrong in the house, Annie blames Ethan, even if he isn't anywhere nearby. There were a few instances where the two of them would start fighting over a toy, and Annie would start to choke him while Ethan clawed at her face. She actually still has a fading scratch mark on each cheek like a football player. I worked hard on brainwashing Annie to like Ethan by being quick to point out all the cute stuff he does and having her pray every night to be nice to Ethan. I don't know what did the trick but gradually they started playing better and better together. They LOVED running away from "the monster" (Stephen) and hiding together. They really became great buddies, and Annie still talks about him all the time even though they have been gone for a few weeks now.
I believe this is when we built Nephi's boat for home church
Bree is always leading the kids on some sort of adventure. Having an 8 year old around is AWESOME.
The kids (well mostly Bree) spent hours making puppets for an outer space puppet show. A grand total of maybe 30 seconds was spent on thinking through the script. We all enjoyed the bloodlings’ performance, despite several considerable plot holes.
Bree is a woman of the stage. She had us all gather to watch a dance show starring hits like "I like to Move it" and "Monster Moves." It was obvious that she didn't want the attention to end, and so she kept telling Alexa to play more songs as both her audience and backup dancers started to wander away.
Confession: I am not a dog person. Most of this is because I'm allergic to them, so my attempts to interact with their species were rewarded with puffy eyes and itchiness all over my body. I admit that I was a bit daunted by having a dog as big as Chocolo move in with us, despite the fact that he is hypoallergenic (he's a standard poodle), but Choco is a champ who won us all over! He is super well trained and doesn't bark, so honestly I forgot he was there most of the time. He spent most of the time in his kennel in the corner or outside. Every time Claudia got Choco out to take him on a walk, she would tell Annie "Choco is my baaaaaby." Annie would yell back "CHOCO IS NOT YO BABY."
Annie used to be terrified of all animals, but after a few months she was petting and hugging Choco and talking about how much she loves him. It was so good for her to overcome her fears.
Tata's stoic face reminds me of those colorized photos from the 1800's
I loved having Claudia around all the time. I've always liked her, but we definitely got to know each other better. She was very patient with me as I practiced my Spanish with her. We both love Volleyball, so it was fun having her come play at the church twice a week. The biggest deal was that we traded off cooking every other day. It took me a little while to calibrate to cooking for 10 people, but I would way rather cook a big meal every other day and then not have to worry about it at all the next day. It is true that there was more chaos in the house with the extra kids, but it always seemed manageable with two of us there to find the missing shoe or break up the fights.
The Bloodlings after Volleyball
One day Bree asked if she could have the seeds I was scooping out from a squash. I said she could do whatever she wanted with them outside. I'm not sure exactly what they were doing, but it involved spitting the seeds and then marking each one with chalk. It looked like a crime scene with all the pieces of evidence meticulously labeled with who spat each individual seed.
A mixture of targets and charts? Not quite sure if anyone know what the objective was here but they all had a grand time
I arranged a seed spitting competition that I thought I could easily win with my adult sized lungs. Eowyn whipped all our butts by spitting it twice as far as I could. I think it is because she's missing her two front teeth.
This picture conveys the general vibe of the Blood house during this time
Bree convinced the kids to lie down and let her jump over them from the chest
A lovely braiding job by the gals of the Blood Salon. There was definitely more spraying with the water bottle than was strictly necessary.
Look closely at the blocks- it is two little block people holding hands
I am so glad that the Johnson crew got to go on a cruise together. There had been a fair amount of stress with the wedding, Christmas, and Papa's health. It was nice to disconnect from the world and have some awesome family fun time. We sailed on the Carnival Pride with stops at Princess Cays, Nassau, and Freeport. Since we were leaving out of Baltimore in December, the ship goes super fast on the first and last days so that they can spend more time in the warmer, gentler seas. Breezy and Morgan got super seasick.
It is nice having artistically minded siblings who take cool pictures of your kids
I have to talk about the food first because really this is the main point of going on a cruise. I LOVE cruise food. The highlight this time around was a desert called chocolate panna cotta that permeated every part of my mouth with the best taste I have ever experienced. I was the only one who had a transcendental experience at dinner- I think being pregnancy gives me super tasting power.
Annie loved the towel animals! One morning they had a display of towel animals by the pool deck. Her loving Grumpa spent a LOT of time looking at them with her.
Aaron rigged up this sheet around Annie's pack and play so that she wouldn't see us and want to stay up all night. It worked pretty well! We had a video baby monitor that worked short range so that we could spy on them and make sure they were sleeping.
Elliot wanted to spend lots of time drawing with his Christmas art supply loot. We used some of his sweet fish pics to mark which door was ours in the looong hallway of identical doors. A nice couple left a note on our door saying that they loved his art and put a couple of new yearsy necklaces on our door handle. So nice! I had Elliot draw some more fish to tape to their door as a thank you.
Elliot did not cooperate with the documentation of the cute note incident
This was the first cruise where we took advantage of the kid activities. We dropped Elliot and Annie off at the kids club a couple of time when they were supposed to be having craft time or fun sounding games, but Elliot wasn't super impressed. After much whining he agreed to go to the Dr Seuss parade and show and ended up loving it. They had a dramatic reading of Horton Hears a Who with lots of kid participation. Elliot got to be part of the clover field, which meant he got to sit on the stage with a clover and wave it over his head.
Max and Morgan were participants in a Newlyweds Game one night. They were the most recently wedded couple. They competed against the longest married and a couple from somewhere in the middle. It was hilarious even if some of the questions were definitely outside of their comfort zone. They won a bottle of wine that they gave to another recently married couple who didn't get to participate in the game. After their big win they became low key celebrities on the ship with people saying hi to them all the time.
One day I noticed some water dripping through the ceiling in our hallway, so I called to report it. It took a few minutes for someone to show up and by that time it had grown from a drip to more of a gush. Water was starting to pool in the hallway. The maintenance person that eventually showed up took one look at the situation and then ran back the way she came talking furiously into her walkie talkie. Soon there was a whole group of workers there. Breezy and I had a great time watching the debacle unfold. The best part was seeing other people open their doors and getting to see their reaction to the mini flood that was the hallway. They fixed the leak and had an impressive array of fans to dry the carpet up in no time.
Annie loves herself some Max and Morgan
Our first port of call was Princess Cays, which is owned by the cruise line. I think there might be a handful of people that actually live there, but most all of the staff there is from the ship. They set up a buffet lunch on the island. The highlight of this stop was that we found some volleyball courts to play on. I learned that my dad is the worst scorekeeper ever because he never wants the game to end. We realized that half the time we asked him what the score was, he would say a number that was lower than the last time we asked.
I packed my beloved snorkel set all the way from Arizona and used it at every stop. Princess Cays was neat because we were able to see some giant brain coral! The biggest one must have been 4 feet wide. But my true snorkeling triumph happened at the beach on Nassau. I dove down and found a live conch shell! It was the highlight of my ocean exploration career to date.
I put it back after the photo shoot because it was still alive
Breezy and Blake gave me some loving coaching on how to take instagram worthy pictures of my prize
My siblings always bring out my most mature side
Behold, the sand goblin!
Our last stop was Fortune Beach on Freeport. It was colder and windy that day which was OK because we didn't have a ton of time. The beach had super soft sand and some eroding cliffs for geologist dad to teach us about. There was a mysterious dark area in the ocean that looked like a scary drop off, but when we waded out to it we discovered that it was a sea grass mini forest.
Clint was convinced that this was some sort of egg and insisted that I trek way back out to return it to where I found it. We later decided that it was almost definitely a plant part.
Another sand goblin
Another fun part of the cruise was the water slides! There were two- a yellow one that Elliot was big enough to go on, and the GREEN THUNDER. The Green Thunder was INSANE. You stand on a trap door and lean back as this capsule door closes around you. A automated voice counts down from 3 and then the door opens and you fall into this super fast slide that actually goes over the side of the ship before splashing you into water. I was completely unable to breathe while I was on it and went in and out of it screaming, much to Elliot's delight. He liked going to the top of the tower with me to watch people go down the trap door because he thought the screams of terror were funny.
Now enjoy the video that Breezy made of the cruise! The music is a song called Blossom that Blake's band, the Dead Sons, wrote. He is the lead singer.
