Randomness

"Yeah, I totally fit in this shoebox"

"What a natural place to stare at the blank back of this poster"

I love this face so much, even when he has who knows what on it

We found a leaf pile in Arizona! It was at the park. In January.

A successful plot in the community garden!

Arizona sunset- view from our backyard. 

The Terrible Twos are upon us

He decided he wanted to ride in the basket on the way home from the park

You do you, little buddy

Playing with his pal Wyatt. They love taking turns being the leader as they run circles around the house screaming.

Now we end with a video of Elliot singing Jingle Bells with me. He somehow learned this song after Christmas.

26

Well, I'm 26 now! Since we were up in Gilbert the day before my birthday, we hit up an Indian food restaurant for my birthday dinner. The waiter was super nice to Elliot and gave him a blank receipt to color on and a free taste of Mango Lasi. He kept stopping by for more Elliot high fives.  

Note the ninja turtle raided from Mary's house to entertain him during dinner. It was wildly successful. 

My actual birthday was on Sunday. I subbed in nursery and had a fun time with little kiddos. Elliot threw a nice meltdown after church when we put him down for a nap. We eventually went up to check on him after hearing a mysterious thump sound (still don't know what it was). We found that he had taken off his pants (that's a first) and chucked them across the room. 

Sweater vest and no pants? The ultimate combination.

Buster bubbs eventually forgave us for attempting to make him take a nap. I had a few friends over to eat brownies and mint chocolate chip ice cream. Aaron gave me an instant pot pressure cooker that we have been having a blast experimenting with ever since. All in all it was a great birthday!

Rebekah's Baptism

We had the wonderful opportunity to attend our niece Rebekah's baptism. Even better was the fact that Aaron was given the opportunity to confirm her. 

Rebekah with her Uncle Jim (who baptized her) and Uncle Aaron (who confirmed her)

Mary gave a really great talk on the Holy Ghost. I thought that she did a great job of being insightful on a level that was accessible to both Rebekah and adults. One thing she said that really hit home with me was that she remembers at her baptism how her mom was trying to explain to her what the Holy Ghost felt like. Mom Blood said that Mary could think of it as the feeling she gets when she sat on her Dad's lap. That comparison to feeling safe and secure as a child on your Dad's lap really hit home to me, especially thinking about young Mary and my incredibly tender-hearted father-in-law. 

We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with Mary and the kids. 

I was totally juggling dirt clods in the background to get the kids to laugh while taking family pictures

Meanwhile, Elliot was busy overcoming his fear of slides

It was more than a little adorable

The lightning progression from "terrified of big slides" to "going down headfirst with cousins" was striking.
A few days later, we had a series of slide mishaps at our local park that effectively eliminated all his progress. 

We drove up the following weekend for Rebekah's birthday party. We also participated in great chats with Mary and a trip to the temple. 

Elliot and Eli. Elliot gets really excited about drinking "Eli's milk," which is just the same as regular milk but drunk from one of Eli's bottles

Birthday girl

 I was in charge of games, so the kids played pokemon themed duck, duck, goose, pokemon themed fruit, blob tag, sharks & minnows, and sardines (they really sucked at sardines). Rebekah's dad did a fun scavenger hunt that was a huge success. 

Very high energy party

Elliot playing with Flubber. The Bears have super fun stuff and Elliot never wants to leave!

I'm going to throw these pictures into this post too. We spent a day with Mary when we got home from West Virginia because we flew in and out of Phoenix. That makes 3 Mary visits in one month, so we are definitely best friends now. Anyway, Mary has a friend who has several naval orange trees in his yard. He let us come pick some. It was super fun, and those oranges were SO. GOOD. 

Very willing to scramble up a tree to reach gigantic, delicious oranges

This was before I accidentally dropped an orange on his head from up in my tree perch

Angels on Airplanes

Elliot had a complete meltdown on the plane last night. He was screaming at the top of his lungs and thrashing as hard as he could. Everything we handed him to distract/bribe him became a projectile, which resulted in cran-apple juice spilled all over Aaron and me. After a solid hour of this, we resigned ourselves to the fact that everything we tried to do to help just made him angrier. We were going to have to let him scream it out for the remaining hour of the flight. I said a prayer asking for patience and calming for Elliot, then sat there thinking about how everyone in the plane must hate us.

Then came an angel! This older lady appeared by our row and started talking about how she went through this with her kids. She offered to walk the aisle with him. We passed the screaming, thrashing child to her, and she walked to the back of the plane with him telling everyone who looked up something along the lines of "you were an angry 2 year old once too." We hit some turbulence, so I walked back to get Elliot with tears all over my face. At this point I was overwhelmed by the kindness of this stranger and was too choked up to say thank you. He finally calmed down enough to let us read a book to him and he passed out in the middle of Curious George.

I found her in baggage claim and was able to thank her through some more exhausted tears. I found out her name is Betsy. What a serious answer to prayer she was!

Before the ordeal began

Christmas & New Years

The Christmas Eve festivities ended up starting pretty late, so Elliot missed out. That's ok- he wouldn't have had any clue about what was going on anyway.

Grandma doing the 12 days of Christmas with the Grandkids

This picture captures the overall vibe of the nativity pretty well

Action shot of Katie tossing the doll that had previously been baby Jesus after commandeering the manger.
I love Megan's "my sister is so embarrassing" pose

 Christmas day fell on a Sunday, so we went to church and had lunch/naps before opening presents. 

Looking dapper. I love sweater vests. 

Christmas Chaos. We went youngest to oldest opening all of that person's gifts at once. I thought it was a great system for this many people. 

Why hello there, Elmo puzzle!

Most everyone was gone by the time New Year's Eve rolled around. Stephen's kids and Elliot went to bed after watching the ball drop in Madrid, 6 hours ahead. Genius. After that, we played games until Midnight. Earlier in the day, Aaron and I went out to Thai food with Stephen and Claudia, then picked up Pina Colada stuff at the store. I was glad to be able to share that Johnson tradition with the Bloods. 

Welcome 2017! We are excited to see what you have in store for us!

Elliot Turns 2

Elliot had his second birthday while we were in West Virginia.

A Birthday Boy with his Birthday Balloon

It is fair to say that he loved it

Sadly, I somehow deleted the video that Aaron took of Elliot blowing out the candles. He was blowing obediently, but was not willing to put his face close enough to the flames to actually do anything to them. I had to blow them out for him. 

opening presents

Cake Selfie

Elliot at 2 is so much fun. He can throw fits with the best of them, but most of the time he so sweet. He know his letters and will sing songs to himself as he falls asleep. He is still generally a great sleeper, although he is starting to skimp on his nap occasionally. I still usually get at least a couple 3 hour naps out of him every week. His favorite thing in the world is to have books read to him while he snuggles with his blanket. He is talking more and more every day and has the the best belly laugh that comes out whenever you tickle him or toss him onto the couch. 

I sure love you, buster bubbs!

West Virginia

We were lucky enough to spend two and a half weeks in West Virginia with the Blood Clan over the holidays! We had to fly out early because Elliot turned 2 on Dec 20th, and we didn't want to have to pay for his ticket.

He kept melting off my lap to hang out on the airplane floor

We met up with James and Joanna in the Houston Airport and rode the last leg to Charleston together. We knew Joanna was going to be there, but no one told us that James was part of the plan too. He had shaved his head and we weren't expecting to see him, so I didn't recognize him at first when he came up to us in the airport. They sat in front of us on the plane, and Elliot enjoyed periodically rubbing "Jam-es" head. 

We got there before the rest of the clan, so we were able to help get Stephen's new house ready to be invaded. We painted and moved some furniture around for a few mornings. 

Elliot hit it off with his cousins right away

 Unfortunately, Elliot got super sick a few days after we got there. He pretty much exploded very messily out both ends for half a day. I was glad to have Mom Blood around to help teach me “cleaning vomit off of couches” skills and exploding child containment techniques. She was great at putting things into perspective with statements like “this isn’t as bad as the time I was woken up in the middle of the night by a kid in the top bunk who puked all down the wall and got the kid on the bottom all gross too.” Very good point. I will never think of bunkbeds the same way. Several people got some degree of the bug after that with Joanna definitely being the worst. 

Post sickness Elliot with his glorious trampoline hair

James and Stephen alligator wrestling

 We had to get creative with things to do as breaks from being cooped up in a crowded house all day during the middle of winter. Our biggest failure was when we drove 45 minutes to a go-kart place… only to find out that it had closed. The most successful activity was when we got the keys to the church to go play dodgeball. We made a rule that adults had to play left handed so that it was actually somewhat even with all the kids.

Wii playing cousins and their observers

Mom Blood attacking a bag of frozen cheese with a hammer

Like Father, like Son

 Another great activity was a trip to the Clay Center. Elliot and all the kids had a BLAST. 

This kid is so weird about food. Being offered food is his #1 tantrum trigger, but he loved the fake food at the Clay center and at Mom Blood's house. 

This great activity ended tragically when Elliot somehow got his finger stuck under the belt.
I'm impressed that I didn't fall when I waded out to rescue him!

The water washed away all the smashed-finger sadness

 Jumping back to the Blood House:

Pie Face!

Elliot turning the Christmas lights off and on while Aaron rubs his hair.

Elliot discovered olives and fell in love.
Olives and Mac n' Cheese were pretty much all he was willing to eat the whole trip.

Elliot & Katie hanging out in boxes. Katie is one month younger than Elliot.

 It was fairly nice the majority of the time we were there, even going up into the 60's for a while. We did get one morning with snow, but it didn't stick around for long.

Elliot's first experience with snow

He probably would have been fine if we left him in West Virginia forever!