Christmas 2019

My parent's house at Christmastime is extremely well decorated. The pictures and decorations in the main rooms are taken down and replaced with Christmas decor. They even swap out the plates for Christmas ones. My kids especially love the Santa display in the window above the sink and the Santa head cookie jar. Annie quickly figured out how to push a chair over to reach Santa's head and help herself to the treats inside. It got to the point where we had to hide the jar. This led to a great scene where Annie was running around in a rage yelling "I WANT SANTA'S HEAD!!" 

Making a gingerbread house with Mimi

We were able to visit Grammie and Papa with the Woolfs. It was the first time the Woolfs had seen Grammie in about 15 years! My favorite part was the sing-a-long. Breezy and Brynlee both recently returned from Spanish speaking missions. Brynlee got her hands on a Ukelele and the two of them jammed out singing Spanish Christmas hymns together. They knocked the socks off of "Noche de Luz," and then Cassidy and I joined them for a not-so-christmassy-but-still-nice rendition of "Hallelujah."

Papa scraped his leg a few months earlier and got a truly nasty infection that manifested itself 2 weeks before the wedding. Mom had her week 101% booked getting her work wrapped up before everyone started to roll in for the wedding and Christmas, but suddenly she had to take Papa (who can't drive) to get IV treatments for 8 hours a day for an indefinite period of time. Fortunately she was able to contact Papa's ward and arrange rides for him to get his treatments after everyone arrived and when we went on the cruise. 

We had a big enough crew on Christmas Eve that we needed to do fondue on two tables for the first time! Max and Morgan were back from their honeymoon, and we also had Timmy staying with us and Karissa over for dinner. 

After dinner we gathered around and sang Christmas songs with Max on guitar. Max and Blake definitely have a more intense tone than Breezy and Brynlee. Dad and Aaron weren't too excited about family singing time, but I sure loved it. 

Before we knew it, it was Christmas morning! Luckily my kids are not yet at the stage where they wake up before dawn with Christmas excitement. We had a nice lazy morning before opening presents. 

Elliot's loot was mostly craft supplies. He was extremely pleased. 

Our Sesame Street enthusiast was a big fan of her Abby Cadabby doll

Breezy had a really neat surprise for me. When she was here over Thanksgiving, she sewed me a dress and had Elliot decorate it with artwork. It is such a neat thing!

Next step: preparing for Christmas Dinner!

It is inevitable that Elliot said "I'M GOING TO EAT YOU BREEZY" at some point during the surprise roll making process

Our Christmas Dinner crew included Bret & Shannon's family and Aunt Cliffee. Sadly no pictures were taken of the spread of beef wellington and other festive delights. We had to rearrange all the furniture to fit in two long tables. After dinner, we moved the long table to the side and made a big circle so that we could play hivemind and signs. 

Max & Morgan's Wedding

I am so happy to welcome a new member into the Johnson family! Morgan is the first new in-law since Aaron joined the family 8 years ago. Max and Morgan are a great pair.

We had a great prep crew that worked hard to set up for the ring ceremony/reception that took place on Friday.

Kim Johnson in her element

Max wanted a soda bar with all the weird flavors like spruce and ginger beer. I think they are gross. We dropped this one while carrying it inside and it started jetting out. Brynlee tried to drink it so it wouldn't go to waste but ended up gagging all over the place because it is actually GROSS SODA 

We had garland and pine cones galore

Max and Morgan asked Elliot and Annie to be the ring bearer and flower girl. I was pretty skeptical about how it would go, but we were willing to give it a try. We watched several youtube videos about ring ceremonies and also watched the wedding episode of Arthur which was great training. Annie was pretty interested in the idea of "making the floor look pretty by putting flowers on it."

During the rehearsal, Annie took two steps into the room, dumped half her basket, then just stood there and generally ignored everyone who was trying to coax her forward. Eventually we figured out a system where Elliot walked right next to her instead of in front of her. He would point every few feet, and Annie would obediently drop a handful of flowers wherever he pointed. It was adorable. 

Fast forward to the real ceremony. The wedding party gathered in the back. I was trying to get Annie to hold her flower basket when the procession started. The master of ceremonies (none other than Max's roommate Jason Richards who got to be a certified minister online so that he could officiate the wedding) walked down the short isle followed by 4 couples. Then Annie and Elliot were supposed to go, followed by the bride. The hitch in the plan was that Annie noticed a bottle of soda on the table as the first couple left. She started screaming for soda. I tried to calm her down and tell her she could have soda afterwards, but she was having none of it. I tried to give her a quick sip of soda but for some reason this freaked her out, and she started screaming even louder. She was flailing all over the place and wouldn't take her basket, and now it was the bloodlings turn to do their part. I tried to tell Elliot to go by himself, but he panicked and hid under a table. Of course the doors are wide open so everyone can hear this whole commotion going down. Jason ended up announcing the bride to carry on without us. 

I left Elliot under the table and ran with the still screaming Annie to the bathroom. The caterers were the Wise family from the stake with some daughters around my age that I knew, so I asked if they could hang out with Annie in the bathroom so that I could watch the wedding. I am super grateful to them for stepping in to help me out like that. Annie was happily hanging out with them when I went to get her afterwards. I snuck into the back of the room just in time to see one of the groomsmen run back to retrieve the rings from Elliot under the table. The rest of the ceremony was super sweet. Max and Morgan exchanged vows that had me tearing up. 

All of the Johnson Clan

The Morgan "wide" stance

Max's sodas including ginger beer and spruce beer. Blegh. 

Annie looks like a weird gremlin in this picture but it is the only one we have of her adorable flower crown

The next day was the temple sealing. The Washington DC temple is closed for renovations, so everyone drove up to the Philadelphia temple 3 hours away. It is about halfway between DC and Boston, so Morgan's family continued on home after the sealing. The most memorable part of the sealing was that the sealer shared a slightly off-color anecdote at the end of the ceremony that caused Max, Breezy, and Mom to about choke from trying not to bust out laughing.

Sealed for time and all eternity

Max is just a little proud of himself :)

Elliot Turns 5

 Elliot's birthday is on December 20, which just so happened to be the day of the wedding. We opened his big presents (a razor scooter and a board game) before we left home and crammed in a quick party with family on the 19th. Elliot was delighted with his haul of craft supplies and cake.

Maze book for the maze master! He was disappointed that these mazes didn't have defenses, so he drew some in himself 

We had to hold him back from blowing out the candles before singing to him

Ok, now it's go time little buddy :)

This is the face I got when I interrupted his focused cake eating to ask him to smile for a picture

 Elliot was very disappointed to find out that he didn't get to start Kindergarten after we got home. I have been telling him "next year when you are 5  you can start Kindergarten" and of course he assumed that meant the new year in January. He reluctantly returned to preschool after an explanation of school calendar systems. This kid is so ready for full time school. He is continually surprising me with how well he can read. After watching his cousin Brianna do some math homework, he made himself a page of math problems to do. He was so proud of them that he cut them out and left them by the door to the garage so that Aaron would see them first thing when he got home from work. 

The other night when I was putting Elliot to bed, I asked him what his top 5 favorite things are. The list we came up with was crafts, exploring (by which he means mostly climbing on rocks outside), imagination games, iPad games, and reading.

We took so many pictures of fish

We had a few days where we got to relax between Christmas and the cruise. On one day we walked down to the creek and Chesterbrook playground.

Annie was glued to Morgan per usual

I was glad to see that someone rebuilt the big rope swing by the creek!

Our next adventure was to go to the Baltimore Aquarium for Morgan's birthday! 

Breezy was still sleeping when we were getting ready to go, so I went to go wake her up. The day before, we had been talking about how dad used to creatively wake up Blake for school by dripping water on his head or wearing masks. I foolishly decided to try some of these tactics on Breezy. I found this alien mask, put my face really close to hers, and breathed louder and louder until she woke up. Her immediate reaction was to punch me in the face as hard as she could. I was impressed by how much leverage she got into that punch since she was lying down and mostly unconscious. I took off the mask and apologized, and she said she wasn't coming because she had bad insomnia the night before. A few hours later she texted me saying "Did I punch you in the face while you were wearing an alien mask or was that a weird dream?" There is no doubt that Breezy falls 100% on the fight side of the "fight or flight" spectrum. 

Bloods at the inner harbor

My bros (and a creeping Timmy) in the bubble jellyfish zone

I was legitimately impressed by Morgan's ability to constantly carry around her 30 lb best friend

Elliot was being a stinker and whining about wanting to go home. My mom cleverly started telling him that we needed to take pictures of fish so that we could draw them in his new art notebook when we got home. She speaks his language! The end result was a happier Elliot and a million pictures of fish on everybody's phones. 

Also this year: Family pictures on the National Cathedral grounds. We don't have the pictures back yet, so here are some non-official ones from the shoot

These two are best buddies :)

Eastward Ho!

This year we spent a whopping 3.5 weeks out east this winter! It was jam packed with Max and Morgan's wedding, Christmas, and (spoiler alert) a Caribbean cruise. 

Like so many of our vacations, it started with a little bit of time with Mary so that we could fly out of the Phoenix airport. This year we were lucky enough to be able to go to their wild west themed Christmas party before our flight left. They had a petting zoo and had the primary sing some songs while shaking these little bells. Some nice sister gave Annie an extra bell. I am writing this in February and Annie STILL will sing Jingle Bells and tell me "I sing this song at my cousins' party!"

She refused to go in, but was completely captivated by watching the animals through the little fence. She decided that this particular goat "wants to be friends with me"

Timmy was kind enough to pick us up from my parent's house and drive us to Jonny and Megan's house for a few days. Our stay featured games, Elliot staring at this lava lamp thing in his bed for hours past his bedtime, cousin bonding, and a small outbreak of hand, foot, and mouth disease. 

Showing Catherine our animation app on the iPad

Aaron and Elliot have a lot in common. They spent hours playing some sort of war game in the basement

Then it was back to Mimi and Grumpas house! There was plenty of wedding/Christmas prep to be done. Both of my Mom's sisters flew out and stayed for the wedding, so we had a full house. I hadn't seen the Woolfs for a few years, so it was super fun reconnecting with them. 

Grumpa with his grandkids