Elliot Starts Preschool!

At the beginning of the summer, a few friends and I talked about doing a co-op preschool for our kids. My friend Cassie got super excited about it and decided to open her own preschool in her house. Cassie is so great with the kids, and she majored in Early Elementary Education so she's all sorts of legit. Elliot hangs out at Saguaro Schoolhouse from 9-12 every Tuesday and Thursday and absolutely LOVES it. 

Rockin the photo booth at preschool orientation

My little boy off to school and not looking back! It helped that his two best friends are in the class.

His loot one day. We love going through his backpack together to see all his work pages and crafts. 

This pickle cactus craft from their desert unit cracks me up

Field trip to the community garden during their food unit. Elliot was all about showing his pals his favorite dirt pile. There are two other kids in the class who couldn't make the field trip (Wyatt and Sarah)

Miss Cassie on Halloween. Isn't she awesome?

Allison and I have been walking the boys to preschool. It is a 30-40 minutes each way depending on how slow the boys are feeling. I love the morning exercise and the chats with Allison.

They made these body vests complete with inflatable lungs and a fillable stomach! Too awesome!

Post Beach (God Bless the American Flag)

Dad's car got to the beach house before we did, and he was watching the tracker on Mom's phone and knew that we had made a couple wrong turns. We were very pleased to drive behind him on the way home and witness him him stopping in the middle of an intersection and a few other questionable maneuvers. The teasing payback was plentiful!

Mimi and her little loves at Dennys on the drive home

Elliot insisted on eating dinner next to Grumpa. RIGHT next to Grumpa. Preferably touching him. Grumpa could talk him into eating way better than the rest of us.

The Kimberlys getting in some bonding time

Love the Hot Tie glasses :)

 Possibly my favorite part of the the whole trip was Blake and Max singing "God Bless the American Flag." It was a song that started off kind of like "God Bless America," but then they changed the words and it turned into this thing where they would whip out these synchronized improv lyrics. They were doing this off and on for the whole trip. I finally got some on video.

 We snuck in a quick visit with Jonny and Megan! It was great because Timmy was there most of the time too! The kids introduced us to orbeez, these cool swelling water gel ball things. Aaron had the opportunity to move a fridge down to their basement and try to fix a weird thing on Megan's laptop. We got a babysitter and went out for dinner and a lovely harbor walk at Harve de Grace. Jonny was telling Aaron about his invention idea for a potty training belt that using ultrasonic sensors to tell when a kid has a full bladder. Aaron came home and immediately bought some sensors to play with.

When we got home from dinner, Elliot was sad because he hurt his leg on the trampoline. He was super whiny and wouldn't walk on it. We didn't think much of it- he isn't exactly a tough kid, and it was past his bedtime. He woke up in the middle of the night whimpering, and the next morning he still refused to put any weight on it. Apparently these were the exact symptoms that Catherine had when she broke her leg, so I took Elliot on a fun trip to Urgent Care instead of our planned hike. They took an X-Ray and fortunately did not find a break. It is likely that he pulled a muscle or something. We flew home the next day and had to put him in Annie's stroller and carry Annie through the whole airport. It was 3 days before he would walk again. Poor guy!

Beachy Glen

First- behold, the fun music video I made of the trip!

One of the best parts of this trip is that we had recently discovered a picture of my dad lounging on beach in the 80's. Words cannot express how much joy and amusement this picture has brougth to our family. Naturally, my brothers tried to recreate it.

The shortness of the shorts... the wicker hat... the casually held drink... the lounge...

They bought a wicker hat just for this

Their drink was a lot less exciting

Just so great on so many levels

My favorite thing to do at the beach is boogie board and jump waves. Brianna was all about swimming in the ocean so we got to be swim buddies quite a bit.

I'm not sure what I'm doing here, but Aaron looks cool. 

I got burned on the first day (dad had fun teasing me about the rookie mistake). Mom was kind enough to lend me her swim shirt, but it is such a classic Kim Johnson article of clothing that everyone kept thinking I was her. 

These guys have perfected the really big hole with a wall over a lifetime of annual beach trips

Maybe one day they will achieve master hole digger status like the uncles

Just a couple of gals hanging out at the beach!

Affection or attack? It is unclear. 

My mom bought this kiddie pool for Annie to splash in shallow water without being able to eat the sand. It was a huge hit. AND SHE SLEPT IN IT!!! She took a 2 hour nap on the beach every day!

A beach trip miracle!

We should have tried to get one with Stephen & Claudia's crew too... oh well. We love the beach!

Holden Beach

To really lock this in as "The Summer with an Insane Amount of Vacation," we flew out to Holden Beach one week after we got home from Alpine.

Arriving in McLean. Elliot LOVES snuggling and reading books with his Grumpa. 

The bros

We rented a beach house with my parents, Clint, Max, and Blake, as well as Stephen, Claudia, and their 4 kids from Aaron's side. The beach house was great! It had lots of little balconies. It was walking distance from the beach. We did a grocery run the first day and loaded up on a truly absurd amount of frozen treats. Somehow we ate pretty much all of it!

Double piggy back with Brianna and Eowyn

Stephen's girls loved my dad. They kept calling him "the man." As in "Where did the man go?" and "does the man have more treats?" (Answer: he always has more treats.)

Sadly we did not have keys to the jet ski parked on premise

"who is this other baby?"

"I should try to steal all his toys and put carpet crumbs in his mouth"

"What's the big deal?"

I'm a little jealous of Blake's lush hair in this picture

Yup, definitely siblings. Blake just has more muscles and hair than me. 

Claudia said she was confused because she thought that Blake was me but bigger when they pulled in

Stephen brought a game called Blood Rage. We had heard horror stories from Megan about the Blood Boys playing a 6 hour game over Thanksgiving. I was quite daunted by the figurines. But it ended up being a fairly fast paced game when Johnsons rather than Bloods were playing. I actually really liked it!

The food was good, the company was even better

Max stuffing as many grapes as he could fit into his mouth with the ever encouraging Mimi cheering him on 

SUCH A TINY LITTLE HEAD! Max and Annie had some great bonding time. 

Fish Fry and Party Plane

After we finished rolling up our sleeping bags and sweeping out the cabins, we drove to Uncle Dave and Aunt Audrey's house for the annual post-Alpine Fish Fry. It is kinda funny that we have made a traditional after party that is over an hour away but pretty much everyone goes to it. As always, the food was delicious and the company was great.

Her head looks so tiny!

Elliot loves driving on the rocky road just as much as I did as a wee lass

Elliot and his (much tougher) second cousin found a hornet's nest. One got him through his jeans and left a nice welt!

After lots of love and a warm bath, he was adequately recovered enough to enjoy a river sunset

Elliot with Jace (Troy's son)

The next day, Max drove us to the Provo Airport. After we made it through security, they announced that our flight was delayed by 3 hours. I kind of wish we had asked Max to come bail us back out, but we were afraid that they would move the flight up again. The airport is tiny with just one big room to wait in. We were hanging out when my friend Palmer called me on the phone. It was pretty random because we haven't talked for a long time, but he had a question he knew I would know the answer to. We had been chatting for a while when I noticed Palmer's brother Spencer Dickson in the same terminal as me! What are the chances of that?? To make it even crazier, I found Ian Blake, another guy from my home stake on the same flight! So there were 3 people who grew up in the McLean, VA stake who were on this flight from Provo, UT to Mesa, AZ. It blew my mind.