Alpine - This is the Place

Alpine, oh Alpine! It's hard to explain how much this place means to me and how much joy it brings me that my kids now adore it as well. This year had a record 160 family members in attendance! 

Our cabin peeking through the trees

 

After setting up our cabin and distributing some Alpine bucks to our very motivated children, we had dinner then headed to the bonfire, which was our assignment this year. Mom had assigned groups to lead songs from the songbook. Most did it with no prep, but there were some real overachievers. Jerry's family had us sing "It's a Small World After All" with verses in English, Swedish, and German- with the last verse having us sing all the languages at once. Josh Williams added some verses to "Down by the Bay." My favorites were "Did you ever see Joel scratching his mole?" and "Did you ever see Glen milking a hen?" 

Naturally there was a live band complete with Banjo, accordion, fiddle, flute, and a few guitars. 

Blake built the fire and was the MC. I bee bopped around telling people when they were up next. A good time was had by all, and many marshmallows were consumed. 

Look at the little ground squirrels that live under the bell! The golf putter was put out in memory of Robbie's son Trey, who loved golf and passed away last year. 

Isaac spent most of his time in the clearing under the big tree. Apparently he foraged for chocolate at some point- my cousin sent me this picture of him covered in it. Elliot was down there quite a bit also. Annie hit it off with some 2nd cousins around her age and was off doing handstands and watching the hoola hoop contest (the winner, Jonah Jensen, went for 1 hr and 2 minutes which is INSANE). Annie was also big into hustling to earn Alpine bucks- she had some major shopping dreams!

They had some activities by age group for all the 2nd and 3rd cousins, which I thought was a great idea. I like the efforts to get more mingling between the different branches of the family. 

The theme this year was "This is the Place." We were at Alpine over pioneer day and took the opportunity to highlight our ancestors that crossed the plains. We are very familiar with the Swedish branch of the family, but not many of us knew that we have 8 ancestors that crossed the plains on Grandma Lucille Keppner Johnson's side of the family. Aunt Cecelia's family did a lot of research and made life sketches of each of them. There were posters with abbreviated versions around the lodge, and full audio productions of longer versions told in the first person and narrated by various descendants. These are SO COOL. I volunteered to upload them to FamilySearch after the reunion. 

The pioneer parade! The kazoo playing along with the brass band caused many a heart to swell. 

I adore this picture. These two are great buds!

Here's the women's retreat! We had yummy snacks, ice cold drinks, and chatted about the theme of leaving things behind to simplify our lives like our pioneer ancestors did. I found this very humorous as several of the aunts are known for doing everything to the max, and you could tell that they struggled to think of a single anecdote about simplifying anything ever. 

The cousin dance started with a bit of line dancing. Annie and Mimi were some cute partners. 

I had room in the car to bring my viola to be part of the strings band for the line dancing! Megan and I fiddled along with Jordan's banjo and a few guitars. 

This girl is so fun to dance with. She was torn between wanting to dance and the allure of the "whipped cream in your face" game that someone brought. 

I snapped this picture to remind me to record my late night chats with Valden -he's the one with the glasses closest to me. Valden is a mortician and has the WILDEST stories that he tells in his trademark deadpan voice. He told us the following real life riddle: 
"A man knocked on the door of of the mortuary and handed me a trash bag saying, 'you forgot this.' I  looked inside and saw a human head. How did this come to be? You can ask me yes/no questions." Eventually we figured out that it was from a cadaver lab. 

I adore the extended Johnson family and am always so recharged by being around them. I feel deeply rooted knowing that I come from a people who are funny, hard working, loving, and resilient. It's always fun catching up with everyone, playing a few rounds of volleyball on the asphalt with everyone blinded by the sun, and staying up too late in the lodge. Big shout out to Aaron for being willing to go to bed early with the kids so that I could hang out. 

Elliot spent most of his time hanging out outside but also had some good crafting time and took on a chess game or two. This kid is so independent and good at entertaining himself. 

He's also good at fighting bears.

Like, really good at fighting bears.

We put the picture of him with the sword into ChatGPT and asked it to make him buff. I think Elliot could pull off the buff warrior kid look 😆

We aren't sure who carved these bears out of the stump by the parking lot, but it sure is a great addition to the camp! They are gorgeous! And I was pretty impressed with Annie and Isaac's impersonations.

Here we are, about to depart with our van packed with Alpine store loot. 

Andersen Dairy & Rexburg

 The drive from the Crawford's to Alpine was too long to make in a day, so we stayed a night with my cousin Robbie near Declo, Idaho. I have always thought Robbie is the coolest but have never seen her house before. It was cool seeing how she organizes to handle her giant brood of kids. I have never seen such a big electric gridle!

The Andersens live on their Dairy farm- a nice continuation of our farm week. We didn't realize that we were there on their daughter's birthday- they were gracious enough not to mention it when we asked if we could stay. Their 7 and 5 year old kids were tasked with giving us a tour while Robbie cooked a birthday dinner, which was pretty funny- the kids wandered around and didn't know the answers to any of our questions but sure looked cute while doing it! We found out from Robbie that they have 2,000+ cows currently milking. 

I asked if they had any clever nicknames for the carousel milker and was disappointed to find that they have never considered calling it the "moover."

They also had MORE KITTENS! Felix was a big fan. We had to stop him from really grabbing their fur. 

I couldn't decide which "Felix with a kitten" picture to use, so here's another one. They were making eye contact, and it was adorable. Annie was all about cuddling the kittens. 

They graciously cleared out 2 bedrooms for us to use. Our 3 older kids were in a room with a double bed. I figured 2 would share it and one would be on the ground, but they all wanted to sleep on piles of pillows. Elliot agreed to sleep on the bed when he no longer had to share it with his beloved younger siblings.

The next morning was Felix's birthday! He was very happy to inherit the "Happy Birthday" sign from his second cousin. We bought him a helium balloon from a dollar store, which flew away shortly afterwards. We stopped at a second dollar store, and the second balloon made it almost until the end of the day. 

We had some spare time before we had to leave for Alpine, so we met up with Blake in Rexburg to help him move out of his apartment and meet up with Mimi & Grumpa. Blake took us to a place that he helped convert into a music venue. It was previously a laser tag place that went out of business and was bought by a soda shop that wanted live music. Blake built a stage and set up the sound system. He's been stoking life into the Rexburg music scene by organizing music festivals and performing with his band, the Stone Popes. 

Here's a picture of Blake in his heavy metal band era for posterity. He's great!

We told Isaac to "do a rock star pose." Maybe the Stone Popes could use him as a backup dancer. 

I convinced everyone to go to Curry Pizza for lunch after hearing Breezy's legends about it. The tikka masala pizza did not disappoint! 

Farm Week

Our main summer vacation this year was a road trip to visit the Crawfords in Nevada, make our way west to Alpine for the annual Johnson family reunion, then make a few fun stops on our way home. Altogether it was 41 hours of driving. The first stretch was the longest- 14 hours in one day. 

We printed and laminated this map with a color coordinated table outlining our itinerary. It is so nice to have this handy in the car when the kids ask "so, where are we going again?"

 

The kids were so good in the car. I love this picture because you can see Felix laughing in the mirror. He slept for most of the way. There were some tears around hour 10 when Annie realized that we STILL weren't close. That's also about when Isaac started coughing in a croup kind of way, which was wild because he didn't even have a stuffy nose the day before. We were really worried about it because we left his croup steroids at home and knew we would be far from any kind of ER at Elizabeth's house. We gave him some ibuprofen to keep the swelling down and figured out how to get a prescription sent to the pharmacy in Winnemucca for us to pick up the next day. We ended up being able to get it under control without using the steroid, but it sure was nice having it on hand just in case. It went down to the level of a normal cold that Isaac had for the rest of the trip and shared with Felix. I got to spend a lot of time with sad coughing boys in the middle of the night this trip. Luckily, they were generally fine during the day.

Elizabeth's house is such an overwhelmingly pleasant place. I love how easy it is to play outside here. 

A family of wild turkeys with two chicks was constantly hanging out near the house! I was obsessed with them. 

Annie prefers the furry to the feathered friends and was obsessed with the cats, especially this kitten. 

Isaac's obsession was with their marble track. He beelined straight for it first thing every morning. 

Felix wanted so very badly to eat all the marbles. Distracting him with sweet wiggle car rides was fairly effective. 

The joy is so real with this little guy

The kids made an impressive stair slide out of the gymnastics mattresses and all the attic theater pillows

Elliot on the zipline. When I tried, I weighed it down enough to really collide with some tall weeds to the point where my phone fell out of my pocket. We had to use the "find my phone" feature on my watch to find it by following the beeping sounds. 

This was Isaac's first year of being big enough to go on the zipline without the baby bucket seat! We tried to take some cool video footage of the zipline with Aaron's drone, but it was too windy.

One of my new favorite things to do by Elizabeth's house is to go to the reservoir! We took the kayaks around for a bit, but the kids mostly wanted to work on their "chocolate milk store." They sold two exciting varieties of chocolate milk- thick or watery. Delicious. 

-

Annie with some nice chocolate milk fingers

They dug an impressively deep mud hole! You can see here that it came up to Elliot's thigh.

On the way back, we stopped by some hot springs. Someone rigged up pipes and tubs to make them more accessible. It was a little sulfuric but oh so relaxing!

Felix at 1

 Let the record show that Felix is an absolutely delightful baby. 

Here's some snapshots of the first year. The thing about Felix is that he looks like a dramatically different baby every time he gets a haircut. I miss his dark hair and hung onto the dark tips as long as we could. 

Felix greatly enjoys feeding himself. He requires a sink bath after most meals. 

I have too many pictures of him covered in various foods in his high chair. Yogurt, oatmeal, and bananas are by far his favorite. 

Here's Felix with his first strong word at 6 months old. "Dada" is a solid first choice!

He's 14 months old as I'm writing this, and he is in the midst of a language explosion. He learns a few new words every week. It's probably not a coincidence that his language took off after spending a week with Mimi. 

Felix came up with an unique mode of transportation. Starting around 8 or 9 months, he started doing the worm to get around. He would get up into planking position, flop forward, then repeat. It was a lot like doing the butterfly stroke on land. This video is from when he was first figuring it out. He got FAST at it for a long time before graduating to the standard crawling on all fours a little past the year mark. 

This video is his very helpful siblings teaching him to clap and wave hi at 10 months old. 

He has just the cutest little fingers. He still sucks his fingers backwards, and when he's tired he will lie down and twirl his hair while sucking his fingers. 

Elliot did a photoshoot with Felix and a tiny minecraft sword when he was a few days old. A year later, he majorly upgraded his weaponry. 

Then we fed it into AI to make a cartoon.

The crossed fingers and hands <3

Here's a video of Elliot and Felix goobering around together as brothers do. Felix is a very happy, playful baby. 

Felix got very good at climbing very abruptly and made it all the way upstairs for the first time when Elliot was supposed to be watching him. He LOVES going up the stairs but hasn't figured out going down yet.

He loved his first trip to the pet store! The fish are always a hit with the lil' guys. 

Other things Felix loves include balls (which he calls "bah") and books (which he calls "booh"). Conveniently, we have a "bah booh" that he requests frequently. He is very easy to put to sleep at bedtime and for naps as long as you read him a book. He will very strongly demand one if I ever try to skip the bedtime book. 

Boy be ballin'

Felix showcasing some of his words

Felix's favorite person is Grumpa. Felix will do his excited feet kick whenever he spots his Grumpa and will start saying his name if he sees Mimi- like he's asking where Grumpa is. Grumpa gets credit for his obsession with balls and for teaching him how to play with toy cars, including the excellent sound effects. 

He does love water! He has spent a lot of time in the pool at Casa Johnson. He always does his excited kicks and lots of splashes. This picture is of the time we let him join the chaos of a playdate with the water pump in the backyard. 

He knows he has excellent hair. 

This boy brings so much joy, laughter, and snuggles to our family.