Johnson Family Sealing

 Friday, November 14, 2014

I had the great privilege of taking some quick family portraits after Trevor Johnson was sealed for time and eternity to his parents and brothers. 

 Wonderful happy eternal family. David, Rena Jean, Trevor, George and Austin Johnson.

We always take advantage of friend picture opportunities these days.  We have been close since we were very small children. (Malu was not there.)

Girls' Night

Friday, September 5, 2014

Girls' Craft Night 

 Rachael, Malu, Rena Jean, Noelle. Friends for two decades. Wow.

 We are always good at documenting our activities.

Also, apparently Rachael missed the memo to wear black.

Here is my cell phone shot of the darling pumpkins I made that night. Eric helped saw the sticks for me.

Birthday Visits

Our very close friends, Adam and Laurie Stradling visited us over my birthday from Virginia. (They have since moved back to Mesa and we rejoice in getting to see them regularly now. Yay. But at this time we had not seen them in a year and a half.) 

We took the kids to the retention basin "park" down the street from us so the kids could run and I could practice more with my new 70-200mm lens.  Which is freaking heavy and I was getting used to it.

Hyrum and Valette ran and ran and it was great fun.

 This is Laurie and Etta, who is about a month older than Abbi.

Abbi, 9 months old

Saturday, December 19, 2013 

 I have no pictures of our great evening. We got a babysitter for all four kids and went to dinner at a restaurant I'd never been to, The Spaghetti Factory. (It was okay, not amazing enough for the price.) We then walked around Chandler Mall and Eric bought my my first ever real winter coat. It's a gorgeous purple peacoat with ruffles at the bottom. I love it.

April

Saturday, April 20, 2013 

 Valette, Kadyn, and Kendyl

Kadyn and Kendyl's dad, Joey, was sitting across the room from them and taking turns "pitching" the ball to each of them.  Valette and Kadyn were loving it. 

 Valette found my phone before church.  She was laying there for quite a while, watching videos.

 Sunday, April 21, 2013

Cute girls before church.

giving kisses. 

Valette gives Abbi a lot of very wet kisses.

Valette's Park Birthday Party

February 6, 2013

Adria, George, Casen

Kaylee, Eden, Dylan, Grandma Julie, Valette, Adria, Andreia 

 Madilyn (I didn't get any with her face, sadly.)

 Casen and Kendyl

Adria is eating goldfish, but I'm pretty sure Casen is eating sand. 

There were lots more people but I didn't take very many pictures.

Grandma Julie made us chocolate and funfetti cupcakes with blue frosting and goldfish crackers.  They were super cute (and yummy!) I can't believe I did not take a picture of them.  I brought water bottles and a million goldfish.  The kids really enjoyed the snack cups for the fish crackers.

I just wanted to do something simple and visit with friends for her birthday.  My mom got sick (that sickness went around forever! I was still dealing with the lingering cough when Abbi was born over a month later) and wasn't able to come but lots of people made it and I had a great time and so did Valette.

Girls Weekend

This is going to be a very long post. There are A LOT of pictures. Most of them funny as all get out.

The last weekend in January my friends and I FINALLY made it to the cabin for a girls weekend. It took 6 months of reschedules to get this weekend to happen.  We were all super excited.

We arrived about 8 pm. I unlocked the door and turned on the lights and everything looked fine.  Then I went to the front yard to turn on the water.  I then come back inside to the yells of my friends that there is water POURING out of the doorframe to the bedroom downstairs.  We then went back out to turn the water off and called my mom about the emergency.

In the mean time I also noticed that the thermostat wouldn't respond when I tried to turn the heat up.  Great.  Our weekend was looking doomed. We hadn't been there ten minutes yet.  I told my parents everything that happened while my friends looked at the thermostat. Rachael noticed that it needed new batteries. Bless her. This basically saved our weekend.  They got the heater on and my mom tried the plumber. But we weren't expecting a response, it was the weekend.

We all really wanted to stay.  So we decided that we would go tomorrow to buy a lot of gallons of water and just force the toilet to flush and boil water for dishes.  This plan worked great and we stayed the whole time we planned to and the weekend was grand, and hilarious, and chatty, and everything tasted good.  Yay for girls weekends.

We got right into the wreath making, and stayed up until we finished around 1:30 am.

January 25, 2013

felt flowers waiting for hot glue.

January 26, 2013

We got "dressed up" for pictures and our trip to the dollar stores.  (Overgaard has TWO dollar stores.  They are moving up in the world ;> )

We sat down to take the group shots and I took this test photo.  It cracks me up.  Especially Rachael's expression.  I then remembered I have no idea where the self timer is on my camera and Rachael went to grab hers.

Cute group shot.

When we came back with every gallon of water that had been on the shelves Rachael decided it was time for dress up. Not even kidding.  Rena Jean even said she would do it with her. What a sport.

 We had the most hilarious afternoon.

We have worn ALL of these clothes in many many dress up games when we were younger.  It was really funny to see them put these on and how they actually FIT. It was nuts.  Since when do dress up clothes actually fit you?

 Here's Rachael as Reba Macyntire. (sp?)

 Mumu's. Yep. All of these clothes are from the 60s and early 70s.  The one Rachael has on has pants inside it instead of a slip.  We always found that to be nuts. She felt they needed to spin so she picked up the skirt to help it twirl.

 Then she started doing cartwheels, which landed one foot smack! on the table, the entire side of it.

 Which resulted in swelling and a serious bruise.

This happened.  I don't even know.  It was hilarious.

 I dunno, maybe this is supposed to be vogue?

 Yeah. Crazy.

 Malu and I were there too.  We got to bust up laughing and take all the documentation.

 My grandma had these wigs. I'm pretty sure there was a time that she wore them on a regular basis too. They are crazy.

 And the olive green color is also compliments of her. It's Nuts.

 I. Love. This. Photo. 

It makes me laugh SO HARD.

Here are the finished products.

Top left, Noelle, right Malu. Bottom left, Rachael, right, Rena Jean.

They are all amazingly cute.

***

My mom got a call back from the plumber on Saturday.  It turns out that a week and a half before this some bozo went out with his gun and SHOT the transformer.  Heber, Overgaard, and Clay Springs were without power for about 12 hours that night.  It got to -6 degrees.  A lot of houses have had frozen, busted pipes because of this guy.  They also told my mom that some houses were still without running water at this point, 10 days later. That would be awful to go that long.

They put up a reward for catching the guy because he caused so much damage and financial hardship to so many people.  I haven't heard if anything has come of it.

The next weekend my cousin and her family went to up and her husband fixed the pipes. This was a blessing because it saved my parents a bunch of money.  Unfortunately my cousin slipped on the ice and broke her arm while up there.  When she came home the bone hadn't set right and she had to have a surgery to fix it.  She is a trooper and has done really well since.  But what a lot of hassle.