Ellie in 2011

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Bah! What a year...seriously.  My baby has grown so much and so have we as a family.  From finishing my first year of PA school, to moving across the country to start Leons first year of law school. New house, new friends, yet same wonderful little family.  There are no words to express how much the Lord has blessed our family this year.  Our beautiful baby girl was more than we deserved and the heavens just continues to pour blessing upon us. I am so in love with both my little princess and her handsome Daddy-o.  We were so lucky to be happy and healthy this past year. May health and happiness follow us and you all in the year to come. Happy New Year!

Love,

US

Family Fun

Yay I love love love our new family pictures. Don't you?  Yes, Holli this is Thatcher haha and I think we are in a cotton field.  Do you love it?  Because I was thinking about buying you and Jake a plot of land right next to ours, which is right next to the trailer park and the archery shop lol. I secretly love Thatcher, but mostly just because I love the people who live here.  Anyway, My sister-in-law decided to give my mother-in-law the fantastic Christmas present of a photo shoot of our entire family with this amazing photographer.  Her name is Amber halverson and you can see her amazing work here.  I figured since we were there and ready that we might as well snag a few of just our little family and I am oh so glad I did.  I can't wait to get these framed and up in our home. 

We left our San Diego paradise and came to Thatcher on Tuesday night. Ellie was such a good little flyer and the flight was practically empty so she basically just meandered around the plane and made friends with everyone. She is such a fun and outgoing little peanut.  

I sure do love Arizona. We only lived in Mesa for a little over a year and it still feels like home.  We drove past Banner Gateway and I smiled thinking about the wonderful little person in the back seat who took her first breath in that hospital.  And then came the superstition springs exit where our first apartment as a family is located. I hope the new residents love it as much as we did and feel the love that was built in that little space by a little three member family a year ago. My heart broke a little as we drove past Burger house in Miami because I knew it would be closed and we wouldn't be able to stuff our faces with green chili burros. Next time.

We arrived at two in the morning and were all three beat.  Ellie woke up on the transition from the car to the house and was so excited to see Itchy! She basically screamed "Doggy!" and chased her around the house. Well lets be honest she has been chasing her around the house nonstop since we've been here.  We woke up and got to see the family. It was so fun to spend time with all of Leon's brothers and sisters. Ellie absolutely loves little Taylor. The two kids kind of look alike and are so cute to watch playing together.

Now we are just hanging around this little town and showing Ellsie where Daddy grew up. We went to the High School today and Ellie played with the old tires and got to run, run, run with Dad. We also got to go over to Granny's house. It is always so much fun to spend time with her. Oh and best of all no more "bobby's"! Yay for us. Ok yay for Leon because he did most of the work. Ellie now can even say sippee. It is so so cute. I love her.

We love and miss you all already.  Hope you enjoy the gems of our little fam.

love us

Reunited

Have I told you we are in love?
There is nothing in this world better than an Ellie kiss...nothing.

Yea! Go Harvard Law School!

How cute is Ellsie here? Bah I want to jump right through the picture and kiss that beautiful smile.

Leon is back in my arms! Yea! I always tell myself that two weeks is nothing, but when it comes to being away from your one and only it seems like an eternity. Not to mention, little cinder-ellie had an awful GI bug and threw up on me every morning for about 3 days, at around 4 o clock on the nose, without fail.  I would literally be changing a diaper every hour until the bug passed. I did everything i could to prevent a mad diaper rash. Oh, how I could have used a little help from my partner in crime haha.  But he was very busy taking all those beautiful tests, so well known by us eternal students, as finals.  But at last we are now all together and the bed fills full again and my little body is warm in those big strong arms at night.

 I am so lucky to have this wonderful man in my life. And this little piece of perfection, that I call my daughter, is more than I deserve. Honestly she is more than anyone deserves. Delicious I tell you. Oh how grateful I am for my little family. We really are so blessed just to be together.  And now that we are here together in California I couldn't be happier. What a perfect Christmas.

We have spent the past couple days walking Hollywood blvd in LA, finishing Christmas shopping, and enjoying each other. I don't want this trip to end. 

Mesa with Mimi

A couple weeks ago Ellie and I got on an airplane and did our, what seems like millionth, flight from Boston to Phoenix.  We are getting quite good at maneuvering the airport and security just the two of us lol.  She was such a good girl, like always, and we made it to Arizona safe and sound. 

I had to take my end of rotation exams, so my mom came out to take care of Ellie for me.  Ellie hadn't seen her Mimi since September (besides seeing her pretty much everyday on skype) and she was very excited indeed.  Jaxy came too and boy was Ellie in heaven. She still is...so much attention, so little time.  She is so the princess :) 

Mimi took the kids to the children's museum in Phoenix, which is one of our all time favorite spots to play with the kiddos, I highly recommend it.  Apparently Ellie couldn't get enough of that place. It makes me sad that I missed the adventure but I love that she had a blast.

Have I mentioned recently that she is getting too big, too fast and that I am shocked at how smart the little one has gotten.  I just finished my pediatrics rotation and am well aware of the verbal milestones of a fifteen month old. And they only are supposed to be saying a handful of words. My child is saying everything from peek a boo to shoe.  In just the past week she has been picking up on so many new words and is surprising me everyday. Recently she has been saying "oww-yyy" to everything she doesn't want.  If she doesn't want a shirt on..."oww-yyy", if she doesn't want her socks on..."oww-yyy", if she doesn't want to be in her car seat..."oww-yy". It is getting quite manipulative.  Her dad is going to be shocked at how her vocabulary has grown in the week and a half we have been apart.

While Mommy and Ellie have been busy play play playing in the beautiful California sunshine, Leon has been finishing up his finals. He will be coming to join us for the Christmas festivities in California tomorrow. Woo-hoo! In fact he is now officially done with his first semester at Harvard Law and I am honestly so proud at how hard he has worked. He is such a smarty and is still able to balance church, family and BYU sports all on his plate lol.

We are so excited to get to spend time with our families and be on the west coast! I can't tell you how many things are different from coast to coast.  Leon and I used to think we could live in New York for a couple of years and then come back to the west coast, but now we are prepared to do whatever it takes to get back here as soon as possible. Maybe it's just missing our wonderful families, or the palm trees, or the organized roads, or the space (I finally feel like I can breathe again after four months of suffocation in Boston), or maybe even just the ability to have a superficial conversation with someone who isn't ridiculously brilliant lol (Trust me there is not much of this in Cambridge Massachusetts).

Anyways Happy Holidays we love and miss you all!! 

PS have I proclaimed my love for Mitt Romney lately? And my abhorrence for the Newt? What is happening to the republican party? I am disgusted and appalled at what is happening in the polls...you people are almost moving me to write another poem...

Black Friday Champions

We came, we shopped, we conquored.

  

For those of you who don't know us well, the love of finding a deal is a passion that Leon and I share emphatically.  We are both what we like to think of as, "wise" with our money haha. I might have used the word "cheap" to discribe the boy back in our dating years, but a lot changes once you get married.  And black friday is the day of dreams for us Johnsons.  

Leon and I have been wanting a new tv for a while now (we might still be using the old tv that I had in my dorm room my freshman year of college haha) and so we decided to splurge on a 46 incher from Target.  He may or may not have gotten in line right after Thanksgiving dinner.  I know, talk about determined, he spent 8 hours waiting in line for the baby in our front room.  It is safe to assume that since it is only a few weeks until his first set of law school finals, he spent his time in line studying (always a good thing).  Ellie and I stayed home and printed out lists of things we needed him to get and maps of the store so we could be as efficient as possible.  We would go and visit him every two hours or so to make sure he didn't freeze over. Don't worry Ellie didn't wait in line with him until it was about time to go in.  Ellie and i met up with him about 15 min before the store opened.  Of course we would need to teach our spawn how to do Black Friday right lol.  It was the Holy day for all bargain shoppers. She would need to learn sooner or later.  Ok, ok maybe that is a little overboard and the truth is we just couldn't find a babysitter at one in the morning. She thought it was so much fun.  We were in and out in a half hour and now we have a brand new tv stand and flat screen tv in our living room to show for it.  Move over Jones', here we come lol.

Halloween 2011 Second Edition

Big news...

I found my long lost phone!! (see previous halloween post to fully understand my devastation)

This has been so exciting for me, especially since I thought all my halloween pictures were long gone. 

I must share these precious gems with the family.

Ellie was so precious in her little ladybug costume and her little pumpkin bucket. We wish you all could have been there.

She even tried out some red lipstick for the big night haha.

*Side note: if you haven't already figured it out by now, our little Ellie pie is all that is her Mama in a tinier and balder little package.  Her favorite thing to do is help Mom get ready in the morning. She will pull all my make up out of the drawer and try to curl her hair with my eyelash curler, brush her face with my powder brush, and open and close all the lipstick containers. It is so darn cute. I let her put on chapstick everytime I put it on, and she just la la loves getting pretty. She will open her mouth and be very still when I put the chapstick on and then be sure to give me a kiss when she is all done getting pretty. Haha it is adorable.

So the story has been told and these are the little memories I'm so grateful to have...Yay for me.

We practiced a little before we went out

Bah I can't get enough of this little smile

Talk about delicious :)

Ellie pointing at the CANDY...come to find out she is quite the chocoholic

Hope you are as happy as I am that the phone has been found and the pictures recoverd.  

Muah

 Love, Us

19 days and counting!!

Until what you ask?

Well until we go to Arizona of course..

Why am I so excited to take my end of rotation exam and pull out my OSCE skills?

Im not.

To be honest in every way, I can't wait to see my mom! Yay! I just miss her so much.

Don't make fun of this 23 year old baby that can't wait to just give her mom a hug and take her shopping at Last Chance, (especially you Leon).

It's ok to miss your mom. I hope Ellie misses me one day too.

Speaking of the peanut, Ellie is going to have so much fun in California for Christmas with her auntie and uncle.

And honestly I can't wait for New Years in Arizona! 

We miss our Johnson brood so much too.

Ellie has so many cousins her age.  Its going to be crazy fun at Grandma Julie's house bahaha.

On another note, Ellie and I did a morning photo shoot in bed this morning and I was just thinking what an extra wonderful place this world would be if there were two of her.

Searching the Scriptures...

This morning Ellie and I have been reading book after book.  She loves to read and will always want more.  So, I decided to get some scripture studying done while the little peanut was so attentive.  As we finished reading the scriptures, I started reading the book we all got in Relief Society last week "Daughters in my Kingdom".  I ran across a quote from president Kimball that said:

" I stress...the deep need each woman has to study the scriptures. We want our homes to be blessed with sister scriptorians-whether you are single or married, young or old, widowed or living in a family. Regardless of your particular circumstances, as you become more and more familiar with the truths of the scriptures, you will be more and more effective in keeping the second great commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself. Become scholars of the scriptures-not to put others down, but to lift them up! After all, who has any greater need to 'treasure up' the truths of the gospel (on which they may call on in their moments of need) than do women and mothers who do so much nurturing and teaching" 

This quote made me think of someone I could only possibly aspire to be, Leon's mission president's wife, sister smith.  I had the pleasure of meeting the couple this summer and I was in awe of the spirit just her presence brought.  What a beautiful woman who is such a good example to me.  I hope to one day be a little of who she is and I know the only way to do that is through furvent study of the scriptures. So all in all, Thank you Spencer W. for a nice little reminder of where my priorities need to be.

Memories with the Mr.

So for the past couple days Ellie and I have been thinking alot about our Mr. Johnson.  Oh how we love him.  I was looking through pictures and Ellie came over to cuddle with me like she always does. I couldn't help but start to tell her stories about all the pictures.  Everytime she saw leon she would say, "Da-EE" and laugh.  I told her how "Daddy likes to play baseball sometimes, and when he was little but still the same size he played baseball for the cubs and Mommy would say, 'YAY!' for him".  Then of course Ellie started clapping and so we cheered for him again for old times sake haha.

How cute were we lol. Yes, that is my molecular biology book. He told me it was sexy when I would study as I watched him play ball.

Then I went on to tell her about how nice her Daddy is.  I told her that "Daddy knows how much Mommy likes to hear singing and so for her 21st birthday he took her to see the phantom and the pretty girl sing to each other" (Phantom of the Opera).  I went on to explain, "Then Daddy taught Mommy how to throw all her moneys away at the game table.  It is a very naughty thing and you should never do it.  Don't worry Daddy never wins so he won't ever teach you about that game."

Lastly, I told her about a place called Utah. I said, "Ellie, Utah is very cold and it snows there a lot." She knows about snow because she saw it for the first time last weekend. Her Dad took her outside and threw snowballs at her puffy snow suit. She wasn't a fan. Not surprising considering who her parents are. I continued to tell her, "Carder and Brenn live in Utah and Mommy and Daddy went to college in Utah.  It is where the cougars live." Ellie knows about the Cougars because she watches them throw the ball and knock eachother down every Saturday with Daddy-o. I told her, "Mommy met Daddy in Utah and that is where we got married and lived in our first apartment. Utah has lots of fun stuff. I will take you there one day ok?" and then quite abruptly Ellie says, "no." 

We will be in Arizona the 7-9 of December if anyone wants to get together and do lunch I would love to see you! Then we are off to California for Christmas YAY!! 

We love and miss you all muah

Love, US