Enjoyin' the Ride!

So, I'm thinking that since everyone else in Southern California blogged about their earthquake experience, I might as well throw mine in for good measure. Kamryn and I were enjoying a tasty lunch with our friend Karissa at a fabulous hole-in-the-wall mexican place called Patty's. Then the earthquake hits. At first, there was that loud rumbling noise and then came the swaying. Usually, whenever I've been in an earthquake before, the earth feels like its jolting and shaking. But yesterday, I felt like I was swaying. So, everyone in the restaurant just stood in place and looked around as we all swayed with the earth. There was one young girl in there who screamed and then cried for a long time afterward, poor girl. My friend Karissa is not a California native, so she hasn't been through one quite so intense so she was shaken up. And don't get me wrong, my heart was pounding...but I wasn't quite as freaked out as I have been known to get when one hits. I think it actually helped that it was during the day and that I was in public and not alone. I was so calm, that I didn't even grab Kamryn in a panic like I think I normally would have done. She just sat on the chair next to me and we both enjoyed the ride. :-)

So, to all of my dear friends who haven't lived in California that long... Welcome! Let's just hope we've all moved before the dreaded "Big One" hits.

Isn't my Mother beautiful??

My Mom was in town during the family reunion and Kamryn's birthday celebration a couple weeks ago and I just wanted to share a couple of pictures I took of her. Kamryn loves her Grandma and loves spending time with her. So, I'm excited to get whatever time I can with my Mom to hang out, visit and for her to continue to develop a close relationship with Kamryn.


While she was here, we also stopped and visited the grave site of my Dad. He passed away 7 years ago. I miss him terribly and it hurts to know that Kamryn will grow up never being able to meet her Grandpa Johnson, but she will know that her Grandpa was a great man. I'll make sure of that. How grateful I am to know that I will get to see my Dad again and that after this life, Kamryn will get to meet her Grandpa face to face and give him a hug. I hope I'm there when that happens. :-)

Finishin' up the Birthday events!

Since we pretty much celebrated Kamryn's birthday last Saturday, we didn't do too much on her actual birthday, but we did do something. We ran some errands and at Target we let her pick a toy...which ended up being a stuffed animal of Blue from Blue's Clues. Then we took her for a special dinner to McDonalds. We haven't been there for a long time, so it was a special treat for her. She even got more daring on the toys and actually crawled through some of the tunnels, instead of just sitting in the entrance, blocking everyones path. First, here she is in her birthday outfit that her Grandma Johnson gave her. She looks extremely adorable in my own biased opinion. :-) Unfortunately, I couldn't quite get the full outfit shout. But it's cute!


This is a first!!!


Enjoying her birthday dinner! Obviously, she is too busy to bother with my bothersome questions.

Happy Birthday Pooka!

So, my baby girl just turned 2 today. So, I guess that means she is really not a baby anymore. She is a little person who can talk, sing, spin, and give her Mommy and Daddy lots of kisses. Everytime I look at her, it reminds me of my Savior's love for me. I know that my Heavenly Father wants me to be happy and I know that they have blessed my life immensely. I am so grateful to have been blessed with a wonderful husband and that we were able to have our beautiful red head. She loves me unconditionally even when I lose my patience or get angry....she just asks me "what's wrong Mommy?' and gives me kisses. I love how passionate she is....even if it does make for some intense tantrums when I try to remove her from one of those passions (ie: swing, puppies and the caputer(computer)). She is a driven little girl and she knows what she wants and I hope she carries that passion with her her whole life. :-)

On Saturday, we spent some time at the Johnson Family Reunion where we ate good food, went swimming and reacquainted ourselves with my Dad's side of the family. Here is my sister, Suzanne, my sister-in-law Mary with baby Owen and my cousin, Candy.


I asked my brothers to just stand by the BBQ and do their thing....so Jeremy made it look so natural.
After the reunion, we headed back to my house where we celebrated Kamryn's birthday. Most of my family (not all) were in town that weekend for the reunion so I thought we'd celebrate. Thanks for all the wonderful gifts. Kamryn can't stop playing with them. :-)




So Happy Birthday pooka! Your Mommy and Daddy love you so much. You are our sunshine and we thank HeavenlyFather every night for letting us be your parents. Thanks for making our lives more complete!

Thanks for the sunglasses Paige and Kameryn

Kamryn got some sunglasses from one of her playdate friends at our group "Birthday party" which was at our friends Stephanie's house. I said I wanted to take a picture of her with the glasses and here's the pose she came up with. I couldn't have posed her better myself. :-)

I Love the 80's!

Just think VH1 when you read the title and think Flock of Seagulls when you look at this cute little bathing beauty.

Concerts in the Park

My favorite Summer activity! To all our friends....feel free to join us when you want! It's a great family night activity! :-)

At the Car Wash, yeah!

You know I'm desperate for blog material when I start taking pictures of us washing the car. But Kamryn does look cute sitting in the drivers seat. (She knows where she sits in our family, unfortunately).

Well, I was a history major so...

You Are Pocahantas!

Free-spirited and wise. You have a strong passionate spirit that touches and changes all who know you. The wisdom and common sense that you have is really what guides you through life. Even so, you also have a very playful side that loves adventure and excitement.

Which Disney Princess Are You?

God Bless America!

The 4th of July came close to being a total loss of a day, but luckily, all ended well. It started when I cut Kamryn's finger while cutting her nails. I seriously haven't done that since she was an infant! I had become pretty confident in my nail-clipping abilities, but for some reason I slipped up and cut her finger. I wasn't too worried at first since it seemed like a small cut and in actuality, it was a small cut but man, did her finger bleed. And bleed, and bleed.....It was hard for us to get Kamryn to let us hold her finger and try to stop the bleeding so that may have been part of why it kept bleeding...but it wouldn't stop for over 30 minutes. And she was crying and screaming and Jason and I were getting frustrated and feeling bad for her all at the same time. It was quite the ordeal. She finally calmed down so we able to put pressure on her finger. Slowly, the bleeding stopped and Kamryn fell asleep on me. So, we put her down for a nap and thought all was well. But she woke up crying 45 minutes later and could not be calmed down. So, our final attempt to calm her down was "blues clues" and it worked like a charm. We were worried that she had taken such a short nap (for Kamryn, that's a short nap) that she wouldn't last long at the festivities, but we decided to head off to our friend's BBQ anyway. And we are glad we did because it ended up being a fabulous day.















This isn't the best shot, but you can barely see Kamryn's head over Jason's. She went halfway down the slide and Jason caught her. She was begging to go down but after doing it once, was happy not to do it again.















This was Kamryn's favorite thing to do...sit in the swing. She did it often and had issues taking turns with it. Luckily, we were able to avoid one of her extreme tantrums...so it was good.















The classic "taking a picture of someone taking a picture of you" shot. That is my close friend, Karissa, with her husband, Ron, looking suave in his sunglasses.















This is how Kamryn watched the whole fireworks show. Clinging to me for dear life, but just barely peeking out to see the pretty fireworks. Thanks to the Silagyis for letting me sit on top of their Honda Pilot and get a great view. It was such a fun night! It's nights like these where I realize how blessed I am to be living in such a great country and to have so many freedoms and rights. God Bless America!

Palm Desert....a vacation of deceit and plenty of heat!

Our little family got to spend a few days in Palm Desert to help my Mom use up a timeshare. It was a pretty relaxing two days and from these pictures, you'd think that it was full of all smiles and laughter. Oh, these pictures can be deceiving. (but isn't this one darling!!)















It started out great when we found the Barnes and Noble Bookstore at the mall. Kamryn loved the books and the stuffed animals and was just having a great time. Then, I went to go buy a book while Jason had the assignment of nicely putting back one of the stuffed animals she had found. As I was purchasing the book (on the other side of the store, mind you) I heard a scream that only a banshee could compete with. I hurried up my purchase and when I got to Jason, our little daughter was in the midst of a meltdown. It seems we couldn't get out of there fast enough (and it seemed everyone seemed to want to help "those poor pathetic parents." I'm sure they weren't thinking that exactly, but it felt like it).















Well, fortunately we got her to calm down and we wondered if we should head to lunch...but no, instead of being logical and feeding her lunch (since meltdowns mostly occur when children are tired and hungry...which she was both since she had woken up at 6am (not usual for her) and hadn't eaten since breakfast) we decide to put her in another volatile situtation. The playground at the mall! Well, it started off peachy.....















She loved this car and would keep coming back to it. Well, at one point another child discovered the car so when Kamryn came back and saw this, her tired and hungry mind couldn't comprehend why someone was in her car so she commenced to push the child out. We gave her a warning and successfully distracted her with a blue car. But, she came right back to the other car and commenced her pushing and hitting of the other child. So, we had to follow through with our warning and remove her from the playground. Wow, if we thought the last tantrum was bad...this one takes the cake of all children's tantrums all over the world. We couldn't even get her in the stroller this time so I attempted to carry her. Ouch. She hit, bit, scratched, screamed bloody murder so I had to pass her off to Jason who had it just as bad. We managed to get her in the car seat and when we got back to our room we put her right to bed and she passed out. We thought, at that point, we would never leave the room again. But, luckily, we realized that confinement probably wasn't the healthiest option.

So we ventured out to the pool and it went wonderful! She was rested, well fed and had a great time!!! And so did we. It was a wonderful note to end our vacation on.

The last pictures from Utah!

The view from Jason's parents house. (I especially enjoy this view right here...hello hottie!)















A trip to the mountains in our rental car. I seriously want a mini van now. :-)