Happy New Year

Happy New Year from Josh, Amanda, Brandon, Mikayla, and Cocoa

Messy Cookie Making Is

I was doing a little post-Christmas shopping today and discovered that Williams-Sonoma now carries a line of Star Wars baking products. Of course, it is ridiculously overpriced and not at all practical, but they have everything from pancake molds to Darth Vader spatulas and aprons! I couldn't resist the cookie cutter set. Nathan, Ashley, and I spent most of the afternoon baking, and I spent the rest of it cleaning up the mess!

Kayaks for Christmas

Christmas morning at the Stacys

This year Santa brought an unexpected surprise. The kids each got a real inflatable kayak (called a ducky). We plan to try these out on new years day so we will let you know how it turns out.

Christmas Bells

This is a little dark but it's my kids playing the bells at church on the Sunday before Christmas. They all did surprisingly well and B even got to be the lead on one of the songs. I wish i would have thought to video it but oh well...

Christmas Pics

I finally downloaded our Christmas pictures. Here's a sampling:

Playing at the park on Petit Jean before going to Meme and Pop's house.

Snuggies from Meme and Pop - likely their favorite presents this year.

We tried to take a family pic Christmas morning, but it just wasn't happening.

Striking a pose in the Christmas pajamas

How Nathan and I spent the rest of our Christmas morning

Lastly, here's Dad holding my favorite gift that I gave this year - a hardbound, printed copy of the blog. I used blurb.com and would highly recommend it! I only had the first two years (2007-2008) printed for now because that was already 250 pages! I also had a copy made for myself and showed it to Renee and Amanda last time they were home. They loved it as well!

A few more random pics

I forgot about these on my phone:

Christmas Eve service at church. (I don't know if you can see it, but Nathan was thrilled to see his head on the big screen.)

Random house in Sherwood

Walking around on Mom and Dad's new property on Christmas day.

Play date at our house. I was at work as Jeff the Super Dad watched 4 kids!

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Roast Beast

Another Christmas in the books! We had a very low-key holiday. We celebrated with Jeff's family last Saturday. And then after opening our gifts Christmas morning, we spent the afternoon with my parents.

We have spent the last couple of days chilling out at home and enjoying our presents. I cooked this lovely roast in my new Dutch oven. Jeff - who rarely finishes a book - read the entire book that I gave him in less than 24 hours! Nathan has been playing with his Wampa Cave Legos and wearing his new Jedi costume day and night. (Literally...he even slept in it!) Ashley has been playing with Barbies, successively wearing all of her new clothes, and tattooing her entire body with temporary tattoos! (Thanks, Santa!)

There are more pictures to follow, but right now we are on our way to Wayne and Phyllis' to try out that roast!

Hot Pink Angel Wings

Merry Christmas from our family to yours! I wanted to share a little something that I wrote a few years ago just after Nathan was born but before the blog existed. I hope you enjoy...

Dress rehearsal…Why is it that no matter how many practices you have for a Christmas program that the dress rehearsal is always a disaster? We had one such calamity at our church in December 2002. The program was to include several songs to be sung by the choir, a few solos, and of course, a nativity scene. Since I had given birth to a (beautiful) baby boy just two months prior to the big show, our newly expanded family was asked to play the Holy Family.

Since Mary had no lines to read, and the nativity scene was relatively short, I agreed to do it. But before the dress rehearsal even began, I had some misgivings. We had a large crop of preschool-aged children in our church that year, and they were going to be the only other characters in the nativity. The mothers of these children frantically tried to dress the girls in baptismal robes and hot pink angel wings while trying to transform their daddies’ bath robes in to shepherds costumes for the boys. Fortunately, my baby boy was tucked away safely in the nursery. My friend Heather volunteered to make “Joseph” and me some makeshift costumes. We had to cut mine open on the side to allow for the “baby weight” I was still carrying.

Once dressed, we made our way to the stage where the angels were poking each other with their wings, and the shepherds were tripping over their robes and tormenting the angels with their staffs (a.k.a. large plastic candy canes covered with brown paint). I thought the whole scene was ridiculous. “Why even bother”, I remember thinking. The practice seemed to last for hours, and I just ready to be finished with the whole thing.

So, the big night arrives. We still had some dressing difficulties. More children showed up than were expected, so we where throwing together some more costumes. I went to the cry room with my newborn to await our cue to enter. It was about 150° in our church that night, so I stripped "Baby Jesus" down to his diaper and wrapped him loosely in the swaddling cloth. I also stuck his pacifier in his mouth and prayed to the Lord that we would get through the next few minutes.

We took our place on stage as the Christmas story was read and the angels and shepherds joined us. Something nearly miraculous happened on that stage. These previously rowdy children, who had not yet practiced with a real baby on stage, were mesmerized by him. As a sat there looking into their adoring faces, I was overcome with emotion. If this human baby could bring such joy to the faces of these little children, I could not fathom the emotion that the original angels and shepherds must have felt when they looked into the face of our Savior. I don’t know if the post-partum hormones had anything to do with it, but I fought hard to keep the tears from streaming down my face. I think a few of them escaped anyway.

Later, I was sorry for the attitude that I had during the dress rehearsal. God moved me in a special way that night. I was reminded of something that deep-down I knew all along. It doesn’t matter if the CD is not cued to the right spot, or if the person sitting next to you sings off key, or even if the angels have hot pink wings, the glory of the Lord can shine through when we make the effort to present his message to others.

Fall on Your Knees...

and hands, and rear end! We went ice skating tonight for the first time in years! Three years, in fact. That's what I love about blogging! I looked back and found this post from 2007 to see when the last time actually was.

But I digress. Back to 2010...

There's an ice skating rink at the River Market again this year, so we went tonight with Audry and Jenna. We all had fun, and there was no drama and thankfully no injuries! However, I'm sure that we will all be feeling it tomorrow!

Party Everyday, Party Everyday!

Last week was the week for Christmas parties for us! On Tuesday, we had two conflicting events. I went to a Christmas dinner with my mom at her church where the featured speaker was a lady named Marilyn Sternberg. She and her husband were both born into Jewish families and converted to Christianity as adults. They have an amazing story, and you can read more about it here.

That same night, Jeff and Dad watched Nathan in the first performance of the 2nd Grade Holiday Musical. Since we are in a public school, it was of course a multicultural experience. Nathan's class was featured in the Hanukkah song. How ironic was it that my son was singing a Hanukkah song while I was listening to a converted Jew speak about Christmas?

Mom and I made the second performance during the day on Thursday, and that afternoon both kids had Winter Parties in their classrooms. Jeff was also at school all day on Thursday as it was his turn as Watchdog Dad. What a fun day! We were all worn out after a long day at school but then had to go home and get ready for my work Christmas party that evening!

Friday was Pajama Day, so at least that should have made getting ready for school a little easier. However, both of my kids had fallen asleep in the car - in their regular clothes - on way home from Debbie's on Thursday night, so I actually had to get them dressed in their PJ's for school! It kind of defeated the purpose for me, but they had fun wearing them and had a relaxed last day of school.

That night, we had the Skinner, Stanisor, and Krebs families over for a little Christmas get-together of our own. We enjoyed lots of good food, and the kids got into the usual things that you do at the Adams' house: making a craft, freeze dance competition, and wearing random costumes. I don't really know why this has become the list of things you do at our house, but that's what they all ask for!

This time (while in costume), some of the kids wanted to sing Christmas carols for us. Calli and Grace will be mortified by this video in a few short years, but for now I have to share it. I don't know what started the little scrap between Lydia and Ashley, but it's too funny!

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

Tonight's low is 12 degrees with 20-30 mph wind gusts! We got out and played hard with Lucy before she gets put up in the garage for the night. Not pictured is me wearing Jeff's coveralls - for obvious reasons.

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Christmas Traditions - Old and New

Ever since I first heard of the Elf on the Shelf a few years ago, I've been thinking about adding that as one of our Christmas traditions. Jennifer and others have remarked about how much better their kids behaved when they thought the Elf was watching them. To be honest about it, I didn't really want to spend 30 bucks on a stuffed elf, so I just put it off. After the kids kept asking if we could get one, I finally broke down and got it. So here's our Elf:

We named him "Snitch". I'll let you know how it works out for us.

One of our long-standing Christmas traditions is to give each other ornaments each year and to collect ornaments from everywhere we travel. We literally have ornaments (or at least souvenirs made into ornaments) from around the world. I will probably never have a beautiful tree, but ours is special because it contains so many memories. I thought that I would steal this idea from my friend's blog and post some pictures of our favorites.

Jeff's homemade ornament (c. 1980)

When Renee and I had an apartment together, she already had a tree and lots of ornaments. I had nothing to contribute, so I cut out this house from a Christmas card. I still hang it up each year.

I do have some pretty ornaments like this one that I got at a wedding shower. Several of my pharmacy school friends bought me a set of "Bride's Tree" ornaments by Old World Christmas. Each one represents something like "faith", "love" and "hospitality".

This one is a little weird, but I love it! It's from our trip to NYC in December '04.

This monstrosity is what Jeff brought home from one our trips to DC. It's a replica of the lunar module from the Air and Space museum.

He's not entirely to blame for the tacky ornaments on the tree, though. I bought this one for him - it even has lights and sound. The kids love it!

And since the little people took over our house in 2002, we have lots of ornaments that look like this one.

We got this one for Ashley last year since she was Cinderella for Halloween and loves all things princess.

Lastly, no tour of ornaments would be complete without at least one picture from our Hog Tree. It holds many Razorback ornaments, ticket stubs, and ornaments we've collected from other schools that we've visited over the years.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from the Johnsons!!


We had breakfast with Santa Saturday morning at the boys school. They also had a Chinese Auction where we won two free buffets to CiCi's pizza!! It was a good day!

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Tiny Dancers

Ashley's class is learning about gingerbread men this week. Tough subject matter, I know. Especially when one of your assignments is to decorate and eat a gingerbread man.



Her homework for the subject was to decorate this big, paper one. With lots of help from mom, she made hers into a ballerina. (You can probably tell by her messy hair that the second picture was taken after school.)



Lydia invited Ash to "Bring a Friend" night at her dance class earlier this week. I think you can see where the inspiration for the design came from:



Conversation in car after I picked them up from the class:

A: Can I go to dance with Lydia every time?
Me: I don't know. What was your favorite part?
A: Whatever was Lydia's favorite part.
Me: Lydia, what was your favorite part?
(Thoughtful pause)
L: Getting a dwink.

I don't know if I'm up for the drive to Maumelle every week so they can enjoy the water fountain! We'll see!

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The Painted Pig

I thought that we had been to at least one birthday party at every venue in central Arkansas, but today we added another one. Jenna S. celebrated her 8th at The Painted Pig, a paint-your-own pottery place. It was a bit calmer than many parties we've thrown/attended, but to me that was a welcome relief! The kids each painted an ornament before stuffing themselves with huge, delicious slices of cake and Fudgesicles.

The Birthday Girl

Nate Dog

The "Twins" - Ashley & Lydia

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