Home Is Happiness

Category: Uncategorized

  • Valentine’s Day Poem


    Sweetums,

    If you send me flowers I’ll gape in disgust
    If you buy me chocolates I just might combust
    Don’t take me to dinner
    (I want to be thinner!)
    Just help with the dishes, the laundry and dust…

  • I guess I should update this here blog

    I haven’t been blogging lately because I have not had the time or inclination to do it. This morning I finally had the thought to take some pictures of my two adorable children to post here, but alas, the batteries in the camera were dead and I do not have any extra AA batteries. I have like a zillion AAA batteries (because of the new pulsating toothbrushes we recently invested in). Maybe I’ll have to take some pictures of our super clean teeth for later…

    Here’s a little snippet about each person in the extraordinary Johnson family:

    Isaac – I have started giving him back rubs in the morning when I go in to wake him up. Ever since I started doing this I have been hearing “I love you mom” more often and have NOT heard “I hate you mom.” Totally worth it! He has had fun reading books like The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham – he is learning new sounds and new words everytime we read together. Potty training is my LEAST favorite thing about parenting (so far), but hearing my kids learn to read has been one of my most FAVORITE things about being a mom!

    Sydney – She has recently been learning division and basic fractions in math. Most of her spare time at home she spends reading a drawing. This week a couple of boys in her class were picking on her because she was the slowest runner in her PE class and so she went to the school nurse and said she was sick and needed to go home. She did fess up to me (duh, I could totally tell she wasn’t sick) why she wanted to come home. Well, I gave her two choices: 1. Continue to run the way you do right now and just ignore the kids who are picking on you, or 2. Spend some extra time running outside and on the treadmill so you can get better at it. She chose #2. I remember always being the slowest runner at school (it’s not hard when you’re also the shortest).

    Liz – The days have really been running into one another. I have not had time to practice the piano, work on sewing projects, read for leisure, etc. My days have been filled with packing lunches, helping with homework, helping my kids practice the piano, teaching piano lessons. I am looking forward to going to the temple tomorrow with Peter and a new couple that just moved into our ward. Going to the temple always reminds me that all of the mundane days are totally worth it. Peter is back in the swing of traveling for work so I am back in the pseudo-single parenting mode. Phlooey.

    Peter – He went to a gun certification or safety class today (I don’t know exactly what it’s for except that he is going to have fun shooting guns all day). He is leaving for Utah on Sunday (sorry folks he probably won’t be able to stop by and visit you). We are still waiting to find out about the job he applied for in the UK but have found out that several people have applied and that he is over qualified or something. I’m pretty sure he’s the one they really want for the job but I think I’m biased.

    That’s all I can come up with off hand….

  • David Archuleta who?

    Today in sacrament meeting it was announced that there would be a youth fireside this evening at the stake center featuring David Archuletta of American Idol fame. Although I had never watched American Idol, I did recognize the name from the news.

    This evening I had a Relief Society meeting at the church and who should show up at the church to warm up before travelling to the stake center? Well, you can guess. The RS president wanted to see him so she could brag to her daughter so we went out in the hallway as a group of guys (David Archuletta being one of them) were getting ready to drive up to the stake center. Well, I had no clue which guy he was because I had never seen a picture of him before. But now I know because the internet is a wonderful thing.

    I went to the following YouTube link to listen to his singing of the song Imagine and I have to say I was not as impressed as I thought I would be. He does have a nice voice but he is very young and I can imagine (no pun intended) that it will mature nicely.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIuMcL4Kz44

    I hope fame does not spoil him.

  • I made rolls!

    All of my previous attempts at making rolls left me with NO motivation to try again. Little bricks are no fun to eat no matter how much butter you slather on them.

    Well, in a moment of deep humility, I turned to Peter and asked him to teach me. I wrote down the instructions in detail to help me in the future. The result: the rolls turned out quite nicely! I love my bread baking husband!

  • Our New Year

    Sydney – She has had fun making some outrageous head pieces out of paper that she has been attaching to her headbands to wear (i.e. a crown, a large bow, cat ears, etc). Pictures to follow. Right now she is learning to play the Minuet in G by Bach (for her Spring recital piece) and I am a Child of God (she is going to accompany us at our next Family Home Evening!).

    We are in the process of figuring out how to post MP3’s to our blog so you (mostly meaning Grandma) can hear Sydney’s last few recital and Christmas piano pieces.

    Isaac – I started teaching him piano lessons this week. And the rule in our house is when you start, you don’t stop until you move out of the house. So far he loves it! Since he’s only 4 1/2 we don’t just sit at the piano and practice for 30 minutes. Instead, we switch between the piano, his activity book and some percussion instruments that he absolutely loves playing with. So far he knows Left hand, Right hand, quarter notes, quarter rests, loud f, soft p, groups of 2 and 3 black keys, C, F, high notes, low notes, middle notes, and reading music from left to right. I am doing a combination of Music for Little Mozarts and The Music Tree (which is my absolute favorite piano teaching method).

    Last night right before I started teaching piano lessons, Isaac jumped off the bottom step onto the landing area and cut himself under the chin pretty good. I knew it didn’t need stitches, but it sure needed a lot more than a Band-Aid so he sat on my lap holding a wet wash cloth on it for about half an hour while we waited for Peter to come home with the appropriate bandages. Isaac is all better now but insists that the bandage will need to stay on for five days.

    Peter – He has been mostly in town for the last four-five months and we have all enjoyed having him home (most of all Peter I’m sure) but the busy travel schedule is coming again starting next month. Work is keeping him very busy, as always.  He has been very frustrated because his department has been trying to hire about 17-20 qualified people for the last year, but beurocracy and politics keep getting in the way. So… that means my husband is busier than he wants to be.

    Peter recently applied for a job in the UK teaching physics to Royal Air Force cadets and we are waiting to find out if we will be going or not. We love living in Florida (except that there are no mountains, no snow, no family, no Temple Square, no canyons, no walking to church, no driving for 30 minutes to get completely away from PEOPLE, etc) but his job is very stressful for him and a change would be very welcome!

    Liz – I had a little incident with a tomato and a serated knife a couple of nights ago while preparing the fixings for nachos. You can probably guess who won. My thumb didn’t even stand a chance. It seems to be doing fine but I am still waiting to find out whether the skin is coming off or if it was a deep enough cut to re-attach itself. I probably won’t keep you posted on this. I will just say that it is not a smart thing to try to play the piano right after taking a bandaid off of a recently cut finger – it’s not worth the blood on the keys.

    Right now I’m just busy with my kids, with teaching piano, reading a couple of books, grocery shopping, doing laundry and most obviously, blogging.

    That’s all folks… Until next time….

  • My Artistic Children

    Here is Isaac’s very colorful picture. I didn’t have time to ask him what the picture is about, but you can see he wrote his name on it! لعبة بوكر

    We are reading The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis (from the Chronicles of Narnia series) right now so Sydney drew a picture of Jadis, the queen of Charn who later becomes the White Witch. In her left hand, she is holding the lamp post that later becomes planted in the ground in Narnia.

  • Sleigh Ride

    My friend Melissa and I played a duet of Sleigh Ride on Christmas Eve. If you would like to see the video click on the link below to watch:

    willandmelissawatson.blogspot.com/2008/12/sleigh-ride.html

    *Special thanks to Peter for being our page turner.

  • Canaveral National Seashore – Dec 27, 2008

    Sydney is pouting in this picture (even though you can’t tell) because we told the kids
    we were not going to play at the beach. I didn’t feel like cleaning up beach mess that day and we were 1 1/2 hours away from home.
    This is what the beach looked like before all of the resorts and condos on the beach. I always wondered…
    Taking a “hike.” I just laugh when I look at all the “hiking” paths in Florida. It’s a joke. What I really need is a week in the mountains.

    There were armadillos everywhere! The only one’s Peter and I had seen before were dead ones on the highway. They let us get pretty close up to take pictures. Weird looking animals…

    Peter and I decided to plan a day-long family fight; I mean, a day-long family fun-filled trip! Since our funds were low after Christmas we decided to go to Canaveral National Seashore just to check it out. We also went to Merritt Island Wild Animal refuge and saw all the birds that flew down here for the winter. We came across some serious bird watchers there – with the outfits and gear and all. As we were driving around a crew of birdwatchers stopped us and allowed us to come and look through their expensive telescopes to see an eagle sitting on her nest. That was pretty impressive!During the day we also saw a few alligators, several different kind of birds (I have to admit that bird watching is not my favorite activity – they don’t do much), and armadillos.

    My favorite part of the trip was being able to see the beach without all of the buildings on it. It was beautiful!

    And after all was said and done, I would still have rather spent the day freezing outside building snowmen and sledding down the huge hill at Hunter Park. I did force myself to drink a cup of hot cocoa a couple of times last week but it wasn’t the same…

  • Christmas Day 2008


    Peter’s Christmas presents:

    • A new Glock .40 caliber revolver (he saved his allowance for about six months to buy this)
    • Two snappy suits
    • White shirt and three new ties

    Liz’s Christmas loot:

    • 2009 Temple Calendar
    • 2009 I Love Lucy Calendar (from Peter – he didn’t know that I already bought a calendar)
    • An almost-paid-off grand piano
    • Butterfly pin from Sydney
    • Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend, both by Charles Dickens
    Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

  • “In the Stable” by Sydney Johnson

    Go to the following link to read Sydney’s Christmas book. She would like you to know that the pictures are simple on purpose because it is a book for preschoolers.

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/9616787/In-the-Stable

    (We’ll keep working on her handwriting…)