Happy Anniversary

Tomorrow marks our Ten Year Anniversary. What can I say to TEN YEARS!!!! We made it, we beat the odds, or how about a simple I love you babe. This last ten years has been wonderful and trying but we have made some crazy great things out of it.

1. Riley Scott Johansen
2. Renowned faith in each other
3. Brenden Connor Johansen
4. Renowned faith in the church
5. Courage to try something new
6. Countless moves
7. Two beautiful homes.
8. Bryce James Johansen
9. Renewed love for each other
10. Respect
11. Compromise
12. Knowledge of each other
13. Growth
14. Understanding
15. Countless numbers of pets
16. Two wonderful families
17. Strength
18. Love

Most of these things are works in progress but what is a great marriage without a goal in mind. I love you and all that you are. I am grateful to have gotten this far in our life and to have accomplished so much together. I will take the bad with the good and the good with bad and follow you anywhere. Except back to New York. Just kidding. Happy ten year anniversary. I love you.

Santa

Why do siblings Fight? I remember not being so nice to my brothers and sister when I was growing up but I do remember loving them. So Why do Siblings fight?

We went to a Christmas party at the Base this weekend which was fun, there were bounce houses every where. Free food and goodies, face painting, free toys, and good company. Of Course the entertainment were the Johansen boys. Every time we turned around some one was screaming at the other. Or some how a folded arm would hit the other in the head. All of Tony's friends get a kick out of them of course but at times it can be really embarrassing. Santa flew in on a KC-130 and you would think that while standing in line to meet Santa Clause of all people that they would be on there best behavior.

Needless to say we left before they could sit on Santa's lap. We told them there was plenty of time to see Santa but today was not the best day because they were on there worst behavior. Unreal Santa can't even set them straight.

We LOVE Our Aunt April

Love LOVE Love the Shirt. Thanks April!!!!

Bethlehem

Riley and I had a wonderful time this weekend. I always feel guilty taking one child out and not all of them but I think that Riley and I really needed that time together. We got to go to Waxahachie Tx with his Nana J and Aunt Amanda. They have this amazing reenactment of Bethlehem. Of course it was packed there but this little church built the little town of Bethlehem in there backyard. If you can get out to see this it is really well worth the drive.

These guys were sitting outside the city walls just chatting to everyone. I took his picture and he kept asking were the lightning came from if there was not a cloud in the sky. (Flash on the camera)

Then Mary and Joseph rode in on the Donkey they entered the city and paid there taxes. They went to the Inn who had no room for them and proceeded to the manger.

The visitors came in with the camels and the Wise Men made there entrance.

Roman soldiers were everywhere. They ushered in people, caught thieves, tormented the blacksmith because his sword broke. It was really neat you actually felt like you were there in Bethlehem in the market as if it were so long ago.

The city had shops for selling bread and they asked you if you wanted to buy bread and chickens. One man asked me if I would like some bread and I told him I had no money. He asked me if my man doth not care for me. I said I guess not. He told me to go get him and he would protest him to care for me. I laughed.

It was a really neat experience and we are glad that we could do that with Nana J and Aunt Amanda. We might just have to go back with the whole family.

Happy Birthday Tony

I would like to extend out a belated Happy Birthday to my wonderful Husband. WooHoo he is forever 29 this year. His Birthday was November 19Th and we celebrated it all week long. It was a blast.

We had dinner with his family and then Ice Cream with mine two days later. Then the Big day was November 20Th and 21st. We managed to sneak away to Houston to see the Metallica concert. Yeah Metallica ! It was amazing.

Getting away from the kiddos is a treat with in itself, but the added bonus of a night full of screaming and jumping up and down to great music was blissful. We ventured right back to our youth, minus some of the crazy things that we use to do. We still had a great time.

Major Mile Stones This Month

We made it we survived!


We have finally moved into our new home. It is wonderful to be back to our normal routine of life. As fun as it was to be at home with the Needs clan we are happy to be back on our own. Our wonderful new box is just that, a box with a roof, but it is our box and fits our needs to a T.





Ten Months Old and Walking! Bryce decided yesterday that he was going to start walking. He has been ready just a little chicken and yesterday he gave it up and started cruising around from furniture to furniture. No more baby for us, he has graduated to complete terror. How fun!!!! We love every minute of it.

TOOTHLESS

Brenden had a rough day today, But took it like a champ. He had three of his bottom teeth pulled to make way for his huge adult teeth on the bottom. It would have been four but one fell out two weeks ago. Our Pediatric Dentist was awesome and Brenden was well taken care of. Now all he wants for Christmas is his four front teeth.

Dallas Stars Time

It is that time again, the time to see my husband vanish into the TV for the next 6 months. We are excited to be able to watch the games again. Hopefully they will do us proud this year! Season starts tomorrow.

!Go Stars!

Halloween Fun

It's that time of the year again. One of my favorite holidays, I have to admit that I miss the falls in New York and all of the Orchards. We have a great alternative here, its the Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch. As usual all I have to post about are my kids so enjoy some more pictures of them. Hope that everyone has a festive October.

Testing our Patients

Bedtime has been a challenge this last week. The boys think that Nana's house is a play house and I know that the same rules at Home do not apply at Nana's. So they take full advantage of it as would any kid. Yesterday was a test of patients, Brenden and Riley were having a hard time getting to sleep and after telling them 3 times to go to bed Brenden snuck down the stairs and told me that he can't sleep because a bug crawled across his head and erased his memory and his brain. Where that came from I have no idea but that was his excuse for not being in bed. Riley on the other hand kept telling me that his coughing was keeping him up and proceeded to exaggerate his cough almost to the point of vomiting. He was caught by his Aunt April leaning over the banister rail coughing as hard as he could so we could hear him. I mean honestly who would blame them there are all these fun people at the house that they want to be around. It really is hard being a kid sometimes.

Moving Again

Well in the last two weeks we have sold our humble home and are homeless for now. Thank goodness we have parents who love to see their children come back again and again and again. We will be with them until our new home is ready for us. We are super excited to to be temporarily homeless.

Nine Months

September 11, 2001

As we woke up this morning the thought never crossed our minds that today marked the 7Th anniversary of the most horrific day that I can remember. It seems to be some what forgotten now and life has gone on as it should. But today I wanted to take the time out to post a blog in HONOR of my husband. He may not have been one of those who tried to rescue many from the burning buildings, but he has played a part in supporting his country to defend what had happened. He spent almost a year in Iraq in 2002 preparing and fixing planes that had jobs to drop off supplies and troops that were out in the muck of war fare. He had to deal with the extreme dessert conditions and constant threat of bombs. I remember getting an email from him and him telling me that they had to put on their gas masks today because there was a threat of deadly gas, or that they missed out on food because it was being poisoned. It seems to be so trivial in comparison to those who lost there lives on this day, but I will forever be proud to tell those that my husband was and is a MARINE and has nobly served his country. We love you!

What were they thinking?

I have to share what happened to me yesterday. It was about 5:30 pm and I was making Bryce some cereal, and I was about to set him down on the carpet in the living room and the front door opened a little. So I looked over at it and it shut by itself. Now I am a pretty paranoid person normally and this would have really freaked me out but I was relatively calm. I walked over to the door and peaked out the peep hole. I saw some people standing in the street and I thought that maybe they were just delivering things on the door knob. Sometimes the door doesn't latch all the way and I thought that maybe they pushed on the door and it opened slightly. So I went to get the rest of Bryce's food and thought I need to look out the peep whole one last time. As I did there was this woman with her daughter walking to the front door. I stepped back for a minute because I thought that maybe she was going to knock and I didn't want it to startle me. As I did that the door opened. I was kind of startled at first and then I grabbed the door and opened it. My initial thought was that maybe they just forgot and walked into the wrong house. And then she started to talk. She said "I saw that the house was for sale and we noticed that it was unlocked, we were going to come in and look around" I am sure that I had that your stupid look on my face and said, "this is my house and I live here, if you want to come in and look at it you are going to have to call the number on the sign and make an appointment." she said "oh". I was stunned. Who thinks that they can just go into unlocked homes like that and not think that there is some one living in there. Are people really that stupid? This is TEXAS, we could have guns, they could get shot for doing something like that. What were they thinking?

WHAT DOES HE HAVE IN HIS MOUTH NOW?

Now Bryce has been able to get around by himself for about a month and a half now. I know that at this age everything goes straight into their mouths, but we are always surprised to see what he comes crawling around the corner with.

He seems to find good substitutes for his pacifier. My favorite has to be the superman doll hanging out of his mouth. It doesn't look like superman is going to survive this one.

First Day Of School

Look at these Handsome boys, why are they so good looking today? Today is the First day of school, wahoooooooo!!!!! School was great! The boys had a blast and got sent off this morning on a great start. They were excited to go and excited to come home.

Brenden is in Kindergarten Riley is in Third Grade.

Pictures

School is Back

Hurray for school. Although I have to say that I did enjoy those mornings of some what a sleep in, I am so ready for my adorable, well mannered, anything but noisy children, to go back to school. Mom is the most excited about school starting again, I get my life and routine back to normal. The Boys are kind of excited I think or lack of excitement for the new-ness of it all but for the most part I am ready. Let me ask the rest of you moms out there about school supplies. I know that we pay our taxes for school so why would I need to buy the school copy paper? This years school supply list was a tad bit out of the ordinary. What ever happened to just needing a few note books, binders, and pencil. Maybe throw in some crayons and construction paper. But my goodness we spent over $100.00 for school supplies this year between the two of them. I was talking to my mother in law about it and she said that she read an article in the paper about a family in Allen TX that had already spent over $2000.00 on her two kids in High school. What is that all about? My children are not aloud to go to High School mainly because by the time they get there I won't be able to afford it. Thank goodness that is only around the corner YIKES!
On a good note we are anxious to get back to school! Yeah School, Hello Sanity!!!!!

Date Night

Date night was so much fun. We went on a treasure hunt, called Geo caching. You use your GPS devise to find Geo boxes that people have hidden. The object is to look for the box with the location given on your GPS and then you take an item and then leave a new item. A lot of these boxes contain logs that you leave name and time found. It was really neat to do and a lot of fun. It is the equivalent to an Easter egg hunt. We found some easy ones but I think that it is something that we are going to continue to do.




This tree was one of the location of a small box. It was left in a whole in the middle of the tree. The clue to the location was It's Alive and when you stand under the tree it has branches that hang down at you and they look like they are going to grab you. Just like the whopping willow tree in Harry Potter.

Tony did an EXCELLENT JOB with date night and it was nice to do something that wasn't just Dinner and a movie. It was GREAT thank you Honey.

Metallica's Youngest Fan

Fun with Hair

So we did decide to have a little fun with the summer haircuts. Brenden of course wanted a Mohawk and Riley buzzed his with some convincing. Buzzed is an understatement it got trimmed a little too short because the clip on the buzzer fell off and no one noticed. Bryce of course has no excuses, It's there in some places and not in others. We have some growing to do this summer but it was all done in fun!!!!!

Update On Bryce-eeeee!

We love this little guy, but of course who wouldn't love him. It is exciting to us to see his him develope and grow. He has decided his feet taste good, he can scream to get what he wants, he can reach his toys by rolling over, and his hands can get all these cool things if he concentrates hard enough. All though we are excited that he is changing We are all sad that it just happens at a blink of an eye. Bryce is our last so for us this is so bitter sweet. We love him dearly.

WE LOVE LOVE LOVE SEA WORLD

We just wanted to share all the fun that we had at Sea World. Hope everyone enjoys the video.

For All The Moms And Those Who Aren't And Want To Be

You Know You're a Mom When...

1. Your feet stick to the kitchen floor.....and you don't care.
2. When the kids are fighting, you threaten to lock them in a room together and not let them out until someone's bleeding.
3. You can't find your cordless phone, so you ask a friend to call you, and you run around the house madly, following the sound until you locate the phone downstairs in the laundry basket.
4. You spend an entire week wearing sweats.
5. Your idea of a good day is making it through without a child leaking bodily fluids on you.
6. Popsicles become a food staple.
7. Your favorite television show is a cartoon.
8. Pizza or ramen noodles is eaten at least in one meal a day.
9. You're willing to kiss your child's boo-boo, regardless of where it is.
10. Your baby's pacifier falls on the floor and you give it back to her, after you suck the dirt off of it because you're too busy to wash it off.
11. Your kids make jokes about burping, pooping, etc. and you think it's funny.
12. You're so desperate for adult conversation that you spill your guts to the telemarketer that calls and HE hangs up on YOU!
13. Spit is your number one cleaning agent.
14. You're up each night until 10 PM vacuuming, dusting, wiping, washing, drying, loading, unloading, shopping, cooking, driving, flushing, ironing, sweeping, picking up, changing sheets, changing diapers, bathing, helping with homework, paying bills, budgeting, clipping coupons, folding clothes, putting to bed, dragging out of bed, brushing, chasing, buckling, feeding (them, not you), PLUS swinging, playing baseball, bike riding, pushing trucks, cuddling dolls, roller balding, basketball, football, catch, bubbles, sprinklers, slides, nature walks, coloring, crafts, jumping rope, PLUS raking, trimming, planting, edging, mowing, gardening, painting, and walking the dog. You get up at 5:30 AM and you have no time to eat, sleep, drink or go to the bathroom, and yet...you still managed to gain 10 pounds.

15. In your bathroom there is toothpaste on the light fixtures, water all over the floor, a dog drinking out of the toilet and body hair forming a union to protest unsafe working conditions.
16. You buy cereal with marshmallows in it.
17. The closest you get to gourmet cooking is making rice crispies bars.

I laughed when I read this because all though I am almost all of these things some remind me more of others. Happy Mothers Day to all!!!

Funniest Picture Ever

Came across this picture in our Picture album and had to share. This is for my mother, she loves this photo and anyone can see why. Riley is a great kid and this is the result of our first attempt at sports pictures. Love it.

Boys Will Be Boys

MUD! MUD! MUD! MUD! MUD! MUD!

Funny story last week the boys went to play and got stuck in the mud. Called Mom to come get them out.




Stuck shin deep in Nasty clay mud, These were the tools that we used to pull out the four wheeler. Yes that is an orange extension cord. Which worked quiet well.





This was the trip back to the mud hole to find the missing cell phone. Yes the phone that rescued the four wheeler was MIA. Thank goodness we found it.





The after math of the fun in the sun with the big toys. I didn't let them in the house untill they were hosed off and they enjoyed that just about as much as they did loosing there shoes in the sticky mud. Boys will be Boys!!!!!!