Well, it is a new year! Happy New Year! The Johnson household survived! That is what we are calling 2011! It was the year of survival. We didn’t know how we would handle 3 kids under the age of two. We are happy to report that we learned A LOT of lessons, perfected our patience levels, and received a lot of love and joy!

This year, we hope to “take back control”. Well, control might be a strong word to use. Our hope is to make 2012 a year where we get a better “handle on things”. And…this blog being one of them. We realized we slipped a number of times this year. (In December, we had 4 posts drafted, but they never made it to publishing…the holidays and kids took over!)

We also hope for a healthy year. The girls are happy and healthy little larks right now. It makes for a very happy mommy and daddy. We’ll see how long we can hold out, as we returned to daycare today.

As we continue to work on and refine our other resolutions, we figured we are only six days late on this post! We hope this post finds you healthy, happy and joyous! Please know that we treasure your support and friendship. Thanks for getting us through the year! You loves means so much.

Christmas Part 1

Why are there parts to Christmas? Well, the girls had MULTIPLE Christmases and a lot of spoiling by loved ones! This post will focus on the Johnson side (Petersen side coming), as it was the “Johnson” Christmas this year. That means, the Johnson side got us for the actual holiday. It rotates every year. It will be interesting to see how this changes, as more in-laws are entering the mix.

Dave, Wendi, Kelli and Little Dave (we really need to find him a good nickname!) arrived at our house on December 23rd. Full Christmas traditions got underway on the 24th! Ava frosted cookies with Grammie. And, boy did she love that! The boys got a day out (as the girls got a day out on the 26th). They went golfing (simulation-don’t be fooled, we do live in Nebraska). And, then they went out to lunch and a scotch bar, (nothing like cheering it up for the holdiay, huh?). What did the women do…19th century stuff…what women always get stuck doing…cooking and taking care of the kids! No fear, the boys got payback on the 26th! We did appetizers and soups for dinner. Then it was off to church we went. The girls did fabulous. They danced in the pews to music. When a picture of baby Jesus appeared on screen, our little Ava was the first to belt out…”That’s Baby Jesus!”

After church, the twins went to bed. No mommy or daddy wants cranky twins for Christmas. Ava got to open her some presents and prepare her snack for Santa. We were very excited about that. We also had to say good-bye to Smurky (see previous post). After the kids were all nestled in their beds, dreaming of sugar plums…the boys got the ultimate Christmas Eve experience. They had to put together the Santa gift…a walk-in kitchen! You ask why this wasn’t done beforehand…because it was so big, Ava would have totally seen it. And, you ask, why a big one? The pictures will explain why. How many guys does it take to screw in the bolts? Mommy will point out that Big Dave had to tell the boys to read the directions, as they were already doing some things wrong!

Here are some pictures of the weekend:

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