London's Swim

My sister Heather (London's Mom) and I

Saturday November 20th was the first ever London's Swim. My family has been doing London's Run for 5 years now, and just this year we realized; we are a family of swimmers- not runners! So Nancy headed up this swim-a-thon to raise more money for our cause. A swim-a-thon is basically a set day and time where you to try to swim 200 laps in 2 hours. You ask for pledges from friends or family to donate money for each lap you swim or a set amount for all 200 laps. I was not very ambitious this year and just paid the minimum donation myself to go and swim! Clark had a t-ball game that morning- so I got to the pool about an hour late. I still managed to swim 140 laps in an hour. For being 6 months pregnant, I thought that wasn't too bad, but I paid for it later! I was so exhausted that night and felt sick the next day- but all for a good cause!  

My oldest sister Aimee and Kate

Brother-in-law Warren (London's Dad) counted laps for us

Kate came to London's Swim with me while Clark and Ryan
stayed at home and changed the oil in the Tahoe

My Mom and nephew Caleb

My sister Nancy in the middle

My brother Dave was the DJ for the underwater music system

Heather and I. Warren couldn't tell us apart when we both had
our goggles on!

Niece Nikki

Niece Hannah

Halloween

Jessie and Woody

( This is # 4 post of catching up)We had quite the festive Halloween this year- it lasted a whole week long! My mom does a Halloween Family Home Evening, and has since I was a kid. It has evolved as our family has grown from 10 people to almost 40- but the basic concept is the same. All the kids dress up- and any of the adults who are still cool enough to dress up. We have dinner, play games and have a pinata. 

Cake walk with all the cousins

Clark eating his apple from the 'bobbing for apples'
game

Kate and Ella spent most of the night on the teeter totter.

My brother Dave helping Clark with the Pinata

Kate's turn!

Next that week was the Johnson pumpkin carving contest. We always get together a few days before Halloween to eat pigs in a blanket and carve pumpkins. Some of the spouses carve their own pumpkin- but I just get the guts out and Ryan carves it. I's a big competition to see who has the most creative pumpkin. The boys go all out. It takes them hours to complete it.

Auntie Jenny and Uncle Jeffy

Grandma gave the grandkids little pumpkins to paint.

Clark, Trevor and Kate with their painted pumpkins

Ellie

In addition to our Monday and Thursday night parties, Ryan's work has a Halloween office party every year. It's basically just for the kids to come and trick or treat around to all the offices and cubbies. They serve lunch and give us a chance to show off our cute kids.

All the kids and parents at the Okland party

Last but not least was the ward Trunk or Treat. This was quite the headache for me- as I was still the activities committee chairman. There was drama about the date, and we ended up combining with another ward on Saturday night. There was tons of food, games and of course candy. Kate and Clark got so much candy that night we didn't bother taking them out on Halloween. I also got this great idea from my friend Heather, called the Pumpkin Fairy. The kids put their basket of candy outside their door at night, and the Pumpkin Fairy comes and exchanges their candy for some type of prize. We let Kate and Clark enjoy their candy for a few days, and then the 'Pumpkin Fairy' took their candy and left them each a new movie. 
Halloween night we had some friends over for a 'Halloween' dinner. We had dinner in a pumpkin, witches fingers (sugar cookies shaped like fingers) , bones (stick pretzels with mini marshmallows on each end dipped in white chocolate), dirt cups and punch with frozen juice hands. To top off the night we watched 'Nightmare before Christmas'- because to me- that is a Halloween movie, not a Christmas movie!

Kate & Clark's 4th Birthday

( Yes, still catching up)

Kate has always been about 3 inches smaller than
Clark, but not this birthday. She is only 1/2 and
inch behind him!

Kate and Clark turned 4 on October 23rd! How is it possible that my babies are 4 years old? As I look back over the last 4 years, I am glad to be where I am today, but do miss my cute little babies. I guess that's why I'm having another one!

Since  their birthday fell on Saturday this year, I decided to throw them a real birthday party. It's hard to know what to do for opposite sex twins, as you can't do anything gender specific. Luckily for me I have a party planning sister, and Nancy came up with the idea for their party. We did a carnival with all sorts of little games. We also did relay races, cake and ice cream, presents and even a pinata.

Here's some of the set up of the games. We Auntie Lorette did the ring toss, my niece Hannah did face painting and Ryan at the go fish.

Here's the duck pond game, Auntie Lisa, Ellie, Auntie Amanda and Jack

Here's the awesome bean bag toss Ryan made the morning of their birthday.  Just one more reason I love that man. 

Here's all the kids patiently waiting for the birthday cake. I made 2 ice cream rolls (tradition in the Johnson family)   and let Kate and Clark pick out the ice cream. I'm glad I made my own instead of paying an arm and a leg for a cake- since none of the kids ate it anyways! ( Check out the unicorn pinata- that was the only one Kate and Clark could both agree on. Sorry- no pics of busting the pinata- I was trying to hard to keep the kids safe with the baseball bat!)

Opening presents! 

They both had a great day. We were planning on taking them where ever they wanted for dinner- and with a little persuasion from Mom and Dad- we got Barros take out and watched "How to Train Your Dragon". Thanks to everyone who helped me throw it together and all our friends who came. Especially thank you to Nana for letting us use her house!

First T-Ball Game

(This is old, his first game was October 16th. He will be done with his season in another 2 weeks)
Today was Clark's first T-Ball game, or should I say orgainized chaos on a baseball field! It actually wasn't too bad, although there were as many Dads on the field as there were kids.
Clark was up at 6am, jersey in hand. He's been dying to wear it since he got it Thursday at practice. He played pretty well- he was all excited the first 2 innings- running after every ball, then towards the end he just got tired and stood there. I can't blame him, it was so hot in the sun, I got tired just sitting in my chair!

After the game I asked Clark what his favorite part was, and no surprise, he said," the treats!" He thought that getting a treat just for playing t-ball was pretty awesome.

Gilbert Temple Groundbreaking

This is totally out of order, but I figure I need to start catching up on my blogging- so here it goes. This was November 13th.

We were not planning on going to the Gilbert temple groundbreaking, since Ryan is there everyday, and I usually drop by there once a week. And technically it wasn't the first time the ground had been worked on, they have been doing underground work since July.  Plus I thought that Ryan would go crazy having so many people on his job site- he's kinda territorial when it comes to his job sites. The night before, he ended up being there really late and was back again Saturday morning about 5am. He met us at Clarks t-ball game at 8am, then decided to go home to change into church clothes to go back for the ground breaking. He invited me to come, and I was hesitant because I really didn't feel like getting dressed up to go fight through a crowd of 10,000 people. Needless to say, I realized that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me and my kids, so we got dressed and headed down to the site. There are definitely perks to having a husband who is building the temple, I got to park in the front row handicap parking, and Okland had reserved seats in the 4th row. It was cool that we actually got to see the speakers and see it when they did the actually groundbreaking with the golden shovels. I think the best part for Ryan and I was hearing the dedicatory prayer. It made this job turn into something more than just another building project. We both walked away realizing that even though he is getting paid to build the temple- it is the Lord's building and Ryan is really working for the Lord on this one. Going to work everyday has all new meaning. There are still long days and long nights, and problems and disagreements, but for Ryan, he has a bigger picture mentality.  Here's some pics for those of you who weren't able to attend.

Here is a picture of what the completed temple will look like.

Carlos RM Costa of the Presidency of the Seventy offered the dedicatory prayer.

Elder Costa and other stake presidents, temple presidents ect who did the original ground breaking.

Here is a view from the stage of how many people were there. 

Another advantage to having a husband who is building the temple, you get access to cool pictures like this one.  They hired a helicopter to come and take arial photos of the ground breaking. 

New Computer

Our computer died about 2 weeks ago, hence the lack of blogging, or keeping in touch with anyone. It was quite sad, but I must have got a virus or something, and everything we tried didn't fix it. When we realized there was no hope of fixing it, we started the process of figuring out what computer we wanted next. I have wanted to try Mac for along time, but there was no need to get a new computer when we had a perfectly fine Dell. So when the computer died, I voiced my opinion again to try Mac. Ryan was not keen on the idea, as he is a die-hard PC user. (It's like the whole Chevy - Ford argument.) Anyways after a week of debating and shopping,  he broke down and bought me a Mac. My brother Rob works for Apple and helped us pick out the right one for us. Of course Ryan had to have the upgraded everything so that he could play his video games, and much to my dismay we spent a whole heap of money on a computer instead of the sleep number bed I've been coveting for months. We ordered it online, and finally received it yesterday. I am still trying to learn the in's and out's of the Mac, and I'm sure I'll be frustrated with it until I can figure it all out. That being said, we have to take our external hard drive and new computer down to the Apple store and have them transfer all of our files. Hopefully we can do that this week and I'll have all my pictures and can start catching up on all the blogging I've procrastinated. So if anyone wants to give me a tutoring session on Mac- I'd appreciate it!