the money pit...and kevin's time pit

our little house is coming along!
after another great johnson work weekend we got most of the painting finished and all of the cupboards installed! the house is beginning to feel more and more like ours...and this will be the first place that we move into together that will be ours. previously i moved into kevin's apartment and we moved into the Hudson's...it's going to feel great to have a place of our own.
for those of you who might be up here over christmas camp i'm thinking we'll have a little open house :) we'll keep you posted!
for right now here are the lastest pictures!
thanks again jim, lorna and rachel for slaving away for us last weekend :)

the kitchen, of course. i love it!

one living room wall. kevin and his sister rachel are working on it

oh, here they are smiling for the camera :)

another kitchen view

a view of the house from the kitchen

thanksgiving weekend highlights

how do i look in grandpa johnson's hunting hat?

fun times with papa

eating pears with grandma nyberg...yum!

on her way to one...

today is laurel's six month birthday!
these last 184 days have been incredible. now, i admit, i barely remember the first few...maybe because i was still coming off the drugs :) we are so enjoying watching laurel grow and change and become more and more like a little girl and less like a baby :)
laurel is celebrating her 1/2 birthday with a runny nose and lots of naps :)
but even the runny nose was exciting for me because i realized that it is the first time laurel has ever felt sick!
enjoy these pictures of our big girl :)

Laurel enjoying the snow

thanksgiving with Auntie Rachel

this is Laurel "walking" from my cousin Danielle to Auntie Anna in Minnesota

and the first picture with Great Grandma Grace, or GG :)

nothing new really...just some cute pictures

Laurel and I are preparing to head to Minnesota this weekend! It will be Laurel's first time meeting many of her relatives! I'm sure we'll have lots of pictures from that adventure next week...but for right now, here are a few random pictures that we've taken in the last week.
enjoy :)

Laurel chomping on celery...I really wanted to get a picture of the initial look on her face - it was a mix of confusion and disgust, but by the time i got back with the camera she must have decided that she liked it :)

more progress!

we spent another weekend, with the help of jim and lorna (kevin's parents) working on the new house...the kitchen is coming right along! i'm so excited to have a kitchen to call my own :)
we met our new nextdoor neighbor, a young, single high school teacher...with the small number of people our age in iron river it's very providential to have one next door!

oooh, our pet eagle just flew by! this is totally random, but for as long as we've been here we've seen this eagle flying down by the lake. this last weekend someone dumped some deer parts in the woods off of west park dr...the tasty snack drew our eagle, another bald eagle and a golden eagle to our little corner of the forest! they were right on the edge of the road so as we drove by jim took some great pictures. we'll try to get them up soon.

well, i digress...
here are some new house pictures...and now that all the really dirty work is done laurel and i have been joining the renovation fun!
and just so you know, we are covered in snow and this morning it was 10 degrees outside...we are so glad to be back in the UP! :p

i really hated the way the front of our house looked, so i thought i would spruce it up a little with a festive star :)

this is a view into the kitchen. you can see there is still alot of work to do in the living area :) one thing at a time!

here's the kitchen up close...and a picture of our hard working crew :)

hi auntie kay! good thing mom tried this dress on, it would have never fit me if i waited until 9 months! :)

here's laurel watching the progress in the kitchen. let me tell you though, she is already showing signs of being spoiled! if i stepped away to work for more than a few minutes she wailed!

always needing attention...sound like anyone else we know? :)

laurel's first "dress-up"

october 31 was not only halloween here in iron river, but it was also the first playoff game for the wicked wykons! and it was at home...so i decided to make laurel's halloween costume do double duty...she was a wykon cub. for those of you not familiar with the made-up "mythological" creature it is a lion with three paws. it was made up to represent the school when they combined iron river, stambaugh and bates townships.
this link has the whole story for anyone interested :)
http://www.westiron.org/wykon.htm
anywho!
i made laurel into a little wykon cub. sadly we never got a good picture when she's awake, but here's a picture of her asleep at last night's game...which, i might add, they won!
you'll have to imagine that the sleeves are sewn into paws with claws and there's a nice long tail with a tuft of fur at the end. :)
laurel and i, along with our friend megan moberly, went to gladstone last weekend and to trick or treat to g and g johnson, g and g nyberg and great grandpa nyberg she wore the pumpkin outfit again :)

west iron county class of 2026

go wykons!

a few more house pictures...

ok...they're not really house pictures, just cute pictures of laurel with grandma johnson

Shocking Experience

Hello Everyone,

Alot of news to report from the johnson family. Laurel is doing great and a huge step has taken place. She has started to role over. From her belly to her back and soon I am sure that she will be all around the house, that will be the exercise plan for linnea and me. As for the house... Lets just say there has been some electrifying experiences. The kitchen has been completely torn apart. I'm in the process of running new electrical, plumbing, and insulation. We took out two windows and put a new small window that will be above our kitchen sink. Then some drywall, new floor and cabinets will be installed and we will be hosting some top chief competitions, or not. Seriously though, it seems like these fixer upper projects go on forever and ever, I still don't see the light at the end of the tunnel and we have been on the project for along time.

So, Linnea and I, and Laurel too, help out with the youth group at Grace Covenant church. A couple weeks ago we had our first experience making homemade apple cider or apple pressing. We used an older apple press that Phil Carlson had (why does that man have such cool stuff?) The youth, as well as us leaders, had a really great time. But, for those who don't know, if you drink to much, you might be in the bathroom quite a bit. :)

And of course how can you have an outting up at the Carlson's house without using the gator. Man I love that machine. here are a couple pictures.

Hope you all are doing well!

Johnsons

defying gravity

since laurel's birth there is one comment we have heard more than anything else...
"look at her hair!"
and it's true, she has some wild hair...
here are some examples :)

now you have to understand here that laurel is not laying down...she is sitting up with a blanket as a backdrop.

the picture below is too dark...but it's a better view of the wild hair standing on end :)

and the ponytail :)

laurel has two distinct layers of hair and the top layer looks and acts very much like a toupee!

rice cereal...not too tasty

so laurel had her 4 month well baby visit...here's the update:
15 lb 1oz
25 inches
very healthy and strong
but because she has not yet slept through the night...and, it seems, is waking up demanding food more often she suggested that we give her some cereal before bed. AND...
1. it has not helped at all...
2. she does not enjoy the stuff
but i know it will just take awhile for her to get used to the texture and hopefully when more of it makes it into her little tummy we'll see some progress.
in the meantime, here are some picture of her first taste of the cereal :)
(ps i dont know why that part got underlined and i cannot figure out how to fix it...sorry!)

can you see me making the "mmm" face...does anyone else do this? open and close their own mouth when they are feeding someone else? it's so weird, and i'm caught on camera doing it :)

now, she doesnt look all that messy here...but she has actually gotten much messier with each try. this does not bode well for kevin's clean obsession.

and a couple other random pictures...

yep courtney...i think i'm going to be a fellow redhead!

More fall colors

A gentlemen by the name of Phil Carlson informed my wife one afternoon that I had a beautiful pile of wood ready to burn. And I humbly thought to myself, I sure do. If only he had tasted my wife's home brewed apple sauce, then he would have had a sensory overload.

Fall Colors, here and gone

Laurel loved playing in the leaves with her papa.

Hello everyone,

The fall has quickly come up in the U.P. of Michigan. Colors peaked last week and leaves are falling rapidly from the trees. As for our daughter, well let me just inform you that she loves the taste of a dead leaf. And she loves to be outside with her mother and father. It really is amazing how big they get and so fast. This morning laurel was in our bed with us for some tummy time and it's clear that in about a month she will probably start to crawl. The nights have been a struggle but we are hoping that some mouth development such as teeth might be playing a large part in that. As for the rest of her day, she is usually all smiles.

"A" team, ARE YOU READY?????

THEN FLIP THAT HOUSE.... Ah crap, Mom you weren't supposed to tear that out !

Well let me just inform you that if you ever purchase a house that needs alot of fix ups, like the one that we purchased, you cannot get overwhelmed with how dirty and destroyed the place looks- because it goes down hill before it gets any better, like a couple of these pictures illustrate. But all in all, our little project is coming along. The kitchen demo is the three top pictures. We have decided to rip everything out and start over new, but that being said we will face much dust in order to make our kitchen look better. The bottom picture is a wall that I had to frame up in order to make a full room for our daughter. My helper shown above ( my father) is gracious enough not to show some plumbers crack while on the job. That's always been a little bit of a turn off to me personally :) Our bedroom, which I should have a picture of, is looking alot better. But there is more to be done. So keep checking and get out there a buy a house to fix up, then you can really see what if feel like first hand to flip a house, and let me tell you it's the most expensive fun I have ever had.

-Johnson Properties

papa's protege

kevin was practicing for church and i guess he inspired laurel to join in :)

what talent we have in this family!

the best part is that right before kevin began at church yesterday he showed this video on the big screen and introduced laurel as their future worship leader :) they loved it!

we hope you do too!

laurel and grant

the women's retreat at covenant point brought most of our (nyberg) family together last weekend. even great grandpa carl came over for the day!

laurel and grant have not had much time together up until this weekend...so anna and i might have gone a little crazy with pictures. we took 133 to be exact! and that's just on our camera. i think she has a few more on hers :)
i wont bore you with all of them...but here are a few of my favorites!

auntie anna with grant and laurel

grandpa GP with both grandkids

ok, these are my very favorite...we had grant and laurel out for a photo shoot in these pumpkin costumes i was given. grant crawled over laurel to get to a leaf and we though, yeah, let's give them each a leaf, that'll be cute! so this is the first picture...studying the wet, colorful thing.

followed immediately by:

the taste test!

finally, we had uncle paul take some pictures with the kiddos in the apple tree.

it was a great weekend :)