Happy Holidays

A look at our child bed head after a morning nap. This style hair is similar to my sister's daily style, sorry sister:)

Another glance at our crazy Laurel, Like her father she loves going outside. Below: a look of a snuggled up child waiting for a fresh diaper after a bath.

Hello Everyone,

Just a couple more days and the New Year will be upon us. Looking back much has happened for the Johnson family We have almost been in our new hour for a year, much rework and a lot of demolition. Many stories, many laughs and not much sadness to remember which is a plus. This past week we spent some time over at linnea's grandmothers original house. Grandmother has recently repurchased the house in Mora, MN so we had a destination Christmas with the Nyberg's. This weekend we are in Cornell at my parents house also doing some visiting. With the snow on the ground and plenty to snowshoe with it isn't a green Christmas at all. Perhaps we will do some hiking with Laurel and have a hobo dinner or two outside. Not much else to report on. Our little daughter made out well for herself this Christmas, if another grandchild come on my side she could see the amount of presents reduce drastically. Everyone, have a safe and happy new year and may much fun and joy come your way with 2010.

Johnson's

More Pictures

Laurel has discovered the sweet cold sensation that is described with eating snow. Now if we could only move some of those feelings over to poddy training we would have ourselves on heck of a Christmas present.

Hey dad, how is that baby staying warm with nothing and I have to be bundled up like Randy from famous Christmas Story movie?

Baby? Laurel says as she continues to eat about 3 lbs of snow. It's like the gallons of juice that she sucks down aren't cutting it lately.

Holtz Hausen

This fall I took the opportunity to learn about wood stacking. A friend on mine had given me some literature on stacking wood in a way that would allow it to season in as little as three months. The task... to stack your wood in a circle which intern would help to create a chimney effect. The time... to much. The end result a sweet looking pile of wood, the holtz Hausen. Now I must give a little bit more detail about this pile. If you look at the pile, to your left while looking at the picture you notice the pile is stacked in a nice vertical manor. However on the right you will notice the that side is not so nice. Seems to be a little top heavy you say? It is... just minutes after snapping this shot, part of the pile blew out. A stupid idea this pile design you ask? I to ask the same question as I watched my wood fall to the snow. My initail thought, how to make it better for next year! :)

Three Months later

Ca mo day in the house! Laurel and I were practicing some covert operations in preparations for late night sneak outs and CPBC. She is learning, if we could only control the loud screams progress would be had.
A little bit of Chalk board time in Laurel's room keeps her busy for about 1 minute. With a child who has an attention span of nothing and wants to eat everything, the simple tasks are the hardest ones in our family.

Hello Everyone,
The Johnson family is still alive and well. The dashboard on our blog indicates that our last update was September 28Th, not that long ago eh? Life has been wonderful for us. With the Christmas upon us and a New Year just around the corner our lives have been go go go lately.
This fall I took on a new position at the High School/Jr. High school at West Iron. The position is titled At Risk. In a nut shell I deal with behavioral students and tutor. Never would I have thought that while giving my Social Studies hell in 7Th grade that I would be the one helping these students later on in life. I love every minute of it and the work in my opinion is rewarding. As for Linnea she says fairly busy with subbing in the elementary building and high school. Morning sleep is often disturbed, not with a phone call that says school is canceled due to snow but instead you need to sub. Our jobs keep us busy as well as our child.
Laurel is almost 19 months old. With sharp little beaver teeth in her mouth you don't want to mess with this child, she is her father's daughter. Chewing through the sheets,running, screaming for more popcorn, constantly on the go climbing, touching everything in sight and in general pushing mom and dad's patients it is a endless circus at our house, some of you can relate.
The winter weather has taken effect in the home town, last week bone chilling temps and now today, Sunday, bright sunny skies with 32 degrees. You just never know what to expect.
Well that is enough update, everyone just wants to see pictures.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
Love the Jonson's'

our favorite face

thank you to our friend lisa for these funny pictures :) i'm actually stealing them from her facebook page...my solution for not being able to get our pictures from the camera to the internet!

laurel continues to entertain us...this is her "oh!" face. she makes it when requested to...and also when she sees herself in the mirror :)

last night she started a new habit that is not so endearing...screaming at people for no apparent reason. she entertained the sr. high youth group for quite a while by screaming in their faces. she's not mad...just needs to be heard i guess. well...when you have to compete for attention with someone like her father you do what you have to do!

a perfect august evening in the UP

we had a lot of company this last weekend...kevin's parents, sister marsha and her husband mark, grandma carol and her friend karen, and my parents! we took advantage of the nice night and our nice friends the snows to take a pontoon boat ride on hagerman lake.

surprise mommy!

i was visiting with my friend sarah snow the other day and i thought laurel was sleeping...she had been quiet for sometime...but then made some noises and i walked in to find this lovely display...

a naked baby with poop smeared all over her crib, her blankets, her yoys...yet mysteriously absent from her flushable liner that goes on top of the cloth diaper. kevin's daughter took off her diaper and then pooped. thank goodness sarah was there! i yelled for her to come...and bring the camera :) she then took laurel into the tub while i dealt with the rest of the mess. how come this doesnt happen when kevin's home??? anyway, i thought that the best way to punish laurel for that little stunt was to memorialize the event with a blog entry :)

5th of july at little lake

here are just a few pictures of laurel with her cousins lena, yanik and svea at little lake, the 5th of july tradition! thank you all for taking such good care of laurel while you were here!!!!!!!

summer, cont.

one nyberg 4th of july tradition is to go see anders play in the escanaba city band. this year not only did we get to enjoy great music but we also had some other entertainment in the crowd...laurel was being so silly! she was walking up and down the row we were sitting in pulling cob webs down when she realized that there were people sitting in front of us...and she could touch them! she started poking this guy. he politely ignored her for awhile, but it became so funny he gave in a laughed like the rest of us. you can see him in a picture above. laurel stood there and talked to him for quite awhile. she them moved on to entertain the crowd behind us by laughing and pointing at a guy wearing some kind of hat. he must have been making faces at her because she was laughing so hard (and so loudly!). i can see it now...in just a year or so she will be one of those kids dancing in front of the stage!

this post is for kaylan :)

i'm just going to start by pleading our case...we have serious computer/internet issues! that is why we are so terrible about updating lately, but since i missed cousin kaylan's birthday this is a special update just for her :)
here are some pictures from our summer. this is at grandpa carl's house. the boys and laurel are modeling some Vietnamese hats that Lena picked out for them. if you look closely at the picture of paul and laurel on the hammock you can see laurel is trying to catch a bubble.

WE LOVE YOU BIG GIRL!

catch up time

we have been very bad about updating this blog and so much has happened so I'm going to do a major update session with many pictures :)

In the last month we have gone to Duluth, Hudson, WI/MInneapolis area, Kalamazoo, had a 1st birthday party and played with lots of friends and family! The pictures on the bottom are from our trips to MN (and Hudson). Thank you to Anna and Jeff and Kaylan and Jeb for hosting us!!! Oh- and there are way cuter pictures from those trips but I guess Kevin deleted them from our SD card...I'll work on putting them up when we get home(we're still in Kzoo).

The first pictures are from Laurel's 1st birthday party!! She was so lucky to have all of her grandparents there as well as great grandpa Carl, great uncle Anders and aunt Rachel too! AND Teri and Wayne Sherwood! Thank you to everyone for sharing her birthday with us!

Almost 1 year old

Hello Everyone,
Well summer is well underway here in the great north. The leaves are out, some rain this morning is making our grass nice and green and the flowers are out. Amazing what a little summer color will do to someones excitement towards being outside. And, of course our little daughter is almost 1 year old in just a couple days. Again, amazing that we had had here for a year already, as well as Linnea and I living in our community for one year. So here are a couple pictures of here. Laurel really likes to be outside. Sometimes she chews on rocks and get dirt in her mouth. The other day she tried to take down and worm, however her father interjected quickly.
Hope everyone is enjoying their Tuesday morning back from work.
Johnsons

Easter Pictures

Here are some cute easter pictures, how cute is Laurel's dress?

Snow day

Well Hello Everyone,

Several inches of snow have fallen in the last couple days here. To bad that just under a week ago we were able to walk Laurel in her stroller with just our sandals and t-shirts. I mean I had even started to work on my farmers tan while out working with duff.
Laurel is doing really well. She is pulling everything we have off the shelves always in the laundry basket and she now has two little white teeth on the bottom. They grow up so fast. Linnea and I are staying busy with work and house projects. Soon we will be sending you some pictures of the new summer construction that will take place.
Ok enough, here are the pictures that you orginally got on for
Johnsons

Don't make me eat that again, PLEASE

OK, it's the Johnson family again.
All of you parents out there reading this know that children just don't like to eat their food sometimes. As for Laurel it seems to be all the time. But then just as if a light switch had been switched she is eating the food. Guess you just never know what gets into children. So I thought it would be fun for all of you to see just first hand some of the faces that we have to deal with while we attempt to nourish our child. With a little bit of comentary on the side.


Dad: Good morning Laurel, how did you sleep? Laurel: Morning dad, I really slept hard.
Dad: Well Lets start the morning off with some cheerios... Laurel: Oh dad you're the best I love cheerios.Dad: Finish those up and I will make some oatmeal. Laurel: What???Laurel: But dad, I am so sick of oatmeal, I eat it all the time.

Dad: Alright sweety you win, just eat some cheerios and then we will have something else, but do not tell your mother.

Laurel: Thanks dad

Hope everyone has a great week.

Johnson