Week from Hell or Just Normal Life?

I try hard to keep my blog "real" and all my posts lately have been about the super fun things I've been doing. Today, you will get a dose of reality from me. It's been a tough week. Why? Let me tell you.

• My awesome niece Cami went home. We loved having her here and not just because she acted as a chauffeur, cook, baker, babysitter, and got us to get out all the time. She's also a very pleasant person to have around and we all miss her. 
• I felt yucky all week last week because of a bunch of horrible cold sores and a tooth problem. I ended up needing my first ever root canal and have been to the dentist FOUR times in the last week for that (is that normal??).
• A wonderful woman from our ward passed away unexpectedly.  
• Tom has been travelling a lot, but is back in town. Unfortunately, I don't see him much more now that he's home, due to his crazy hours. 
• Andrew's behavior always suffers when he doesn't get enough daddy time. 
• I'm really struggling with a relationship  in my life (not with a family member) and don't know how to handle it properly without hurting someone's feelings. 
• Someone close to me was diagnosed with skin cancer. (thankfully, the kind (s)he has is very treatable. (s)he isn't telling anyone.)
• Our closest friends are out of town and we miss them!
• My darn weight just keeps going UP. I do not want that. 
• So many friends are moving away. It makes me so sad when people leave. 

Since I don't want the whole post to be depressing, I'll also tell you some things I am grateful for:

• Air conditioning (it's been hot!)
• The ability and means to do fun things. 
• The ability to eat again. (even if I eat too much sometimes)
• Tom has a great job. 
• We have awesome neighbors. 
• We have amazing friends!
• Crazy awesome coupons from Kohls. I know it's silly, but I love me a good sale!
• We moved our laundry room upstairs! We no longer have to haul laundry up or down the stairs!
• We went to lunch with friends today. 

So, how is your week going?

Beach Day

It's true, my family loves the beach and Cami requested another trip there before she left. Sorry we are lacking in pictures of Cami for this day, but she was too far in the water for my camera to go.

Our newest neighbors and friends joined us at Salt Creek Beach on Friday:

Logan

Andrew

Carter

Rebecca

This is the day Madeline learned to boogie board! Hooray for her!

Madeline has been avoiding my camera. I was glad to actually see her face in this photo, because she's been blocking the camera with her hand all the time lately. Grrrr...

This is the stop taking pictures of me face

And this is "hahaha, you can't see my face, mom!"

I'm so sad Cami is gone, but glad we got to do so many fun things while she was here. Maybe I can even lose 5 lbs now that I don't have freshly baked cookies/brownies/cupcakes to eat everyday.

Los Angeles

We took a quick trip up to Los Angeles today for Cami. We thought our drive through LA on the 5 freeway on our way home from the Bay Area would suffice for a grand tour, but much to our surprise Cami said she actually wanted to see more. (o:

We headed to the Griffith Observatory first for it's stellar views of both the smoggy skyline of LA, and the hazy Hollywood sign.

Yes, the Hollywood sign really is in the background of this picture. 

We were finally able to bribe Madeline to be in a picture. We only had to give her two brownies with cookie dough frosting to convince her to smile for the camera.

Then we took Cami through the most "colorful" part of town complete with rainbow flags everywhere so she could see what LA is really like up close. I think she was duly unimpressed. (I could show you pictures of some of the interesting shops we passed, but I don't want to offend anyone.)

After our "scenic drive" we ended up at the beautiful Los Angeles Temple, which was awesome! 

Madeline smiled for another picture!

While at the LA Temple we actually ran into a couple kids we knew from our days in New York. What a small world we live in as members of the church!

After our quick trip to LA, we ended the day by dropping Cami off at the airport to fly home to her family who are anxiously awaiting her arrival. We will sure miss you Cami! You are an AMAZING young woman and we are so glad to have had the privilege of spending time with you the last few weeks. You (and your family) are welcome back anytime!

San Diego

We gathered friends for a fun trip to Los Angeles, but after finding out the President was visiting and several roads were going to be closed, we decided to head South to San Diego instead.

Our first stop was the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla. The view was amazing:

Left to right
 Top row: Audrey, Betsy, Alli, Andrew, Me, Corey, Cami, Carter, Tricia, Logan, and Brenden
Bottow row: Nathan, Claire, Madeline, and Rebecca

Cami and I thought it would be fun to dress up as twins for the day:

Second stop-Mormon Battalion site in Old Town San Diego:

Nathan and Madeline panned for gold

Andrew is pretty excited about all the gold he found! Too bad he only got to keep two pieces!

Audrey, Nathan, and Madeline on the old covered wagon

Cami became a soldier with the Mormon Battalion-Does she look ready to march?

Third Stop-San Diego LDS Temple:

This is where the kids started to go a little crazy and use up their energy:

Madeline showing off her new front teeth

The Johnson Family not acting crazy at all

Audrey and mad-faced Madeline

And then there was Andrew who put on a show of his own:

This is calm as Andrew is capable of being. 

Andrew trying to teach Nathan to "fly"

There was such a strong appeal to playing on the stairs-good thing this doesn't happen at home all the time

Why would you not want to do a dance in front of your sister?

The reason he is smiling for the camera is because he just dipped his head in WATER!

We ended our day eating at Los Olas right on the beach and enjoying some frozen yogurt.

What a fun day with friends. Hope we can do it again soon! Maybe Los Angeles next week?

Funny Faces (and Pikachu)

Andrew generally runs from the camera, but once he got a super awesome Pikachu hat in San Francisco, his attitude towards pictures started to change:

Should I be worried that he's staring so contentedly at Alcatraz?

Ok so he may not have run from the camera, but he still has the same attitude of "don't smile under any circumstance". I love this boy, funny faces and all.

More posts coming soon.

Best Day Ever!

Yep, that's how much fun we had today playing in the water. Tahoe is officially on our list of favorite vacation spots ever!

 

Today, we rented a boat and partied! ;-)

 

This was Cami's first ever attempt at wakeboarding and she was amazing!

She could stand up!

 Tom's first attempt at wakeboarding did not go quite as well as Cami's:


 His second attempt had a much more exciting ending (for those of us watching):

It's highly probable Tom will not forgive me for posting this pic

Once we were done with our wakeboarding attempts, we moved on to the sport that requires far less balance and coordination:

We got going pretty fast on this baby!

For the kids' turn, Madeline kept wanting to go faster, but Andrew wasn't quite so excited about the prospect of super speed:

When Andrew went with Tom, Tom was able to convince Andrew to go a wee bit faster, but if you look at Andrew's face he wasn't too enthused about it:

 

The day ended on a high note as Tom and I got to go on a hot date to an awesome restaurant, a hike in the woods and even a beautiful rainbow.

 

Thank-you Cami for letting us have a night out! We may start bringing you on all our vacations!

I can't believe our time here is almost up. Tomorrow we head to the Bay Area to show Cami around San Francisco and to see our long lost friends.

 I ❤ Tahoe!

Tahoe Adventures



So our family is staying in Lake Tahoe this week, and what would vacation be without a mid-stream blog post showing off all our cool pictures.  First up, is a picture of our niece Cami (who graciously agreed to accompany us) with the cast of a wild-west comedy show.  As you can see, Cami is taller than the villain...who was probably wearing boots. 

 



Virginia City, NV

Surprisingly, perhaps, the show was better than the similar shows you would see at Disneyland or Knotts, notwithstanding the lower production value.  Tom wonders if they had permission to use the Wells Fargo trademark, however.


Next up is a picture of Tom barefoot:

You can't tell it from this picture, but Tom and Madeline are about 300 feet into Lake Tahoe in this picture.  Right before this picture, we experienced the craziest thing (right when we were walking back to the car to get our camera.) We were minding our own business, when a HUGE dust-devil came up and ran right over us on the way to a beach where about 30 people were hanging out, sunbathing, etc.  It ran right over a baby, whose mom jumped on top of it.  Then it stopped right over a tent for about ten seconds.  Finally, it picked up an umbrella, inner tube and a bunch of towels and spiraled them up and away for about 300 feet.  Luckily. no one appeared to be hurt.

When we inspected the carnage from the dust devil, we discovered a creature in the lake who liked to skip rocks and calls himself a "baby mutant megalodon," which is apparently a prehistoric shark monster with a mouth ten times the size of a normal shark.  We don't really see the connection.

Madeline and Cami practicing for the mermaid role in the Little Mermaid.

 

 

This might be one of the few family pictures in the entire world where all four of us are smiling. (we are again sitting on a rock several hundred feet into Lake Tahoe. The water is very shallow)

 This is how most of our family pictures turn out.

 

 

 Madeline pulling daddy's chest hair. Ouch!

And finally, Andrew is either trying to stop Tom from receiving the power of Grayskull, or he is trying to steal Mommy's phone.

Written by Tom

PS Did we mention we went river rafting down the Truckee river this morning? It was our favorite part of our trip so far. Unfortunately, we didn't bring a water proof camera, so we don't have any pictures to prove that we really did it. :-)