Christmas At Our House

We had a wonderful Christmas and few weeks leading up to the big day.

Jack is very into drawing and coloring right now and is constantly bringing me his creations. This is his version of Santa, wearing many belts.

Jack is a dancer. Yes, my SON takes dance lessons. He looks forward to "active hour" class each week, and is constantly practicing his skipping and chasse-ing around our house. I was a little nervous that he wouldn't perform when it came time for the Christmas dance concert, but I could not have been more wrong. He was SO excited about it, and was literally a clown during the performance. He was so elated to be up on stage, that he didn't look at his teacher once to be reminded of the routine, but was shaking it so hard he fell on his bum. I was laughing so hard I was crying. His face was priceless the whole time as he was grinning from ear to ear. I now realize why parents spend hundreds of dollars on their children to take dance lessons. I was beaming watching him.

We had all the cousins over for a ginger bread house and cookie decorating party.

Yep, my kid is the shirtless one.

Our elf....whose named changed several times..

"Fishing"

Can't wait till he returns next year!

Temple Square

My little Wiseman

McNeil Family Christmas Party

Nativity Program

Christmas Eve Jammies

Christmas Morning

We hope your holidays were as wonderful as ours. We can't wait to see what 2012 brings to the Johnson family!

Merry Christmas

One for the book.....

Yesterday, I gave Jack the world's longest lecture about his bad behavior.

"Why do you always sass me? Why can't you do what I ask? When I ask you to do something, please just do it, instead of giving me a looooong list of reasons you cannot do it. Please STOP talking back to me and just do what I ask. Is that SO hard?"

Don't worry, typing and re-reading the words made me naseous that I would actually give that lecture. I'm completely embarrassed for myself.

But then he responds with this.

"Mom, you wanna know why I can't do what you say and stop talking? Cause I have to close my mouth if I stop talking. And when I close my mouth, it hurts. So I can't do it."

I guess this is a VERY bad case of "I hope you have a child just like you."

Christmas PreCap

At the blogging rate I am going, I will probably not recap things until well after Christmas, so I thought I'd precap Christmas and update with a few recent happenings of our household.

I LOVE this time of year! There is nothing else like it. The joy, Spirit, fun and excitement of the holidays are something I always look forward to, and they never fail to disappoint. Holidays are definitely more fun and exciting when you have kids, so I've been doing my best to instill the same love for this time of year in Jack that I have. He seems just as eager to celebrate as I do, and I love seeing the excitement in him.

Thanksgiving always kicks off the holiday celebration for me. I didn't have Jack this year, and I missed him a lot. I wonder how many years, if ever, it will take to get easier to take your child somewhere else for holidays and not be with them? Its getting old spending the holidays driving back and forth to meet for custody exchanges, instead of enjoying time with family and relaxing. Keeping with tradition, we headed out for Black Friday Smackdown.......I mean shopping. Olivia and I were both accosted by the SAME crazy European fool on two separate occasions! He elbowed me in the face and broke my fingernail. I addition to the physical damage, while I was waiting patiently in line, he was assaulting my senses by eating jalapeno poppers 2 inches from my face. I didn't make it out with everything on my list, but it was a good start and well worth the broken nail.

Amidst all the decorating and festivities, Jack and I have been the unfortunate recipients of the stomach flu. It seems to be a highly contagious bug that has circulated through our family for the last couple weeks. Jack got it in the middle of the night and threw up in every bed we have in our house. By 5 am, I had done 3 loads of laundry, and it just went down hill from there. Over the course of the next 3 days, he went through about 20 pairs of underwear and continued to throw up. Two more days had passed, and I thought I had avoided it. Last Saturday, I was driving back from Moab from running a 10K with my friend, and it hit me. I was throwing up the whole way home. Luckily for me, mine only lasted about 24 hours and we are both now free and clear. But I cannot say the same for other family members we may have passed it on to!

We also experienced a major gas leak in our house from our furnace. In case you're keeping track, the score is gas leak=O Chelsea =2. We had a really bad one in our St. George house when we first moved in, and now this one. I had smelled it for a few days, but talked myself out of it. Once I finally called Questar at 10pm one night, he came and confirmed that it was very bad, and coming from our furnace and the exhaust pipes(or something like that). A repair man came the next day to fix it. Nothing like unexpected appliance repairs right before Christmas!

Like every other kid, Jack is on the countdown to Christmas, which he keeps track of by eating a daily candy from his advent calendar. We've also been fortunate enough to have Buddy the Elf, our very own Elf on a Shelf, to keep track of us and our behavior. Santa sent us one of his Elves, and it watches us daily. When we go to sleep at night, he heads to the North Pole and reports to Santa, then returns to our house and hides in a new spot. We almost had to abandon the idea the first week, when it was backfiring on me badly. Every time Jack would throw tantrums or misbehave, which is every other minute, I would remind him about the elf and Santa's naughty list. Apparently the warnings were too much for him to handle and he completely freaked out. Every night before bed he would start bawling and crying hysterically, telling me he just KNEW he was on the naughty list and that he wasn't getting presents, and that he didn't want the elf to go tell Santa what he had done that day. He even went to far as to inform ME that I was also on the naughty list, because I had yelled at him that day. I will have to have a little chat with the Jolly Old St. Nick about that one! So, after MUCH convincing that he is a good boy and that Santa will definitely bring him presents, he is now enjoying Buddy the Elf's presence in our home, and wakes up bright and early everyday to find where Buddy is hiding. He has made about 20 different lists as to what he wants Santa to bring, and its seems that Santa is having a hard time deciding what he actually wants....hope he is not too disappointed on Christmas morning!

Other than preparing for the holidays, life is pretty normal and boring for us. Jack is still loving preschool and learning so many new things. Lately he is obsessed with numbers and people's ages. All day long all we do is talk about numbers and what numbers add up to what and how old will so and so be when he is X age......his brain NEVER slows down. I know I am completely bragging, thats what parents are supposed to do, right? He is super smart. Too smart sometimes. If I tell him something once, he has it memorized. He can count to 100 in various ways, such as 1x, 5x and 10x. Yesterday, we had to ask Grandpa what comes after trillion, because his mom didn't know the answer......sheesh....I won't be able to keep up with him! And FYI, if you have been around him lately, chances are I know exactly how old you are....just like I know how old his babysitter, preschool teacher, and primary teacher are. I'm sure they appreciate him pestering them for this information, then turning around and telling everyone.
This is a typical day....
*If I'm on the phone....
Jack- "Who is that?"
Me- "The questar man."
Jack- "How old is he?"
Me- " I don't know, probably 50."
Jack-"Whoa, that's old. Older than daddy, cause he's 34, and older than you, cause you're 29. But younger than Grandpa, cause he's 60."
Me- "Yep."
Jack- "So, if he's 50, how old will he be when I'm 12?"

We hope you are enjoying the holidays as much as we are!