Daddy-Daughter

Abbi absolutely LOVES her dad. Everyday when he walks in the door from coming home from work, it's a celebration! She crawls double-time to him and is smiles and giggles when he picks her up.

This is Abbi at Thanksgiving. Dad was the most comfortable spot to sleep. Whenever she struggles to sleep, this usually will do the trick.


We had tried to get her to sleep in the playpen upstairs, but she wasn't having it. So down she came and sat on her dad. With everyone in the room talking she was finally able to go to sleep. I guess his belly makes a good pillow. :-)



Daddy tickling Abbi in the leaf pile.



Two best buds.




She loves to hear her dad play the guitar. Sometimes when she is giving me a hard time at eating time, Mark will get out his guitar and play for her and while he does that, I have no problem shoveling her food into her!

I am so grateful to have Mark as my husband. He is a great father and his little girl totally adores him. We are some lucky girls!

Fun Pictures of Abbi

Here are just a few pictures of Abbi doing fun little things.

This is when we were playing in the leaves. Just her little face is poking out. I can't help but think she is the cutest baby ever!



Abbi is playing at Grandma Welch's house. Everything on the lower shelves had been taken out and spread all over the office. Such is life with a 9 month old!



Abbi loves taking baths. She'll play in the water until it starts getting cold, then mom says that she has to get out. Her hair can do this big curl down the middle of her head. When it dries it get quite puffy. It's fun to play with!



This is Abbi trying to get under the table, but chairs were blocking her path. Which won't stop her from trying. However, when her legs get caught in the chair, then cries for someone to come rescue her start. She got so stuck, she couldn't go forward, backward, or to any side. Funny the places they try to go.



Abbi likes to get into her books. Mainly to chew on the book edges, not really to sit down with mom and read them. WAY too much energy to do that at the moment.

Halloween!

It's Halloween! Abbi borrowed this adorable costume from her cousin Savannah. I think she was the cutest little sunflower! Many at the trunk or treat would agree!

Here Abbi is all ready to go out to the Trunk-or-Treat! She didn't even mess with the hat!



Abbi showing off her little "stems." She seems pretty excited about being all dressed up!



We did have a little problem with keeping the head piece from falling down into her eyes. We would pull it back and try and get it tight, but inevitably it would fall down. Oh well. She was still a show stopper!



Abbi somehow got a hold of a sucker. When I looked down she was sucking the daylights out of a sucker with it's wrapper on. The wrapper was a soggy mess, so I went ahead and took it off and let her keep sucking. She was in heaven! Our bishop walked by (he's a dentist) and said we were starting her off early. She was loving it so much I couldn't take it away! However, when it fell onto the parking lot, that's when it went bye-bye.



Abbi loved to give candy to the other trick-or-treaters that came to our car. I had to help the candy go into their bags instead of into her mouth sometimes.

We had tons of fun at our Trunk-or-Treat. We even had a member build a "Spook Alley" and Mark provided the sound system to play Halloween sounds and songs. We are looking forward to next year!

Fall Fun!!

We had a TON of leaves from our Ash trees in our front yard that after we raked them up, we PLAYED! You forget how fun a huge pile of leaves can be! Abbi sure loved it!

Can you see her! She could get lost very easily in this pile! The next day, the wind had blown off enough leaves to make this pile again!

Abbi enjoyed trying to eat the leaves. Fiber right??

She missed her mouth and went up the nose! Woops!

Mom playing with Abbi. I really like this picture. :-)

Abbi having fun with her daddy!

A fun family night for all!

Ready for Church!

This is the dress that Mark bought Abbi before she was even born last Christmas. She finally fits in it!


Abbi is always so happy and willing to smile. We LOVE it!


Her little poof of hair on top. Her hair is growing in around the sides more, but the top is quite a bit longer and it works so well in a little "poof" on top of her head!

She's all ready, now just waiting on Mom to get ready!

Our little Abbi

This Post is just some random pictures we've taken of Abbi. I decided it was time to put them on a blog before they really started piling up!


Abbi has finally figured out how to sit up by herself. This is the first day that she did it. She seems pretty happy by her accomplishment. It probably didn't help that mom was clapping and making a big fuss!


Here's Abbi sitting up all by herself playing with her toys. She also has learned to army crawl everywhere. We are still waiting for her to learn to put her knees under her. She gets up on her knees, but when it's time to move, she plops down on her belly and army crawls.


Abbi likes the exersaucer we got for her. It keeps her entertained for awhile. We love how she is always quick to smile.

Abbi is all bundled up as we were up at Twin Lakes camping the 19th of Sept. and it was a bit chilly in the mornings and evenings. She had lots of fun though.

Abbi snoozing on our bed. If she wakes up early in the morning, I usually just bring her in with Mark and me and eventually she falls asleep again for a little while.

Here she is waking up in the morning. We had to leave the house early for something so Mark and I were already up and getting ready.

Here Abbi looks like she is trying to tell us to go back to bed. I guess she got bored watching us get ready to go. She laid like this for awhile.

Abbi and her oatmeal. We have gotten better at not having so much on her face.

We borrowed this baby backpack from our neighbor and Abbi likes to go for walks in it. I guess her dad wanted to make sure she was all primped to go out.

The Queen of the King size bed.


Sometimes Abbi just talks to herself when she wakes up. This is what we found one day after she had woken up from her nap. She's happy as a clam!

Abbi LOVES her jumper! I am very grateful for it, as she is perfectly happy to jump in it while I take my shower. It's a great babysitter for things like that.

Abbi had reached up and pulled her headband over her eyes during her nap. I guess she wanted one of those black out masks and made due with her headband. She has also done this in her car seat behind us. She was crying, and we kept saying, "it's okay baby, we're almost there...." then when we got out and looked at her, we then knew why she was crying so much. We felt kind of bad.

This is Abbi's first attempt at baby cereal. It has taken awhile, but we are now pretty good at it. and she totally prefers oatmeal to any other. And I don't even want to talk about green beans.

Johnson Campout

Our annual Johnson Family Campout is held in July, but I figure it is better to post about it late rather than never!

It was a fun filled weekend, with huge water slides, lots of good food, fun skits, and great company. Mark and I got to the "campsite" (Mark's parents house for this year) on Friday night. We were lucky enough to have the fifth wheel trailer for our sleeping quarters. I say lucky because it was VERY hot this weekend, and we had air conditioning! :-) As it was hot, we went in one afternoon and took a midday nap. Abbi, as always, was our alarm clock to wake us up. Here she is going up to Daddy to tell him it's time to get up.



On Saturday, Mark got an early start on cleaning out his dad's shop. I know that doesn't sound like a "vacation" thing to do, after all we are "camping." However, Mark and I felt that his parents have done so much for everyone, and his Dad isn't home long enough to be able to go through it himself, so we wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to serve them and help them with this project that desperatly needed done. It took all day, and only breaks for lunch and dinner, but we got it done! A trailer full of trash, and another with DI, we got it clean! You can find what you're looking for, and when I ask Mark's dad how he likes his shop, I usually just get a look saying, "are you kidding? I love it!" We were happy to do this for them, and are happy they are enjoying it!

While the shop was getting done, there was also a HUGE waterslide getting put together thanks to Chris. They got sprinklers going on it, and everyone was going down it. It was fun to watch them go down and get all wet (and muddy). I'm sure it was very refreshing as, like I've said, it was VERY hot!

We also got to enjoy skits by every family. Regrettably I didn't get pictures of everyone as Mark and I sort of slacked on this part and we were putting together a skit on the fly! However, I did get a picture of everyone watching and of Grandma T doing her skit.


Ken enjoying himself watching the skits.


All the kids on the floor watching with the adults standing guard! We even had a curtain for the skit stage!




This is Grandma doing her skit. It was a fun little poem/story. We love having her come to our family functions!

We had great food throughout thanks to the camp cook Chris, and to all others that contributed. It was nice to be able to sit and talk and shoot the breeze with everyone and we look forward to another camping trip!

Update

So, o.k., I have totally slacked on updating our blog! I will try and do a quick update for ya'll.

1. Mark is the executive secretary in the bishopric. He is actually enjoying his calling and really likes the men he works with, which probably makes it easier for him.
2. I am the CTR 5 teacher, and it's pretty interesting to teach 5 year olds. They seem all interested in the lesson, and then I ask a question about the story or something, many hands go up in the air, but when I call on them something usually comes out as, "My dad has a big truck and I'm going to have one someday!" Not so sure the lesson sinks in. Oh well!
3. I have been doing Mary Kay. I was in the Burley fair and have gotten a lot of people to see this month. I hope that it keeps going this way! (I'm having a back to school special...e-mail me if you want anything, or check out my website - www.marykay.com/haleejohnson)
4. Abbi is growing like a weed! She is our little rollie-pollie. She will roll around the entire room. We have been working on getting her up on her hands and knees, but she just lunges forward and then proceeds to roll. We even brought the dog in so she would try to crawl/lundge whatever to it. It was kind of funny, she wanted to be by the dog, but her legs just kicked like crazy behind her, but was going nowhere.
5. We finished putting our yard in the back. It is SOOOOO nice having grass instead of a bunch of dirt and bark. We actually have had dinner a couple times on our back porch now. Gotta love it.
6. I have craft projects coming out of my ears! Mark has informed me I can't start anymore until I get some of my current ones done. Probably a good rule for me. So I need to get going so that I finish one so I can look at others!
7. We are going on a camping trip to Twin Lakes. It will be Abbi's first "real" camping trip. Cross your fingers that we survive!

That's all I can think of right now. If I think of more, hopefully I will remember to post them, and any pictures we have.

Until next time!

Bear Lake

This is the little vacation we took with my family to Bear Lake. It was a lot of fun, with beautiful weather, and great company. Here are some pictures of our get away.


We didn't want Abbi to disturb everyone, and our room was a little cramped (you pack a ton of stuff when you have a kid!) So Abbi was confined to the closet as her sleeping quarters. She acutally did quite well.

We bought a floater for Abbi with a cool little canopy. She LOVED the water. Her little legs were just kicking like crazy! Reminded me of a duck, don't see much going on above, but crazy down below! Swimming tuckered her out and she slept a LONG time, so we tried to go swimming every night!

This is the north beach at Bear Lake. The Malmstrom kids and Chris Condie playing in the sand. It was a beautiful day. We also did our traditional water games, which the Welch clan DOMINATED! (as Mark gives me a smirk as I type that!)

Abbi didn't enjoy the beach as much, because the farther out in the water, the colder it got. So we had to keep her close to the beach, and she couldn't kick like she wanted to, plus she got sunscreen in her eye. We took her out of her floater and let her sit in the water. She liked the feel of sand on her feet, but quickly got bored. So off to grandma who was more than happy to take her and to give her warm loves.

This is Abbi all ready to go spilunking (cave exploring) We went to Minitonka cave. It is constantly 40 degrees inside. I thought Abbi was cute peeking over the side of the backpack. She didn't like when we stopped because she got bored quickly, but she liked it. However, being dark, she did doze off in the middle for a little bit.

This is Dad walking on the "boardwalk" that you have to take to get to the cave. On one side solid rock, the other side a 50 ft. drop. Mom was nervous whenever Mark got close to the open side.


Abbi peeking out right before we go into the cave.

These are steps made in the 1930's during the Great Depression. It gave men work for 9 months to make the trail for this cave. There's about 9 million stairs! Most were carved from the rock.

Apparently there was something on the ceiling. But this is most of the family in the cave. It was hard to take pictures as you can imagine it's kind of dark inside.

This is at the end of the trail, called the Wedding Room. There was acutally a couple that got married down here. Why, I don't know. It's muddy and cold. (Mark liked the temperature) The stalagmite (don't know how to spell) is called the bride, and there is a stalactite above it that is the groom. Hence the Wedding Room.

Sorry about the sideways picture, But this is when we got out of the cave. Abbi was good just chillin in her seat.


This is Mark and the baby on the "Boardwalk" We thought the scenery was pretty.

Mark and Abbi ready for a bike ride. It is Abbi's first bike ride. She seemed to like it. Abbi seems like anything that is outdoors. Even with all the bumps of a bike ride, she still managed to doze off.

Abbi in the bike trailer. She's still too small to sit alone in it, so we shoved the car seat in and strapped it down. It worked and she liked it. She has a screen in front of her, which she likes to feel.

This is when we first arrived. All of us are putting our food we brought away and making lunch. The condo we were in was very nice. Thanks mom and dad for putting it all together!

This is the beautiful view from the upstairs bedroom window.

This is Whitney catchin some rays reading her book on the balcony.

Overall we had a great time. It was perfect because it was a vacation that when we came home, we didn't feel like we needed ANOTHER vacation to recoup. Thanks mom and dad again for putting all this together. We love you!