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!

Fun pictures of Abbi

O.K., so this isn't a picture of Abbi, but I just finished making this, it's the first one I've made (hence the tea dying isn't the best) but, I like it!

Abbi was in a pretty good mood, so we took some fun pictures! I know that I am biased, but I think that she is one CUTE baby!

It looks like she is deep in thought, but really all it is, is she loves to chew on her fists. I've tried to stick a pacifier in there, but she just spits it out and sticks her fist back in.

She is learning how to hold on to her rattle. She's not the best at it, but we are working on it! She likes to look at it and she likes the rattle, but she prefers to have you hold it and entertain her.

Something tickled her fancy! This baby LOVES to laugh, and we LOVE to do all we can to get her to!

While we were visiting Candace in Logan, Mark and I were trying to get dressed, and Abbi just wasn't very happy, so Mark turned the TV on to a cartoon, muted it and set up this little area for her. We thought it was funny how mesmoried she looked as she watched the cartoon.

This is Abbi chillin in her car seat as we drive to Boise.

Finally, this is a video of Abbi "talking" in the car on our way to Boise.

Here's what's new!

News for the Johnson family:

Abbigail was blessed on April 12th. We had all of Mark's family and most of my family were able to make it. It was a lot of fun to have everyone at our house, it was definatly a full house and we are very grateful that we have a big grassy field next door for all the 25 kids to play in!

Abbi is growing well. We went in for her shots and she is in the 75th percentile for heighth and 50th percentile for weight. She is such a happy baby - so quick to smile and she is even starting to "talk"! I love to hear her talk to me as it always includes a smile and a giggle. I'll have to record it and post it a little later. In the mean time, here is a cute picture of Abbi. Ignore the lady next to her as it is early in the morning and she looks pretty bad! But Abbi has the biggest smile on her face...she LOVES the fan in our room.

I don't have a picture for it, but another little bit of news is that I started my own Mary Kay business. It was a little scary to start as it is TOTALLY out of my comfort zone to approach people and ask them to host a skin care class. But I have done a couple and I am getting much more comfortable and they are actually quite a bit of fun! It's kind of nice to be able to leave Abbi with Mark some nights and I get to leave and have some fun and have adult conversation with women. So if any of you want to host a class or need anything...let me know! :-)

Our last bit of news is that Mark got a new calling. He was released as Stake Young Men's secretary and was called as our ward's Executive secretary for the new bishopric put in on the 26th of April. To say the least he is nervous but also excited because he really likes all three men that are in the bishopric. I think the Lord is determined to make Mark a very organized person! Anyway, here is a picture of Mark with his dad and father-in-law on the day he was set apart for his calling. It was a pretty fun day.

So that is our update for now. I hope all are doing well and I check all your blogs all the time...so I hope there are some new posts!