Kaylee's Birthday Party

Pictures from Kaylee's birthday party...

Ode to Colin

Well, it's a little late and the boy has already grown some. We're happy to have a new cousin/nephew in the family. Congrats to Nate and Kirsta!

Projects and more

Some might say that I'm a little behind in my blogging. Yes, this may be true. What I'm not behind in is my house work. Over the last few weeks we've been busy with painting our house. It all started the week before July 4th when Heather and I purchased a new King bed. We wanted to keep our old bed to be available for guests, but Bry's room just wasn't big enough. So we decided to switch Bryant and our office/craft room.

We started by moving Bryant and his things into the girls' room. We primed the blue wall and repainted the entire room to a medium green. We think color turned out really nice. From there we moved the office to the newly painted room and then painted Bry's blue accent wall again. He now sleeps on the queen bed and still has room to play. If any of you come to visit you're welcome to boot him out for a decent bed!

The painting didn't stop there. Some of you might recall that we had painted the front room and living room a light tan color. We decided that the color was too light. We found a darker tan color that we thought would look better and proceeded to repaint downstairs. We did a slightly darker accent wall in both of the downstairs rooms. While Heather and the kids were gone to a family reunion (Johansen side) I took on the monumental task of painting the stairwell. It's a good thing I have a Little Giant ladder, otherwise this would have been extremely difficult. Here's a picture of the setup.

I have the platform extended between the ladder and set on top of a bucket of wheat. The food storage came in handy! I was able to step off the upstairs landing right onto the platform, then I used the kids' stool to reach up into the corners. It all turned out pretty well.


Oh, remember the "colorful" couches we inherited for the front room? Don't the slip covers look great?!

Kaylee's Blue Steel

Retiring the duck and rabbit

This post is primarily for our friends Josh and Farrah Keeler who are responsible for the large stuffed animals in our house. They watched Rachel for us one evening and Rachel took to the large duck they had. They wound up giving it to her for her birthday and it has been a good friend ever since.

When Kaylee came along, she too liked the duck. But this was just too much trouble - they had to share. That is, until we found a large pink furry rabbit that Kaylee could call her own. We've decided the animals have had their time and we will be parting ways. Here are a few pics from the years...

The girls wanted to take some last pictures with their furry (and no so clean) friends before they were tossed.

Thanks for the great memories!

Stormy Weather - June 5, SC News

So Heather and I are finally recovered from our vacation and life is getting back to normal-ish. It turns out that I'm headed back to CA next week. Kaylee's Birthday is Sunday and I'm sure we'll have some more pics of the kids to share soon.

As I was going throught he photos from our trip, I wanted to share some I snapped from the plane ride out to SC. After we took off from SLC the captain came on and said that there was a major storm system that was in our path and that we were being directed around it. Little did we know that we'd be near Albequerque, NM before we really started the trek east. Go figure. The captain pointed out that fact and also the weather system as we rounded the end of the storm. We were cruising about 37,000 feet and we were told that some storm cells went as high as 70,000 feet.

Anyway, I snapped several cool pictures of the clouds from the plane, here are a couple of my favorites. The first is the end of the storm as we came around.

As we got in front of the storm you could see multiple layers to it, creating some interesting pictures. This is a zoomed in photo of the lowest of a three layer cloud system. You can see a little bit of the rain here. Kinda eerie.

Anyway, those of you to the east can blame this as one of many storms causing the bad weather out there.

As you may know, Heather's brother Sam got married which was the reason for the trip. We got there a day ahead to have some time to help set up and socialize with Sam and Renata (she's from Argentina) before they left on their honeymoon. The wedding was typical for a Johansen wedding, there had to be something that happened and this time was no exception. The Columbia, SC temple is about and hour and a half away from where the family lives. It turns out that after arriving at the temple Sam discovered that he didn't have the marriage license. Well, 3-4 hours later we all met back at the temple for a later-than-planned ceremony. Here's a picture of the happy couple:


A couple of unique things about the day: first, the ceremony was done in Spanish so more than half of the people in attendance didn't understand the language. With my Portuguese I understood a little more than half of what ws said. The second thing that was that outside the temple and during the reception there was a webcast from a laptop so Renata's family in Argentina could see what was going on. A little unusual, but I'm sure it made the bride very happy to share with her family.

Mom's 50th, etc.

So, contrary to popular belief, I have proof that Mason wasn't all smiles while he was here in Utah. I know he had a really good time, but I thought this picture was too funny to not share with everyone. Honestly it was fun to have all the family together for the short time that it was. I think we all had a good time.


These pics are my contribution to the "mom's 50th" series of blogs that we've all had. I thought all of the decorations came together well and made a fun evening.



And of course we can't forget the cake that Heather put together. Mom's not too young now that she's 50! We officially buried her youth in a chocolate cake (note the gummi worms).


I think this is one of my favorite pics. You can tell that mom was really happy. Happy 50th mom!


We also had fun playing around with everyone - and very glad that we have the space to have people over without sitting on each other's laps! RockBand seemed to be a hit - especially Nate's smooth vocals. Of course we can't forget the "Scottish lakes" Police lyrics and Mason's astounding vocal performance on the B-52's "Roam". Too funny! I snapped a couple pics of Brad, DeAnna, and Donovan as they were jamming.


And now for a few I snapped over the week of our kids. I especially like Kaylee and Rachel's pics. They're growing up too quick!