Happenings...

In the last month since Halloween a lot has happened...

We hired some painters to paint the dining room...

They were cute and cheap...

But, liked to pose a lot...


 I hosted book club...

 The house was clean, so I took a couple of pictures....

 {I'm putting it out there Lauren...}

We did not have book club in our room, but it seems to be the only pictures I took that night...

 This picture is blurry and a little dark, but you can see the new color in the dining room...

{I will take better pictures of all the rooms at some point}

We brought back the hired painters to tackle the basement...

 Oskar supervised...

Again, they really liked to pose!


 The little one had his first bite {with good luck kisses} of cereal...

 He liked it!

And, I don't think anyone has mistaken him for Hungry!


The biggest one had her first school performance...

a medley of patriotic songs for Veteran's Day.

 Hanging with the sisters...

 Sometimes, no matter how cute a princess looks...

 she doesn't always behave as a princess should...

and then some looks go back and forth...

Until princess like behavior is resumed.


And, we celebrated Thanksgiving...

Sometimes, I think Greg feels the way Oskar looks in this picture...

When you have a little bit of this....

 and a little bit of this...

and a little bit of this...

coming at you at the same time...

it's enough to make any man rub his face in weariness!

I'm glad the two Johnson men have each other...

The End.

Halloween

 Our Halloween festivities began with Lily coming home for lunch on Friday 

to get into her costume for the afternoon parade and class party.

 While Hannah Grace wasn't in her costume she wanted to be a part of the photo shoot...

and brought her prop cell phone.

 School parade!

 After school the girls spent the afternoon playing the with little girls from down the street.

 As I was taking their pictures, I realized Lily was leading a "fighting" school. 

I couldn't figure out if the sticks were swords or light sabers.

 Teaching them all her fierce moves.

 

I realize it looks like the Johnson girls were beating down on the neighbor girls, but every so often Lily would shout, "It's night time" and all four girls would fall to the ground and pretend to sleep.  Then Lily would walk around and wake them each up.

 

 That night I tried to get a nice picture of all three together.

 As you can see I was taking a little too long and soon lost everyone's attention to the TV that was on behind me.

 Halloween day was sunny and bright and not too cold!

 We met up with some of Lily's friends from first grade and did a little trick-or-treating with them.

Then went over to Grandpa's to trick-or-treat with him on is street.

It turned out to be a beautiful day, no winter coats needed like last year.

And, it was so nice that none of the homes we visited had any type of horror

decorations as so many homes seem to have.

  A couple of skeletons, but nothing that made these little girls feel scared or uncomfortable.

{Although, Hannah Grace looks a little doubtful of the pumpkin man she's standing next too!}

Needless to say everyone had a really fun day and everyone is very tired.

Right now I have both Oskar and Hannah Grace taking naps right now.  I put them to bed at 10:30 this morning!

Spellcheck

Recently, someone 

who shall remain anonymous

{but is in this picture}

 asked me if I used spellcheck on the blog.

I admit, I was slightly offended.

While not an English major,

I pride myself on my use of spellcheck

and grammatically correct sentences.

{although, my college English professor told me I had some issues with my use of the comma}

{I either insert it throughout my writing at all of the wrong times}

{or, ignore it completely}

So, I went back to the last post and read through what I had written.

In the email it was implied there was something amiss

with my spelling of the word sweating.

I didn't remember talking about anyone sweating.

After reading through the post I still didn't know 

what the email writer was referring too.

And then it hit me.

Bless her little heart

Not only do I use dalmation material to make her cowgirl chaps...

but, I tell everyone I call her Sweat Pea.

For the record, she is not a sweaty child.

She is precious and sweet...

and her nickname is Sweet Pea!

and I will pay more attention to spellcheck's recommendations.

Bubbalicious

Things have been busy at the Johnsons the last few weeks

This SweatPea 

had a great season playing soccer.

As in all things, she plays hard and plays too win!

 And when she gets tripped up she always gets right back up and into the game.

There is nothing better...

 then running...

 as fast as you can....

 just because you can!

And the cheerleaders.

 This SugarPlum

 has also been busy.

One sunny morning I found her outside dressed like this...

heading for her sidewalk chalk in the driveway.

She turned "free"

 At times she hangs out with her baby brother

 and other times moves onto something else.

Lastly, we have this little guy...

 who is just...

 busy being...

 precious.

 We've had a hard time coming up with a nickname for him.

Lily's is SweatPea and Hannah Grace is SugarPlum.
If I call Lily "SugarPlum" she'll say to me-
"Momma, I'm not SugarPlum, I'm SweatPea."

If I call Hannah Grace "SweatPea"
She'll tell me
"Momma, I'm not SweatPea, I'm SugarPlum."
They take these things seriously.

Lily keeps asking what Oskar's nickname is going to be
I had been calling him Bubba...

But, Greg did not like that

He said you only called someone Bubba
when they were really your brother
or
If you weren't being nice to them.

I've tried to stop calling him Bubba..

but, I've had a hard time with it...

because he's just so Bubbalicious!

 I have been busy trying to get Halloween costumes together,
which includes creating a Cowgirl costume for Lily.

 Here is how I spent my afternoon...
attaching "chaps" to an old pair of jeans...

I was thinking about two different things when I took these pictures...

1) While I was busy measuring, cutting, and gluing these we had three plumbers downstairs working on the plumbing for our basement.  When I decided to take a picture or two of what I was doing for the blog, I tried to do it discreetly so that the plumbers wouldn't know what I was doing.   I don't know, but I don't think plumbers take pictures of themselves plumbing.  Anyways, I was caught three different times, camera in hand taking a picture of the unfinished pants.  Each time the plumber was very nice and just smiled at me as he walked by and I quickly tried to put the camera down.
2) The other thing is I didn't realize until I got home from JoAnne Fabrics that I had mistakenly bought a yard of dalmatian print fabric instead of the cow print fabric...
I'm betting Lily won't notice!


Well, that's our update for right now.

The plumbers have also left for the day and have completed all their work.

Tomorrow the workmen come to start putting up the drywall.

I am going to try to get down there tonight to take some pictures of how things are shaping up
and I'll try to post them soon so you can see the basement come together!