Sundance

Chelse, Jeff, and Georgy went up to The Sundance Film Festival while George was here.

The first picture is of Georgy before Chel picked her up to go.   I just really love that dress!

  Neil and I couldn't go because it was a school/work night and they were staying the night in Park City.  :(  

It looked like they had a lot of fun though.

You might wanna barf!

Last Sunday everyone was just hanging out at my parents house, as usual, when Reagan comes upstairs and keeps saying spilled, spilled, spilled, etc. So Jill runs downstairs because she realizes that Tinkerbell and Olivia have been left alone for way too long. We hear her yell a little and then she comes back up with soaking wet towels and bath mats from the bathroom.

This is what had happened.

Tink and Liv were playing "Finding Nemo" in the toilet...not the bath tub, not the sink, the freaking toilet! They had found a ziploc baggie somewhere and were pretending Nemo was in it or something. When Jill showed up, Liv had the ziploc baggie filled with toilet water and was DRINKING IT!! Now, you all probably realize that that part isn't in the Disney show Finding Nemo, so I don't have any idea what made her decide to drink the poisonous water. Surprisingly, it's been an entire week and she hasn't gotten sick or died or anything!

These are the culprits:

They really shouldn't be allowed to even associate with each other because as soon as they get together they become the 2 naughtiest little girls you could ever imagine!

Let's Go Outback Tonight!

We always like to take our Australian friends to the Outback and laugh about the fact that NOTHING there is Australian!  It's still pretty good food whether it's australian or not.

At some point during Georgy's stay, Neil brought up the fact that there is a "sexy missionary" calendar.  That same night George found it on the internet and ordered it.  Luckily it showed up on our doorstep the day before she went to San Francisco!  Here's what ya get...

And a Sneak Peek at the Inside!

We liked this picture best because of the fact that if you look closely, the Plan of Salvation is drawn on the chalkboard!  Those sneaks.

I also love the fact that the actual calendar part of the calendar is about 2 inches big.  It's more of a poster than a calendar!

Igloo

My neighbor down the road built this enormous igloo and Georgy was especially impressed with it.  It was tall enough to fully stand up inside, but it was beyond slippery, we needed ice skates in that thing.  Anyways, One night after visiting Cold Stone we pulled over and snuck into the igloo.  Luckily we had Neil with us to photograph our big adventure and protect us in case there were any polar bears or mean eskimos inside :) 

Last night we wanted to take Georgy to a type of restaurant that they don't have in Australia.  We were going to go down to Rodizio's at Trolley Square, but decided it would be closer/cheaper/quicker to just go over to the Braza Grill in Clearfield.

To Georgy's dismay, I made her hold the waiter's meat sword!  It was super hilarious!  You can see in Georgy's face just how excited she was!  I think the waiter was quite pleased (he he he)  

Tay's concert

Last night, Me, Neil, and Georgy went to my little brothers concert.  He plays with Jason, Seth, Cam, and Rob

An attempted self portrait

Rob's shirt was absolutely FANTASTIC!!  This picture doesn't show just how cool it is.  It had these vertical lines on it and it was like a sound reader (I'm sure there's a name for that, but I don't know it).  When the beats got louder, the lines lit up to the noise level.  I'm not describing it well, but I just know it was a sweet shirt that lit up- that's all that matters.  

Look who came for a visit

You'll have to wait til the end to see!

Meanwhile, we had a great time with Sean & Shelley's babies last night at my mom's house.  This is me with Lindsay and Ethers.

Here we are with the boys helping LaLa make cookies.
Neil and Lindsay watching Baby Mozart or something
Alex found Livvie's old sunnies and would NOT take them off!  He likes being a little rockstar!

And finally, our Visitor is 

GEORGINA CHILTON!

She's my friend from Australia that I met when I lived there 5 years ago.  We still see each other at least once a year though :)
The reason she's holding a Health bar is because she loves Cold Stone (and so do neil and I), so we went there the first night she came in.  While we were sitting at Cold Stone eating are amazing desserts, she goes, "Why would you want to put a health bar in your ice cream!?"  Neil and I just started laughing at her awesome-ness!  So we explained that it was a Heath bar and it was made of toffee, it wasn't the protein/nutrition bar you would find in the diet section of the grocery store.   She is such a riot, you all should spend some time with Georgy while she's here!

Happy Birthday Jeff

Jeff is the very first brother in law I ever had!  He's been in our family for probably 13-14 years! He had his 36th birthday on Monday and we celebrated with Mom's delicious manicotti and homemade Dutch Apple pie!  (and a few cupcakes too)
YUMMM!

This is what took up my 2 week break

I tend to get bored when school is on break and I don't have stuff going on.  Christmas break is always full of parties and shopping and all sorts of stuff to do, but since I had 2 whole weeks off, I thought I'd better give myself a big project to do. 

Our house has a little loft-type area that has been a very boring off-white color the whole time we've lived here.  I've wanted to do painting projects before but Neil never wanted to.  I figured this was a small enough area that even if Neil didn't want to help, I could do it myself.  I don't know how well you can see the color of the walls in these pictures, but I painted them yellow and re-painted the trim too!  (the wall with the design thing on it is the color that the whole area used to be, but not anymore!)

I really love the color and it was such a fun thing for us to do- yes Neil did end up helping and I was glad.

Don't mind the missing doors on the closet, that is the last part of my project and I'm planning on finishing that today!

Oh, and in case you're wondering; neither Neil or myself made New Years Resolutions this year (actually I don't know that we ever have!)

oh man...

Last year at this time we were celebrating New Years Eve here...

With these people...

And it was hot enough to be places like this...
I think we might have to make Sydney for New Years a new family tradition!

The Backyardigans

Sean put on the tv show Backyardigans the other day for his kids and this is what happened.

Alex ran to get Pablo and then he and Ethan were glued to the tv.

I stood right in front of them and they just looked over me!  It was super funny!

Here's Ethan on their fun new playground.  It's actually not new, just new to them.  My aunt connie has had it since her youngest was a baby and since he's now 18, she decided the triplets would have a good time playing with it.  They absolutely LOVE it!!

Alex is always all smiles!
(Lindsay wasn't interested in the slide at the time and she only wanted to watch TV for a couple minutes at a time... She's just too busy.)

Banana Tree: 1964

My brother Taylor is officially a published writer!  He writes a lot of poetry and one of his poems was selected to be in a book called The Iowa Review.

We're so proud of Tay!

He even got some much needed money out of it!

Christensen/Johnson Christmas Festivities

Okay, I hope you have plenty of time for this one...

Here's what we've been up to this holiday season.

First, the annual Johnson-sibling night out.

Moving on to Christmas Eve at the Christensen house, we draw names for presents.  Here's Neil opening his.

And me.  My parents give us slippers or jammies on Christmas eve as well as our annual tree ornament.
Taylor, Neil, and Sean all got almost the same sweater but all from different people.  It was quite the coincidence.
Tinkerbell with the purple Ariel she wanted.
Tiny Reagan.  For some reason I didn't get a picture of Nick opening his present, but there he is in the background.
Christmas Eve BINGO at The Johnson's.
Some of the kiddies with papa calling out the numbers.
A very busy Christmas morning!!!  This picture made us laugh because, as you can see, it looks as if I'm not wearing pants.   I assure you I am wearing pants---well shorts.  Neil surprised me with this Paris Hilton perfume.  My sister has it and Neil likes it so he secretly bought it for a present :)  Despite the name of the perfume, it is actually quite nice.
Oh- my favorite part!  Neil woke up at 6 am to make me sugar cookies from scratch!!  He said it was especially difficult due to the fact that we don't own cookie cutters or a rolling pin.  So he made them into an Mc, a Heart, and an N.  What a sweetie!!
We got about a million things- this is just what Santa left!
Cute Lindsay and LaLa 
Max got a gun that shoots little velcro balls.  Of course Pops was the target!
Livvie got this awesome, old school polaroid camera.  Her face was SOOO funny when her dad took a picture of her and the picture popped out of the camera! 
Max and Liv
This is one of Neil's many presents.  They're electronic shooting earmuffs that go behind the neck.  He was stoked!

Jill and I rocking out to Disney's Sing It!  We belted out High School Musical all morning long!

Neil and Blake's new presents from their dad.
Ethan in the Princess tent.
Alex laughing about nothing.  It was hilarious!
We had our yearly Christmas Day lunch at Grandma CC's, although most people couldnt' make it due to the terrible snow storms.  After lunch we headed to Neil's grandma Lyril's for more visiting and more food.  (this is her Christmas tree)

Last stop was back to my parents for a night filled with Rock Band.  It was a very long, busy, and wonderful day!!  

I hope you all had a good one too!